“Should we safeguard the freedom and rights of prostitutes in their career choices, or should we consider prostitutes to be victims of male-dominated consumption?”

“Why do men always have to be portrayed as positive and sunny characters, while women are just the opposite? Is it because of the physical gap and the lack of a sexual organ that women have to be soft? ”

“How do women change their social status? Should they strive for the same rights as men, or should they use female logic to transform the entire society?”

Revolving around these issues, poet Zhai Yongming, scholar Li Jian, artist Qin Yufen and host Wang Ge gave their opinions at a women-themed salon at the Goethe Institute in Beijing last weekend.

It is a bit extravagant to talk about improving the working environment of prostitutes in China

Zhai Yongming recited his poem "Young Prostitute" before the salon began. In 2002, she saw a photo of a Chinese prostitute on the news and learned that the 12-year-old girl had been abducted into working as a prostitute and had "served" more than 300 men in more than 100 days. Zhai Yongming was shocked and wrote this poem. In addition to expressing sympathy for young girls, "Child Prostitute" also attempts to use this incident as an entry point to accuse men of treating women (not just prostitutes) as sexual consumption goods to a certain extent, thereby expressing that in this male-dominated society, women are still in an absolutely weak position and do not receive fundamental respect.

However, Zhai Yongming's views were quickly challenged by an audience member. This listener said that he had lived in France for several years and felt that the French wanted to fight for more rights for prostitutes. "That is to say, the defense of this kind of rights is not that I do not allow you to be a prostitute, but to improve your working environment and ensure your health. But in China, including in your poems, the view on this issue is still at the level of consumption."

Zhai Yongming responded that he and the audience were not talking about the same issue. She said that one of the starting points for her writing at that time was because some male friends around her also believed that prostitutes should have their own rights, but they ignored the premise that all behaviors should be voluntary, and many Chinese sex workers are forced. For example, this girl is only 12 years old and obviously does not have the judgment required to make independent decisions. "In China, some of the most basic issues have not yet been resolved. It may be a bit luxurious to talk about rights and interests at this time. If the incident of child prostitution had happened in the United States, more than 300 men would have been convicted of rape." Zhai Yongming said. Talking about respecting freedom of choice under such circumstances will only cause greater harm to women.

Women must tell their own stories as protagonists

Scholar Li Jian’s words were sharp throughout. She tried to remind people with passionate speeches that women still live in a male-dominated society.Women who are suppressed still exist as the "other" and therefore must resist and fight. She believes that women's identities are defined by men. "Women are associated with femininity, and men are associated with masculinity. These are all potential discriminations in society that we should reflect on and oppose. This is a concept sold by men's rights." Men define God with their own image, history with their likes and dislikes, and sex with their genitals. In this case, women can only be in a dominated position.

She believes that "women must tell their own stories. They must become a protagonist in the life story, not a supporting role, or even a character without a role on the stage." She said that many Chinese women do not live for themselves, but seem to live for their husbands and children. This is actually a restriction. When talking about how to do it specifically, Li Jian called for a kind of personalized expression. Everyone should decide for themselves what kind of person they are and then create new things. Like writing, reciting poems like "The Young Prostitute" in public. But she added that asking for expression is anything but egocentric. "If your freedom and demands are not based on equal attention and respect for the freedom and demands of others, your self-esteem cannot be established. On the contrary, you are just self-indulgent and narcissistic."

Use motherhood and love to build a new society

Different from the unrest pursued by Li Jian, host Wang Ge emphasized a more peaceful way to transform the society. She started with the theory of Western scholar Levinas, saying that one of the basic logics of Western social construction is egology, with the starting point being personal freedom. Wang Ge attempts to propose a maternal logic from the mother's perspective.

She believes that in this consumer society, we always preset values in advance and believe that everything is quantifiable. When we think about justice and fairness, we are always in a reciprocal relationship with the object, and the basic principle is equivalent exchange. Under this presupposition, all attention becomes a consumption of desire. But Wang Ge believes that this logic is actually a fiction. "I wonder if there is something maternal that is not equivalent in exchange. Just like a mother's giving behavior to her children is a gift, not to raise children for old age, or for other purposes." Therefore, Wang Ge advocates replacing the logic of exchange with the logic of gifting.

As far as justice is concerned, she believes that there is a need for compensatory justice to replace punitive justice. Punishment can certainly curb temporary evil, but it cannot teach people to be good. The purpose of people's upholding justice should not be to punish the past, or even to avoid the future, but to deal with the aftermath. We can ask for more forgiveness, supplementing the logic of justice with the logic of forgiveness. However, she also mentioned that we must have sufficient awareness of historical and current faults. Being so forgetful as our nation should not be part of the logic of motherhood.

In addition, unlike Li Jian’s understanding of politics, Wang Ge recognized the replacement of the logic of dominance and power with the logic of love and emotion. She believed that women could build a new politics. "Why can't it be friendly? We fight for freedom and equality and divide the left and the right. Why can't we advance a little love? No mother says to her children, you have to love me first before I love you. Motherhood is such an unconditional advance."

and be recognizedThe concept of production, which has existed throughout human history, has also been questioned by Wang Ge. She believes that production itself is a very masculine concept. Life should be a process of self-education and mutual education. What matters is not how many visible products we produce or how many measurable results we obtain. "I think the most authentic thing about human beings, even if it has mixed flavors, all kinds of problems, all kinds of shortcomings, all kinds of dark things, but it can inspire us time and time again and make us grow into a particularly interesting version of ourselves." In Wang Ge's view, this is the most important thing.

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Child Prostitute (Author: Zhai Yongming)

Baby prostitutes are also called beautiful babies

She is wearing a lace dress

The thighs are already seductive

Her mother is more beautiful than her

They are like sisters "one of them is like an antelope"...

Men all like babies like this

Baby also likes the feeling of facing the camera

The young prostitutes I saw were not like this

She is 12 years old, thin and dirtyly dressed

The eyes can hold a whole world

Or I can no longer hold even a single tear

Her father is a young farmer

But my hair is gray

Her father spent three months

Find him step by step

The missing baby

Three months of a prostitute

It almost takes more than 100 days

More than 300 men

This is not a simple number

She never understood why

So many old, ugly, dirty men

Lie on her belly

She doesn’t understand what this kind of thing actually looks like

Only know her body

Become light and empty, something was taken away

Child prostitutes are considered beautiful and brainless

She knows nothing about any of this

She only calculates at night

There are more than 300 in her arithmetic book

No name, no surname, no place or address

Together they are called consumers

Those numbers are like ancient symbols in a cemetery

Disappeared before the sun came up

While reading the newspaper I kept thinking:

Can’t write a poem about this

You can’t turn a poem into this

Don’t chew poetry until it makes a loud noise

Don’t beat words into teeth and chew them over and over again

Those diseases, those surgeries

Statistics that add up to 12 years old

Poems, bandages, photos, memories

Scratched my eyeball

(This is the transition zone between light and dark areas of the retina)

Everything shows that it is useless

They are all injuries that no one cares about

They are the data of every day

It is creating a lifetime of sorrow for some people

Partly, she is just a news photo

12 years old standing with other girls

Can’t you tell she is missing an ovary

Generally speaking, it’s just a report

Every day, our eyes collect thousands of pieces of information

They control consumer happiness

They passed by so did "it"

Information hotline and international perspectives

Like a huge linen cloth that wipes away a person’s humble pain

Those of us just saw it after seeing it

It was crumpled and stuffed into a black iron bucket

2002/4/21