Throwing the baby out with the bathwater: discursive contradictions in the feminist critiques of pro-feminist men

Recent studies indicate that pro-feminist men have increasingly engaged in gender justice activism, especially through hashtag activism. Yet their feminist interventions have led to both progresses and liabilities in enhancing women’s rights. Such contradictionary ramifications became heightened in China where platform-backed misogyny made visible both their pro-feminist endeavors and misconducts. Against recent sexual misconducts by alleged male feminists, this study sets to explore how Chinese feminist critics responded to the paradoxical effects of men’s pro-feminist engagements. Using qualitative interviews and textual analysis, the findings show that feminist critics’ informed critique of pro-feminist men paradoxically led to increasingly exclusivist understanding of feminism when similar or stricter standards of feminist performances were applied to female and other gender non-conforming feminists. We locate such discursive contradictions in platform-backed misogyny that simultaneously directed attention to the patriarchal underpinnings of pro-feminist men’s privileges and deflected attention from the power asymmetries between feminists with different gender identities. This study, therefore, contributes to extending digital gender studies by identifying and accounting for the new discursive contradictions in men’s pro-feminist engagements.