Feminist Humor, Digital Circulation, and the Rise of Chinese Female Stand-Up Comedy

Since 2020, female stand-up comedians in China have emerged as prominent cultural figures, transforming the genre into a key arena for negotiating gender politics under tightly managed media conditions. This article examines how comedians draw on embodied experiences of cis-heterosexual discipline, son preference, and everyday gendered asymmetries to craft humour that resonates across diverse audiences. Through close readings of live performances and their mediated afterlives on Weibo, we trace how punchlines are rearticulated into shared vocabularies of pan-feminist critique. Drawing on feminist humour scholarship and Sara Ahmed’s concept of affective economies, we argue that feminist stand-up in China functions not only as entertainment but also as an affective practice that converts personal injury into collectively legible critique. The digital circulation of these comedic fragments expands their political force while subjecting them to the emotional expectations of China’s platformized entertainment economy. This often necessitates a recalibration of feminist anger into narratives of confidence and empowerment, revealing the ambivalence of humour as both subversive and conservative. By situating feminist stand-up within the broader context of Chinese digital feminism, this article demonstrates how humour operates simultaneously as a survival strategy and a mode of political speech that travels across bodies, screens, and publics.