Can men in China take a joke? Women stand-ups doubt it

Comedy has become a way for women to skewer China’s gender inequality. Some men aren’t happy about it.

On the list of topics best avoided by China’s comedians, some are obvious. Politics. The Chinese military.

Now add: Men’s fragile egos.

That, at least, was the message sent this month, when a major e-commerce platform abruptly ended a partnership with China’s most prominent female stand-up comic. The company was caving to pressure from men on social media who described the comedian, Yang Li, as a man-hating witch.

Speaking up for women’s rights is increasingly sensitive in China, and the stand-up stage is the latest battleground. Growing numbers of women such as Yang are speaking out about — and laughing at — the injustices they face. On two hugely popular stand-up shows this fall, women were among the breakout stars, thanks to punchlines about the difficulty of finding a good partner, or men’s fear of talking about menstruation.

But a backlash has emerged, as men balk at being the butt of the joke. They have attacked the comics on social media; Yang has described receiving threats of violence. The women’s new visibility can also be easily erased. Not long after e-commerce company JD.com dropped Yang, it deleted posts on its official social media account featuring two other female comedians.

The battle over women’s jokes reflects the broader paradox of feminism in China. On the one hand, feminist rhetoric is more widespread than ever before, with once-niche discussions of gender inequality now aired openly. But the forces trying to suppress that rhetoric are also growing, encouraged by a government that has led its own crusade against feminist activism and pushed women toward traditional roles.

On guancha.cn, a nationalistic commentary site, an editorial declared: “The fewer divisive symbols like Yang Li, the better.”

Even before the JD.com controversy erupted, Yang, 32, had addressed the perils of poking fun at men. On one of the recent shows, she said young female comics had asked her whether they should make certain jokes.

“I didn’t have an answer,” Yang said. “If I told them to do it, I’d worry what would happen to them afterward. If I told them not to, I’d worry about how good their performances would be.”

Yang, who declined an interview through a representative, was one of the first Chinese comedians to demonstrate the possibilities for women in stand-up.

The daughter of pig farmers in Hebei province, Yang was a former graphic designer and aspiring comedian when she shot to fame in 2020, with a routine about her dating woes. “How can men look so average, and yet be so confident?” she said, a one-liner that went viral.

To many women, she became an icon. But many men viciously denounced her, accusing her of inciting “gender antagonism” — a term state media often uses to denounce feminism — and even reporting her to the government. When Intel and Mercedes-Benz featured her in ad campaigns in 2021, online fury prompted Intel to drop her and Mercedes-Benz to limit the ad’s visibility.

Yang was unapologetic. And gradually, more women joined her. A female contestant on one of this year’s shows thanked Yang, who was the show’s chief screenwriter, for acting as an “older sister” in a male-dominated field.

Those women have been blazing their own trails, with jokes that sometimes go further than Yang’s or broach new aspects of women’s daily indignities. Several performers talked about men commenting on their weight, or their parents’ preferences for sons. Another contestant, named Cai Cai, told a story about ordering menstrual pads and her male delivery driver’s refusal to even say the word.

“What is there to hide? Will you get thrown in jail for buying pads?” she said.

Jenny Zhang, a 30-year-old Information Technology worker and stand-up fan in Shanghai, said watching the female comedians had helped her recognize injustices in her own life.

“After you hear it, you feel yourself becoming more aware of your own emotions,” she said. “Some things that you just thought were a little uncomfortable, you realize there’s a problem behind it.”

Still, even as the performers have broached once-taboo topics, they have not explicitly called themselves feminists. And they have left potentially more sensitive issues, such as domestic violence or sexual harassment, largely untouched.

But even if the jokes stay within the realm of the mundane, what matters is their appearance on mainstream platforms, said Xiaowen Liang, a feminist activist in New York who has participated in a popular Chinese-language feminist stand-up show there.

“Young women have already been talking about this a lot,” she said of topics such as period shame. But “to let your male partners, elders, bosses, those kinds of people understand your experience — that’s extremely precious.”

The emphasis on personal stories has also helped to keep references to gender inequality alive in pop culture, even as more overt activism has been crushed, said Dan Chen, a professor of political science at the University of Richmond who studies Chinese stand-up. Government censors are less likely to see such stories as political statements, he said.

“But if others resonate with you, then the message is sent,” Chen said, adding that stand-up, with its humour, allows women to deflect accusations of lecturing.

Still, even the relatively cautious approach has not been enough to stave off controversy, as shown when Yang appeared in an ad for JD.com’s online pharmacy services this month.

Infuriated commenters called her an “extreme feminist,” citing her 2020 joke about average-looking men. They promised to boycott the platform and filed customer service complaints claiming that the company didn’t respect men.

Some pointed to JD.com’s CEO, a woman, as proof that toxic feminists had infiltrated the company. (The company’s chair, Richard Liu, was accused of rape in a US court; the case was settled out of court in 2022.)

Four days after posting the ad with Yang, JD.com deleted it. “Recently, the participation of some stand-up comics in JD’s promotional events attracted online attention. If this has brought you a bad experience, we deeply apologize!” it said in a statement. “Going forward, we have no plans to collaborate with the relevant performers.”

JD.com also deleted posts featuring two other female comedians who have made jokes about men. The company did not respond to a request for comment.

To Yang’s defenders, the controversy was not really about her, but about men’s insecurity about women’s rising status.

“Women’s buying power and self-awareness are getting stronger and stronger. Appealing to this group is a very simple business decision,” said Cheen Qin, a 40-year-old manager at an internet company in Shenzhen. But “men can’t handle it,” she said.

After she posted in support of Yang online, Qin said, a male former classmate called her stupid.

Still, many women said they hoped that female performers and audiences alike would continue to find an outlet in stand-up. (The genre can be fraught, no matter the performer’s gender. Last year, stand-up shows across China were cancelled after a male comedian made a joke that some nationalists online considered an insult to Chinese soldiers.)

Yang herself had already said, before the ad controversy, that she planned to focus more on smaller-scale shows, rather than television appearances. But she encouraged other women to ignore exhortations to talk about something other than gender.