Aggression, Disempowerment, and Feminism in the "Scum Men" Discourse on Chinese Social Media.
This study presents an analysis of the Chinese Internet slang "渣男" (scum men) by examining Weibo posts containing this term from 2011 to 2022. It is found that "scum men" is only on the surface an aggressive expression to condemn male infidelity, especially during outbreaks of celebrity scandals. Th...
| Published in: | Critical Arts: A South-North Journal of Cultural & Media Studies Vol. 39; no. 4; pp. 86 - 102 |
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| Format: | Article |
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Taylor & Francis Ltd
Aug2025
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| Online Access: | View this record in EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=190207472&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 190207472 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 02560046 CTA jtl: Critical Arts: A South-North Journal of Cultural & Media Studies issn: 02560046 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Aug2025 vid: 39 iid: 4 pid: 377 pub: Taylor & Francis Ltd artinfo: ui: 190207472 10.1080/02560046.2024.2384632 ppf: 86 ppct: 16 formats: fmt: – @attributes: type: T – @attributes: type: P size: 568KB tig: atl: Aggression, Disempowerment, and Feminism in the "Scum Men" Discourse on Chinese Social Media. aug: au: Yiwei, Du affil: School of Foreign Languages, Ningbo University of Technology, Ningbo, People's Republic of China su: Internet terminology Aggression (Psychology) Power (Social sciences) Feminism Social media sug: subj: Internet terminology Aggression (Psychology) Power (Social sciences) Feminism Social media keyword: aggression discourse Infidelity scum men ab: This study presents an analysis of the Chinese Internet slang "渣男" (scum men) by examining Weibo posts containing this term from 2011 to 2022. It is found that "scum men" is only on the surface an aggressive expression to condemn male infidelity, especially during outbreaks of celebrity scandals. This main usage manifests not only women's resignation and evasion due to a lack of social mechanisms to address male infidelity, but also tendencies including women's self-discipline and self-sluttification by introducing scum women into the scum-men discourse and associating "scum" with physical attraction. Further behind the rise of such usage is an underlying acceptance of a gendered trade-off where men's wealth is exchanged for women's physical attraction, with fidelity added to material wealth to form the ideal manhood. On the side, the "scum men" discourse has also begun to touch on feminist themes such as domestic violence, sexual harassment, and gaslighting since the late 2010s. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: Copyright of Critical Arts: A South-North Journal of Cultural & Media Studies is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. item: Critical Arts: A South-North Journal of Cultural & Media Studies holder: Taylor & Francis Ltd dt: @attributes: year: 2025 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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