The womb as battleground: negotiating motherhood and feminism on Chinese social media

This article conducts a feminist critical discourse analysis (FCDA) of a widely debated occurrence within the Chinese public sphere, where a mother’s decision to accompany her six-year-old son into a female restroom ignited substantial discourse. Employing FCDA to interrogate postings on Zhihu, China’s preeminent question-and-answer platform, the research navigates the discursive construction of motherhood intertwined with the prominence of digital feminist narratives. It engenders a bifold analytic perspective by interweaving “digital feminism” with “C-fem,” a conceptual representation that integrates the entrepreneurial and dissenting elements of feminism within China’s unique socio-cultural matrix. Facilitated by FCDA, the study disentangles three salient discursive trajectories that forefront challenges to entrenched patriarchal paradigms. The emergent strands encompass discourses oscillating between lauded and scrutinized maternal figures, contending perspectives on sexuality education, and forceful rebuttals to gendered childbearing expectations. Collectively, these narratives contribute to a multilayered critique of normative gender constructs and signal a fortified agency of Chinese women in digital feminist praxes. Despite the pressures of traditional gender ideologies and state censorship, the study uncovers the burgeoning assertiveness of Chinese digital feminists, particularly within the non-cooperative C-fem contingent, who increasingly call for transformative societal change. This study not only highlights Chinese women’s negotiation with gender identities in the digital realm but also enriches the global discourse on feminism’s adaptation and resistance in authoritarian contexts.