“I’ve been warned not to talk about it,” the woman wrote, before revealing snippets of the day she says she was arrested for publishing gay erotica.
“I’ll never forget it - being escorted to the car in full view, enduring the humiliation of stripping naked for examination in front of strangers, putting on a vest for photos, sitting in the chair, shaking with fear, my heart pounding.”
The handle, Pingping Anan Yongfu, is among at least 8 in recent months which have shared accounts on Chinese social media platform Weibo of being arrested for publishing gay erotic fiction. As authors recounted their experiences, dozens of lawyers offered pro bono help.
At least 30 writers, nearly all of them women in their 20s, have been arrested across the country since February, a lawyer defending one told the BBC. Many are out on bail or awaiting trial, but some are still in custody. Another lawyer told the BBC that many more contributors were summoned for questioning.
I know nothing about Chinese child care, but reading that the government wishes for more child rearing, might it be that there are other systemic problems like no access to child care facilities, a culture that doesn’t value women and people exhausted by long work days? I might have read that this is part of the root cause in korea. But sure, some gay novels might also be the reason for significant numbers. Overall the Chinese are somewhat known for pragmatic approaches, why chasing illusions in this case? The total number of readers and writers can’t be that huge can’t it?
Chinese child care is the adults going to work and the older generation (the grandparents) take care of the child.
Or sometimes my mother brought me to her workplace and I just sat there playing a video game on the portable dvd player thing with the games loaded on a dvd (or a cd, idk the difference) and with controllers attached to it. (She worked at an electronics store as a salesperson).
My parents were in an arranged marriage (the consensual type, I think, but there was high pressures to enter into a marriage), and they argue a lot.
When we first immigrated to the US, my maternal grandparents weren’t part of the “immediate” family, so they weren’t allowed on the immigration visa, my paternal side of the family (who are already in the US) didn’t like the responsibility of taking care of us (unlike my maternal side of the family), so my older brother who was around age 13-15 at the time when we first arrived, had to pick me up from school, and he resented having this responsibility, my brother didn’t really like me, we were frienemies (now, present day, actual enemies).
But eventually, like around 6th grade I just walked home by myself. Most of the time, the house was empty (other than my brother). I barely talked with my parents, never had real emotional connections with them.
Childcare in China isn’t that different from the US. (Well… in the US, kids get like a small child credit in their parent’s tax returns, and some food stamps, but that’s about it) The lower class is really very similar regardless of country. We the lower class people have more in common with each other than we do with the rich that runs our respective countries.
(If you are confused at the “Older Brother” part, my mother “illegally” gave birth to me. Then they sterilized her to make sure she can’t violate the one child policy again. I was literally not even supposed to be born.)
This reflects a typical right wing approach to “increasing birthrates”: Reinforcing “”““traditional family values””“”, vilifying defiance of gender norms and addressing anything but the root cause.
Probably enlightened despotism giving way to regular despotism. Facing economic problems, and having shed all pretense of being socialist, the Chinese ruling class likely needs a scapegoat for the country’s troubles.
Sounds plausible, crazy how that always works
Maybe still effects of the one-child-policy times. It’s probably much easier to punish people for having too many children than it is to incentivise having more.