NEW FROM VERSO

BETRAYING BIG BROTHER

The Feminist Awakening in China

by Leta Hong Fincher

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A feminist movement clashing with China’s authoritarian government

On the eve of International Women’s Day in 2015, the Chinese
government arrested five feminist activists and jailed them for
thirty-seven days. The Feminist Five became a global cause célèbre,
with Hillary Clinton speaking out on their behalf and activists
inundating social media with #FreetheFive messages. But the Five are
only symbols of a much larger feminist movement of civil rights
lawyers, labor activists, performance artists, and online warriors
prompting an unprecedented awakening among China’s educated, urban
women. In Betraying Big Brother, journalist and scholar Leta Hong
Fincher argues that the popular, broad-based movement poses the
greatest challenge to China’s authoritarian regime today.

Through interviews with the Feminist Five and other leading Chinese
activists, Hong Fincher illuminates both the difficulties they face
and their “joy of betraying Big Brother,” as one of the Feminist Five
wrote of the defiance she felt during her detention. Tracing the rise
of a new feminist consciousness now finding expression through the
#MeToo movement, and describing how the Communist regime has
suppressed the history of its own feminist struggles, Betraying Big
Brother is a story of how the movement against patriarchy could
reconfigure China and the world.

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Reviews

“A vital and necessary book in a world hostile to women and girls.
Leta Hong Fincher’s account of a powerful network of activists is a
foundational text on feminism in contemporary China, rich with
scholarship and a grasp of history. It is a book to inspire and to
guide all of us who insist on fighting the patriarchy globally.”

– Mona Eltahawy, author of Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East
Needs a Sexual Revolution

“A provocative, sharp-edged account of Beijing’s push to cajole women
to marry and fix the country’s sagging birth rates. A must-read for
students of feminism.”

– Mei Fong, author of One Child: The Story of China’s Most Radical Experiment

“Writing with rigor, passion, and indignation, Hong Fincher introduces
a group of Chinese feminist activists who refuse to be intimidated by
China’s powerful patriarchal state. Offering a detailed account of the
women’s critiques of increasing gender inequality in China, Betraying
Big Brother is a singular account of a Chinese—and now global—movement
that will not be silenced”

– Rebecca E. Karl, author of Mao Zedong and China in the Twentieth Century

“In Betraying Big Brother, Leta Hong Fincher unlocks a fundamental
truth: the subjugation of women is a key feature of authoritarian
power. But in telling the harrowing story of the detention of China’s
Feminist Five, she may also have discovered the strongman’s Achilles’
Heel: a broad-based feminist movement poses an existential threat to a
patriarchal state.”

– Rebecca MacKinnon, author of Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide
Struggle for Internet Freedom

“In her vivid and comprehensive work on China’s emerging feminist
movement, Leta Hong Fincher explores the coming of age of a generation
of young activists in an authoritarian state increasingly hostile to
social protest. A must-read for all seeking to understand China’s
feminist activists, hear their voices, and experience the day-to-day
reality of their lives.”

– Carl Minzner, author of End of an Era: How China’s Authoritarian
Revival Is Undermining Its Rise

“In Hong Fincher’s estimation, the official hostility toward feminists
in China as part of a global rise of authoritarianism and backsliding
of democracy will affect not only China’s women but its economic
future and will have worldwide repercussions. This is a fascinating
and earnest book.”

– Publisher’s Weekly

“In clear, concise chapters, Fincher, whose previous books include
Leftover Women: The Resurgence of Gender Inequality in China, lays out
the origins of the movement and its exponential growth, as well as the
Chinese government’s violent attempts to extinguish it. The US
president may be walloping China via trade war, but Leta Hong Fincher
argues that the most existential threat to Xi Jinping’s regime comes
from within.”

– Claire Landsbaum, Vanity Fair

“Betraying Big Brother shows how the [feminist] movement has risen on
social media and taken root abroad and in cities like Guangzhou. Hong
Fincher argues that the Chinese Communist Party relies on patriarchal
crackdowns for its post-Soviet survival—and, further, that ‘anyone
concerned about rising authoritarianism globally needs to pay
attention to what is happening in China.’”

– Harvard Magazine

“Hong Fincher explains that far from a small movement on the fringes
of Chinese society, feminism is on the rise, from the burgeoning and
ongoing #MeToo movement, to increasing calls for protections for
survivors of domestic violence … to protests against workplace
discrimination.”

– Esther Wang, Jezebel

“In Betraying Big Brother, journalist Leta Hong Fincher examines the
feminist movement that’s rising in mainland China, and explores how
the Feminist Five continue to covertly educate other women to confront
and resist the country’s sexist policies.”

– Evette Dionne, Bitch Media

“Brings the clash between China’s grassroots women’s movement and the
state’s manipulation of women to life. Hong Fincher explores the
struggles of young feminist activists who are detained and vilified
for seemingly innocuous campaigns—handing out stickers warning against
sexual harassment on public transport, or parading through the streets
in soiled wedding dresses to protest domestic violence … A pertinent
primer for anyone who wants to understand the aftermath of China’s
one-child policy, and the country’s fledgling feminist movement.”

– Katrina Hamlin, Reuters

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Hardback :  September 2018 / 9781786633644 / £16.99 / $26.95 / $35.99 (CAN)

BETRAYING BIG BROTHER  is available to buy on the Verso website at 20% off:
https://www.versobooks.com/books/2863-betraying-big-brother

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