Community-Based Sexual Violence Prevention Education in Digital Space: A Case Study of Sexual Violence Prevention Approaches at Sun Yat-Sen University

• In Event: International and State Power in Gender and Sexual Violence Prevention in the Postsocialist "East"

Abstract

In China, sexual violence has extensive impacts on the experience of college students and larger communities in higher education (Kaiman, 2013; Want et al., 2013). On top of this, state-controlled surveillance on discourses related to sexual violence, as well as the hegemonic narratives sustained by the state-sponsored image of “gender equality,” have posed limitations to the implementation of meaningful sexual violence prevention education in universities and colleges (Hong-Fincher, 2018; Jing & Ristivojević, 2020). Digital feminist spaces, popularized during 2018’s #MeToo movement in China, then provided an alternative educational site for college students to collectively make sense of sexual harassment and assaults Chinese women witnessed and experienced on campus. To further examine the influence of digital feminism on sexual violence prevention in higher education under censorship, this paper analyzes the past and present implementations of sexual violence prevention at San Yat-Sen University (SYSU) in China, using 2018’s #MeToo movement as a reference point. Through a content analysis of SYSU’s university regulations, official documentation, news reports, research reports, and online articles, it uses Liao and Luqiu's (2022) framework of “state insider/outsider” to look at the nuanced relations between higher education and the Chinese Communist Party. Moreover, it looks at the strengths and limitations of the institutional and community efforts to implement sexual violence prevention. Finally, inspired by #MeToo’s successful impacts on nationwide and local education policies, this paper suggests a digital community-based approach as an alternative sexual violence prevention education that centres on Chinese women’s collective imagining of a liberatory future.

Author

• Qichun Zhang, U of Toronto (Canada)