Exclusive Interview with Xianzi:
“If I Were Zhu Jun, I Would Also Say I Believed in the Law.”

WhyNot: Before the court’s session, you told your supporters not to lose hope in the MeToo Movement over this case. But your previous interview mentioned Lin Yihan, emphasizing the need to pay attention to individual cases and to value personal experiences. How do you understand the relationship between individual MeToo cases and the overall movement? Some people say that you have become a representative of the movement, or at least the person who has garnered the most attention. If the public's attention to the entire movement is focused on you, then how do you deal with your own relationship to the movement as a whole?

Xianzi: Probably because Zhu Jun is very famous, everyone also pays close attention to me, and I also participate in the public arena a lot. They will regard me as a representative of MeToo, but I think if you look carefully, everyone implicated in different cases have paid a lot. In fact, none of those involved have paid for their own affairs only.

Everyone has paid dearly. It surpasses the sexual harassment itself and the pain of litigation. Everyone is willing to bear it, or maybe it’s because each party has a sense of social responsibility to do this. Especially when it comes to litigation, they will have a strong sense of social responsibility.

If I always appear in the public domain, does it mean that MeToo is being discussed all the time? I have not disappeared, and all along have been involved in MeToo as a personal witness to gender-based violence. I still hope that everyone can realize that there are actually many people caught up in these issues who have stood up. Especially when these victims are willing to connect with others, they are constantly reminding everyone that these events are actually related. You encounter gender-based violence not because you are unlucky, but because of society, or the law, or the power structure. These cause the personal dignity of many weak people to be easily violated and not taken seriously. 

I hope everyone does not see this case as only one specific case, but instead connects it with others to see that a regular person was caught up in the middle of a common circumstance, and that is why they met with such a terrible situation. 

Whether or not I am a symbol for MeToo, or later become a symbol of defeat, my biggest hope is to make everyone think about the victim implicated in these situations. You won’t just be thinking of that person; you'll also think of MeToo. You’ll end up thinking about all those people who stood up, and their situations, their efforts, and their hopes.

WhyNot: From an individual to the public, you not only are involved in MeToo, but you have broken through into public opinion and have the status of an activist. It seems like others cannot break into so many fields. What contributed to your transformation? What did it feel like to go from an implicated party in a lawsuit to a public figure?

Xianzi: It’s just to say, I probably made my life really public because I chose to make online (action) a part of my life. 

But it was like that with He Qian. We were all working on Jingyao’s case at the time, and He Qian had been helping all along. At the time, we had about three or four people in our group, and along with a close friend, then there was He Qian, Jingyao, and Huahua. We participated in many cases together. 

I think it’s still hard for people to imagine what a victim of sexual harassment can do. It’s like everyone has a stereotype of victims of sexual violence, but it’s really not like what they’re thinking. Everyone has their own life, their own character, their own hopes to do certain things, and above all do not want to be immersed in an injury. Gender-based violence is only in your life in the specific moment it occurs; afterward, it affects you, but it is not your entire life. 

Within MeToo are many of these people who have been hurt, and they all have other identities. Some work as lawyers, some work with the women’s federation to help others, like He Qian who was also a lawyer. Everyone was astonished ––can gender-based violence victims create a public debate online? But I think that all gender-based violence victims after encountering it, no matter if they fully come out or partially, they are willing to participate publicly because they need a process for self-affirmation.

Probably everyone who sees me, the main thing they see is the label of a gender-based violence victim attached to me. This is still a new label, but actually the way I do things and live as a regular 20-something woman who, when she had the opportunity, went to do what she had to do. 

A gender-based violence victim is able to feel deep empathy for other victims’ cases as if they happened to her too. Many MeToo people, when we got to know each other––including from the Liang Gang case, the Shenzhen new recruits rape case, including Jingyao––everyone was willing to help each other. This time before the court session, they recorded me, and that recording was a form of public action because when you openly express yourself, you are supporting a person you may not know, and moreover, you are helping her carry a heavy burden.

WhyNot: I was pretty surprised by the tremendous capability you showed in this process. There is also a lot of violence and uncertainty in public spaces. For example, netizens have a lot of negative comments about sexual harassment victims and women. How do you cope and reconcile with this?

Xianzi: Due to this unexpected turn of events, I have been publicly expressing myself on Weibo since 2018. In this process many people get to know you, like you, and you make friends with some influential bloggers. You also form really strong relationships with many women; my fans include many women, including lesbians and transgender people. Everyone becomes good friends, and it’s only in this process that that can happen. 

Establishing close relationships on an online world of strangers very much depends on what kind of person you are. If you go on about misfortunes, for example, probably people will generally fear you. Ideal Journalist is like that. He gains traction because of his dirty methods, and nothing more, but it is not a real capability; it’s only spouting off negative emotions. True capability is whether or not people are willing to pay the price for something.  

MeToo has touched on a sore spot for many young people because it is about a person’s individual dignity, no matter male or female; it is about whether an individual has the right to protect their own body and self; it is about whether or not you truly have the right to voice your own pain. I think that on this basis, many young people regard my case as a public affair that they can participate in. In fact, this is a noble force because it is about the issue of justice itself. There are people who are willing to pay a certain price for justice. They will speak out, no matter if they risk their (Weibo) public account being blasted (deleted) or being attacked online. They will still go to support you, even when there may be a real risk.

I do not see this as a result of my own personal energy; they have their own capabilities.

I did not predict that at the end of this year I would meet with such forceful attacks, including calling me a foreign force. But in the previous two years, you establish these close relationships, and in the end, everyone comes to protect you. 

If it weren’t me, it would be another woman. If she hadn’t voiced what happened online, and spent two years’ time speaking publicly, it would be much worse. How would she be able to respond to these attacks? But who like me would spend two years doing all of this? Many people do not have the circumstances that allow them to do this, and many do not have the time. 

 I think this is really horrible. If these kinds of attacks were normalized, then other women wouldn’t have the power to express themselves ––Jingyao is abroad and can mitigate the effects for herself, but what if it’s a vulnerable woman? She probably wouldn’t have any standing to say a single thing; this is the place of public opinion that makes me fearful. It is not only the harm to me personally, but also that they are constructing a terrorizing atmosphere.

WhyNot: In your interview you said that you discovered that your own misfortune was a kind of good fortune for others, and that you therefore believe you do not have a reason or any grounds to give up the fight against power. Why do you have this kind of feeling?

Xianzi: It is difficult to replicate the situation with Mai Shao and me. We spent two years throwing ourselves into this case. During this period, we received attention and support, regardless of whether it was support from the community or our parents and families; all were helping us with resources. And the media’s support is hard to copy. 

If with all of this we were to admit defeat, if now for instance, we could no longer stand it, then who is left with MeToo? You have to be there. You cannot say that we victims all cannot make public expressions, and that MeToo doesn’t need public expression. 

After Mai Shao and I stood up, many people were paying attention. We also accepted many media interviews, and met many people. After I went to Shanghai for a case, I helped that person connect with Gu Yu, and also linked up with the lawyer Luo Xiang. All of this was due to everyone paying attention to my case, only because of that attention was I able to do all of this. So now it’s very hard for me to say that I would give up, that I want to go have my own life back.

A short time ago, I watched a movie based on a true story; I think it was set in America in the 1980s, and it was called The Accused. In the movie, there was a girl out drinking who was raped by three men. These three stood in a circle and watched the rape –– and she ended up going after them with a lawsuit. This was the first American court case ever broadcast live, and this process was extremely frightening. If it were me, I’d be scared, and think "Ok, we might as well give up."  But if people in the midst of this give up, a child today, in the future many years later, will still have to report a similar case to the authorities, and that grown child will face the same situation. So I think that me pursuing this case is not enough; I have not spent all of my energy yet, at the very least I want to give it a shot. I think that "giving it a shot" to me is necessary –– you cannot give up the process of experiencing this yourself.

WhyNot: You once published an article rejecting the label of feminism, which caused quite a stir in feminist circles. It was interpreted as a separation between you and feminism. Do you still have similar ideas? Where do you feel there is tension between feminism and yourself?

Xianzi: The main thing is that I cannot say I am some kind of ideologue, and I have no way to make a promise about my character like that. Say I were a feminist, I would probably have to put these concepts into practice many times in my life. But many times, I have fallen short, including in my relationship with my boyfriend, so I have no way to stand up and say that I myself am a feminist. 

Also, the Internet has its own disciplinary power. When you are online, you have no way to be a perfect feminist, maybe because of your attitude toward sexual minorities, your attitude toward marriage, your attitude toward individuals in other gender-based legal cases, your attitude toward men. And all this causes you to spend a ton of energy debating with others about what a feminist really is. At present, feminism has not succeeded; we currently have not done a thing, and society still is patriarchal. But have we spent too much time discussing what a feminist is –– truly what is its significance?

I really hate this topic because when you see people stating that a feminist cannot sympathize with being gay, if you want to sympathize with individuals who are gay, you are not a feminist. If you are married, you also are not a feminist, and if you don’t say "Marriage is for donkeys" then you also are not a feminist.   

To be a feminist in your own life, I think it is a process of putting things into practice, not a process of talking.

I thought when I wrote that article in 2018, everyone would think that I was cutting ties with women. But as of today, my actions have proven that I never thought of severing these relationships. As for whether I should meet everyone's expectations of me, I think it's okay, and I haven't hurt anyone.

Maybe the group of feminists on Weibo who love to discuss identity have given up trying to cure me; they don't bother to talk about me. Maybe they have realized that no matter how they insult me, I will support sexual minorities and transgender people. But think about it for yourself. Compared to the attacks by Ideal Journalist, attacks by feminists are really nothing. They still have a real bottom line. Everyone is really anxious, because in the field of public opinion, the internal anxiety of women comes from the frustration of our struggles with the patriarchy. So you have to nitpick the perfect person, and you have to keep asking everyone to be perfect.

But the patriarchy’s attack on you is not for this reason at all. It is not at all because they feel that they are in a difficult situation in society. It’s because their dominant position has been challenged, so the substance is very different.

WhyNot: After you called the police in 2014, the police went to your parents wanting you to discontinue your pursuit of justice; after the exposure of Zhu Jun, Weibo deleted posts on a large scale, and MeToo began to be suppressed on all sides. Plainclothes police also interfered with supporters at the court hearing. Do you think the pressure of public power still exists for you?

Xianzi: It exists in the judicial sense. Only in January 2019 was the legal designation "disputes regarding compensation for harm caused by sexual harassment" established. So far, of all the sexual harassment cases only one has been called this, and only Liu Meng’s case won (Xianzi points out: Just after March 8, 2020, International Women’s Day, a Shanghai ruling on sexual harassment was won by a defendant, who was awarded nearly 100,000 yuan). Is it really the case that China only has in total only one instance of sexual harassment for a year? That’s impossible. In fact, the cases for reputation rights are the same. The entire burden of proof in the court relies on exposing the person sexually harassed. But in cases in the US, for instance, if Weinstein wanted to sue others for infringing on his reputation, he would have had to prove the subjective malice of the other party himself. He would have had the burden of proof. But those of us here who speak out have a very heavy burden of proof. 

Actually, whether it is a case of reputation rights or a liability dispute over sexual harassment, the law does not protect the victim or their feelings.

We hope that through our life experiences and self-exposure, even if you expose your pain in court, at least that will get everyone to think, "why has only one case won?" Is there really only one instance of sexual harassment? And besides, even in a case like Liu Meng’s that was successful, there was no compensation. Is there no need for compensation? Even including civil lawsuits of sexual harassment, there is discretionary power. In your discretionary power as a judge –– really, where is the free part of your judgment? These are things we hope we can influence.

The current victims are still stuck on the nail board. Its logic is a closed-loop kind of logic: you have no way to prove sexual harassment, and you have no way to prove that you have no way to prove it. The law will not recognize that you have been sexually harassed, and even if it were to, the law will not acknowledge that you deserve compensation. It does not give you dignity, and the more the process is like this, the less are the girls who dare to call the police and dare to talk about their experiences. 

Why do many men, like Deng Fei and Zhu Jun, who says he still believes in the law –– well because the law was on their side. As a sexual harasser, just open a webpage on written judgments and you can see that all sexual harassment cases have been lost by the plaintiffs. Of all of them, only in one case did the plaintiff win. You can say that you believe in the law. If I were Zhu Jun, I would still say that I believe in the law. The law will not let the injured person win. The law requires every woman to carry a voice recorder and a pinhole camera.