Diary: A "Masculinity Crisis"?

At the end of last month, China's education ministry suggested young Chinese men had become too "feminine"and promotes education drive to make boys more 'manly', redesigns physical education classes in elementary and secondary schools.

I welcomed this overhaul of physical education, because P.E. classes are often taken up by other basic classes and students are busy with their studies, resulting in a lack of exercise. But I don't think it would have any effect in shaping masculinity. Because the Chinese were once called the "Sick Man of East Asia", we were terrified of that, and it had a huge impact on our culture. Many online users pointed towards China's male celebrities being to blame. Our recent aesthetics are mainly influenced by the K-pop culture. And these celebrities largely are known as squeaky-clean, well-groomed, and with delicate features. But they think that strong, muscular men with military spirit are what we need.

The government has rarely taken a stand on women's rights or LGBTQ+. They recently destroyed a subtitling group (that was the one of main sources of foreign films and TV shows for Chinese) and released a program on condemning bad artists (without a clear definition of what is bad, nobody knows where the bottom line of speech or morality is). In short, instead of encouraging young people to think independently or to indulge in entertainment, they just want youths just to indulge in studies and sports.

Love & Peace