Earlier this January, a now-widely denounced internet celebrity named Zhou Yuan appeared on the Chinese internet. This person goes by the online handle “Hei Bai Dian Zhou Yuan” and self-identifies as the “Chinese Sex Commerce Mentor.” She sold online a batch of instructional videos teaching women how to use eye contact and body language to “attract men,” with extremely vulgar and nauseating content. She also ran offline classes and involved companies amassing wealth. According to Qichacha APP, Zhou Yuan controls 11 companies, where she held positions such as general manager and director. She sold expensive courses priced in the range of 999 to 88000 yuan, and her official store revenue has surpassed 24 million yuan, accumulating substantial wealth. Based on publicly available material, Zhou Yuan is not merely a so-called internet celebrity, but a black-hearted female capitalist who harms women and sells spiritual drugs to gain wealth.
From the phrase she self-promotes, the so-called “Chinese Sex Commerce Mentor,” the term “sex commerce” clearly reveals that what she advocates is a complete ideology of women selling their looks and treating themselves as commodities for high prices. The term “sex commerce” was originally crafted by Chinese male who uphold patriarchy, used to describe male sexuality’s promiscuity; Zhou Yuan imposes this concept—already quite disgusting and largely limited to China’s Confucian state—onto women. Zhou Yuan wants to coerce women into adopting a “slutty logic,” publicly promoting that women should train themselves to act as male sexual tools and sell their appearance for wealth and honor. In her so-called “Sex Commerce Courses” there are also many deceptive contents that entice women to sell their dignity and body, insulting women. Even the publicly circulated excerpts on Chinese internet are extremely crude. The posters for Zhou Yuan’s courses are filled with sexual innuendos; in these courses she presents an extremely affected demeanor, demonstrating to women how to act “weak” toward men, such as “how to act coquettish” and other behaviors intended to show weakness to men, with phrases like “I only give you my eye contact” and “my body forms an X shape” as part of the so-called teaching. The publicly available content is already shocking; the courses Zhou Yuan sells online are even more obscene. Some netizens paid for parts of Zhou Yuan’s online courses to investigate, finding that the so-called “courses” encourage women to imply sexuality; some go as far as to demonstrate sexual acts in pornographic videos. The images displayed on online platforms show that the offline “Sex Commerce School” Zhou Yuan runs is also a pornographic venue.
Zhou Yuan not only sells these reactionary courses and inferior products that harm women physically and mentally, but she also embodies the opportunistic behavior of using capitalist patriarchy to profit, defending the capitalist patriarchy. Her numerous reactionary actions have rapidly triggered broad condemnation from the public, especially oppressed women. People cannot accept that such a person could openly peddle denigrating content about women and promote pornographic content under capitalist patriarchy. On various online platforms, reports about Zhou Yuan are met with widespread cursing and little to no defense. Many women angrily condemn Zhou Yuan, demanding women sell their looks and abandon dignity to please men, and express a strong desire for independence and to have no relation with such people. Some men also critique Zhou Yuan’s courses as encouraging women to abandon independence and contain reactionary content that has no positive value. The condemnation isn’t limited to mainlanders; online voices in Taiwan are also scathing. Some Taiwanese netizens say: “As a girl, I saw that look of hers that almost made the 24 kg dumbbell fly out of my hand.” Zhou Yuan’s courses are said to clearly demonstrate women’s subordinate position. Most people call for Zhou Yuan to be banned immediately and for her illegal gains to be confiscated.
Under strong public pressure, on January 21, Zhou Yuan’s multiple accounts were forcibly set to private on social platforms, making content inaccessible. The next day, Zhou Yuan’s main account “Hei Bai Dian Zhou Yuan” was permanently banned by Douyin for “violating the Cybersecurity Law by disseminating vulgar information.” On January 30, the Chinese government finally issued an official stance forming a task force and officially opened an investigation into Zhou Yuan, ordering her to halt all online and offline activities, but the stated reasons by the government were surprising: Zhou Yuan “violated advertising law.” This suggests the government’s definition of Zhou Yuan is limited to some misleading advertising and does not recognize the spread of sexual content as causing harmful effects, instead treating the dissemination of pornographic content as legal and permissible. Even at the highest penalties under advertising law, fines would not exceed 2 million yuan. After a minor hiatus, a comeback to continue harming others is only a matter of time. The public’s anger toward Zhou Yuan contrasts sharply with the government’s light-handed approach, revealing a clear truth: the government is protecting Zhou Yuan and people like her.
The government’s protection of Zhou Yuan is not otherwise, but because she spreads pornographic content and indoctrinates women to unconditionally obey men, thereby preserving capitalism and patriarchy. What Zhou Yuan does is indeed a breach of the law, but in a capitalist society, law is a tool to uphold bourgeois dictatorship; harsher penalties are aimed at things that threaten bourgeois rule. China’s exploiting class acknowledges oppression and exploitation as reasonable and supports capitalist patriarchy whereby men oppress women, and the spread of pornographic content is designed to make men the oppressors and women surrender their dignity. It is natural that the government cannot truly crack down on the distribution of pornographic material, only barely restricts it in law under pressure. The same logic applies to Zhou Yuan’s so-called “Sex Commerce Courses.” Zhou Yuan teaches women how to sell their looks to satisfy the desires of the capitalist male class, essentially making women relinquish their independence to become male sexual tools and appendages, upholding the capitalist patriarchy. For this kind of drug-like content that entices women to give up resistance and accept subordination, monopolistic capitalists are eager to welcome. They themselves are Zhou Yuan’s biggest supporters, the backstage supports, and thus have no reason to impose heavier penalties. Hence such lenient outcomes. Although public media must condemn Zhou Yuan under public pressure and official media like the China Women’s News criticize that Zhou Yuan’s “Sex Commerce Courses” are demeaning to women, the truth is that the government’s acceptance of Zhou Yuan’s defending capitalist patriarchy and its promotion by media reveals the underlying reality: the government is protecting Zhou Yuan and her ilk.
And what we Marxists intend is not only to criticize Zhou Yuan and her ilk’ reactionary male-dominant ideology but to root it out socially—capitalist patriarchy and the exploitative system that supports it. The so-called “Sex Commerce Courses” occur to meet the needs of male-rights proponents under capitalist patriarchy; they claim to be for women, but wholly serve male elites who objectify women as sexual tools. Zhou Yuan will not be completely banned or eliminated because the bourgeois government and law defend her, attempting to poison more oppressed women through her. The entire social system supports male oppression of women—economically alienating women from production, sparing them from coming into contact with male domination, and spreading reactionary pornographic arts that corrupt the morals of all men, while cultivating new male-rights activists to uphold capitalism and patriarchy. This societal climate continues to discriminate against women. The reactionary social system, decaying ruling class, and rotting culture are Zhou Yuan’s strongest backers. Therefore, the fight should not only target Zhou Yuan and the bourgeois stooges who promote patriarchy but also the backers—the entire exploitative system. A thorough transformation of social institutions and the complete overthrow of capitalist patriarchy is the only way to prevent the next harmful “Sex Commerce Mother” from appearing.
References
[1] Elephant News: “Unveiling Zhou Yuan’s Commercial Empire,” http://www.sina.cn
[2] Hubei Daily: “‘Hei Bai Dian Zhou Yuan’ Under Investigation, Thoroughly Investigate the Turbulence of the Online Course Market,” 东湖快语｜“黑白颠周媛”被立案调查，彻查网红卖课市场乱象 - 湖北日报新闻客户端
[3] The Paper: “Against Zhou Yuan, cannot Stop at Ban,” https://thepaper.cn/newsDet
[4] Pengpai News: “On ‘Hei Bai Dian Zhou Yuan’ You Cannot Stop at Ban,” https://m.thepaper.cn/newsDet
[5] Yahoo Taiwan: “Video - Lively Type Zhou Yuan - Naked Practice Video Leaks,” https://tw.news.yahoo.com/…
[6] Observers Network: “‘Sex Commerce Mother’ Under Investigation,” https://www…
[7] China Law: The law defines ‘obscene materials’ as described, and thus Zhou Yuan’s courses fully meet ‘obscene materials’ according to Zhongxiu law.
[8] People’s Republic of China Criminal Law: On distributing obscene materials, penalties etc.
[9] ZhiHu: Statements about Zhou Yuan
[10] Nan Du News: “Dismantling the Female Virtue Camp,” https://m.mp.oeeee.com/a/…
[11] Rosa Luxemburg: “Women and the Proletariat”