Feminist Five

#FreeTheFive. (Artist: Badiucao 吧丢草)

The Feminist Five are Li Maizi (Li Tingting), Wei Tingting, Zheng Churan, Wu Rongrong, and Wang Man, a group of women's rights activist that rose to international notoriety in 2015 after being criminally detained for planning a public awareness campaign to commemorate International Women's Day. According to author and expert on women's issues in China Leta Hong Fincher, prior to their arrests the five "were completely unknown outside China. Had the women not been detained, their activities marking International Women’s Day likely would have passed without much attention. Yet in cracking down on these largely anonymous young women, the Chinese government itself provided the spark for the creation of a powerful new symbol of feminist dissent against a patriarchal, authoritarian state: China’s 'Feminist Five.'" The women's activism helped to pave the way for a Chinese version of the #MeToo campaign that swept the world in 2017, but met with significant cultural and political hurdles in China.

In March of 2015, the five activists were detained on suspicion of "picking quarrels and provoking trouble," a nebulous charge that has in recent years been used frequently to detain activists, lawyers, and writers amid a widespread crackdown on civil society activism in China. The women had been planning a campaign to hand out stickers at public transportation hubs in Beijing to raise public awareness of sexual harassment in honor of International Women's Day.

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