This post was written by Catherine Lai and originally published in Hong Kong Free Press (HKFP) on March 9, 2018. The version below is published on Global Voices as part of a partnership agreement.
A prominent Chinese feminist account was forcibly shut down on March 8, International Women’s Day.
The Feminist Voices account on Sina Weibo, one of China’s most popular social media platforms, received a notice saying it was suspended due to “irregularities” late on Thursday evening.
Prior to its suspension, Feminist Voices had more than 180,000 followers on the microblogging platform and was one of the most popular feminist advocacy platforms in China. It often posted articles related to feminism and rallied followers to support related causes. The account was also suspended on International Women’s Day last year, but administrators were later able to reactivate it.
The account’s founding editor Lu Pin told HKFP that their team called Sina Weibo on March 9, Friday morning to ask about the suspension:
They said it was because we distributed sensitive content that was in violation of regulations…But they didn’t tell us exactly which content it was… and they said they could not reactivate the account for us.
Lu added that they were appealing to Sina Weibo to get the account back online.
Feminist Voices had launched a campaign against sexual harassment on March 6. It asked users to post photos and a pledge to combat sexual harassment with the hashtag #March8againstharassment. The account had been reposting the responses in the run-up to the women’s day event.
It also posted content criticising corporate advertisements that it said were discriminatory, and hit out at the commercialisation of women’s day and sexist campus banners.