Heyin Zhen was a prominent Chinese feminist and anarchist thinker in the early 20th century. She was critical not only of the oppression of women under the established Confucian order, but also of the bourgeois reform movements that ostensibly championed the liberation of women from said oppression. In her article “On the Matter of Women’s Liberation,” Heyin argued that the gender equality championed by these reform movements could not actually liberate women; true liberation could only come through the abolition of all forms of oppression, be it social, political, or economic.
Heyin argued that traditional patriarchal values regarded women as commodities to be exploited by men for the sake of procreation and parenthood. As such, women were confined to the house and regarded as slaves; indeed all manor of customs and language were developed to uphold this status of confinement. At the same time, Heyin noted that men too suffered from oppression under the patriarchy. Because women were confined to the home, men were forced to shoulder all the financial burden of family.1
For Heyin, the oppression of labor suffered by men was no lesser evil compared to the oppression of confinement suffered by women. As such , Heyin rejected the idea that women could be liberated simply through the assumption of male gender roles. She noted that lower-class women were long forced to shoulder part of the financial burden alongside the men; such an experience was anything but liberating.2 For these same reasons, Heyin was very critical of the male-led gender reform movements in China at the time. She further asserted that these male reformers did not truly care about the rights of women, and only sought to use gender reform to further their own interests. Heyin listed three purported ulterior motives of the male reformers. First, Chinese men saw that the colonial powers were strong and thus sought to emulate them; it just so happened that women in these countries had more freedoms than in China. Second, the economic hardships of the late Qing meant that keeping women out of the labor force was no longer sustainable even for the middle class, thus women were encouraged to “free” themselves from domestic confinement and make their own living. Finally, having long struggled to support their households, these men sought to transfer their burden over to women in the name of “equality.”3
In attacking the male gender reformers, Heyin asserted that the patriarchy could not and would not reform itself out of existence. Indeed, any “feminist” reform championed would be invariably tailored to ensure the continued existence of the patriarchy. Such reforms, though giving the appearance of emancipating women, in reality allowed men to continue their exploitation of women in a modern environment. If men could not be trusted to free women, the logical conclusion would be that women would have to lead their own liberation. Yet even here Heyin urges caution.
Heyin was no less critical of contemporary female reformers than she was of their male counterparts. She argued that the reforms championed by such women only created a superficial parity between men and women without actually removing the underlying oppression. Heyin was especially critical of the women’s suffrage movement. Heyin argued that only a small minority of (upper class) women would actually be empowered by the right to vote and this empowered minority would only contribute another layer to the oppression of the unempowered majority. Heyin’s rejection of such tokenization encompassed not only gender, but class as well. She asserted that even the most progressive champions of the masses (i.e. socialists) became just as oppressive as every other member of the ruling class soon as they achieved power.3 Heyin’s attitude towards politics amounted to a wholesale rejection of authority, regardless of who wielded it. To her, any relationship, political or otherwise, that involved one party asserting power over another other was inherently oppressive and worthy of being opposed. Being equal in name only could by no means be called “liberation” if there was no equality in practice. Heyin thus believed that the only true liberation for women was total liberation: liberation not only from the patriarchy, but also from all other forms of oppression and exploitation.