The Politics of Cynicism and Neoliberal Hegemony: Representations of Gender in Chinese Internet Humor

Abstract

In this chapter, the authors examine jokes about gender relations from the Chinese Internet to examine how these are examples of contemporary “depoliticization” in Chinese politics. While looking at the emergence more generally of humor on the Internet in China and some views of its critical potential, they note that gendered jokes do feature commentary on society and politics, but ultimately locate them primarily as an expression of cynicism and political passivity. Even as the jokes, about marital relations and the proper role of women, do have political implications in their implicit rejections of Maoist feminism’s radical gender equality, they serve an ironically didactic function in a China where moral meaning has become individualized and privatized.