Weibo suspends Ayawawa over ‘comfort women’ comment

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Chinese online relationship guru Yang Bingyang, better known as Ayawawa, has been suspended from posting on China’s Twitter-equivalent Weibo and receiving followers for six months on Tuesday due to her inappropriate comment on “comfort woman,” female civilians who were forced into sex slavery by the Japanese military during World War II.

China's Twitter-equivalent Weibo suspended Ayawawa's account on Tuesday. /Screenshot of Weibo

Weibo posted an announcement on its administration account on Tuesday, saying that, in an article posted by a Tencent nonfiction platform Guyu Lab last Friday, Ayawawa had made inappropriate remarks on “comfort women” in an offline workshop and triggered widespread outrage from the public.

During the workshop, Ayawawa asked her students about the Chinese comfort women taken by the Japanese military during World War II.

Guyu Lab revealed Ayawawa's inappropriate remark on “comfort women” during a offline workshop. /Photo via Weibo

“Do you think comfort women were miserable?” she said, “Have you ever thought that men were more miserable since they were all shot dead, and the women, at least, could survive.”

She then came to the conclusion by saying “So, women do have gender advantage during wartime. If you make good use of your gender advantage as a female, you will get all sorts of benefits.”

Ayawawa's she published similar remarks on female’s gender advantage during wartime on her Weibo account, but taking black slave as an example. /Photo via Weibo

After her remarks were released by Guyu Lab, she published similar remarks on the gender advantage of women during wartime on her Weibo account, this time using African slaves in America as an example. She claimed that women could at least be left alive while most of men were beaten to death by American farmers during slavery in 17th and 18th century. She further revealed her values by saying that life was more important than chastity and being raped was better than being dead.

Ayawawa apologized on Weibo on Tuesday. /Photo via Weibo

Her comments on the “gender advantage of being female” sparked outrage on Chinese social media after it was reported by some mainstream media outlets, such as People’s Daily, Xinhua News Agency, Thepaper and China Women’s News.

Since Ayawawa became aware of the serious consequences to what she had said, she quickly apologized on her Weibo account, saying that as a relationship blogger, she made this stupid mistake due to her lack of political and military knowledge and promised to stop updating her account for a month. However, the apology was later deleted.

China's Women News criticized Ayawawa. /Screenshot of Weibo

China Women’s News, a newspaper run by the All-China Women's Federation, denounced Ayawawa’s remarks last Friday, saying that they were “heretical ideas and poisonous chicken soup”.

“It is really hard to imagine that there still exists such an idea under the policy of gender equality in the country that tramples women to dust,” said China Women’s News.

People’s Daily praised Weibo’s suspension of Ayawawa’s official account on Tuesday. /Screenshot of Weibo

People’s Daily, the official organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), praised Weibo’s suspension of Ayawawa’s official account on Tuesday, saying that the blogger must be restrained from delivering and promoting such fusty and absurd theories.

Apart from the mainstream media criticism, Chinese critics also expressed anger towards Ayawawa’s beliefs.

Professor Li Yinhe denounced Ayawawa. /Photo via Weibo

Li Yinhe, a Chinese professor with the Institute of Sociology at Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and an advocate for LGBT rights, accused Ayawawa’s theory of being totally anti-feminist. She said that the so-called female advantage that Ayawawa promoted would require women to be obedient and weak in order to climb to a higher status and live more comfortably in a male-dominated society, instead of striving for equal status, rights and dignity.

Yang Bingyang, who claims to have an IQ of 145, has been an online celebrity on Chinese social media since 2005 when she was crowned as the “Goddess of Mop” by Mop, a popular bulletin board system in China. She had since published a series of books that focused on relationships and began to promote herself as an emotional analyst by making exaggerated comments, such as “Women who are prettier than me are not as smart as me, and those who are smarter than me are not as pretty as me.”