Circulating feminist knowledge and experiences through the Internet proved to be full of obstacles. Through the process of uploading my videos to major Chinese-language social media platforms, I genuinely experienced the challenges faced by Chinese feminist publishing outlets I encountered in my research, such as Feminist Voices.
All content must undergo review before it becomes visible to other users: first examined by the machine, and if there is anything it cannot identify, it will be checked by human censors.
At first, I copied the description of the original film that I borrowed, and presented the videos as ordinary “fan-made film edits”. Among all eight videos I made, only four survived. How the review mechanism works and why certain videos failed to pass remains unclear, perhaps it is because they mention the government’s law enforcement.
For those that passed the review, however, they did not reach a wide range of audiences either. All these platforms are based on algorithm mechanisms and they only give exposure to contents that they think to be valuable. The exposure of my video is therefore very limited and they received low visibility. I then experimented with a different approach, adding captions such as: “How cool is this character! The subtitles are a bit hard to understand—can anyone help me interpret them?” This led to an increase in views, but most viewers did not seem to recognise the underlying meanings embedded in the videos.
My current approach relies on visual concealment and disguise—an indirect way of working around censorship. While this might allow the content to exist in the public sphere in a relatively safe way, the meaning of publishing is not just in enabling information to stay somewhere, but also in amplifying it so that it can be understood and received by a broader range of people.
This led me to reflect: through what form of communication can those who are not familiar with feminism begin to notice these issues, and then engage with feminist ideas and histories? Rather than hiding or avoiding, what is more powerful might be more direct responses—something more open and with a stronger presence, because constantly working around restrictions may in fact be another way of reinforcing them.
Therefore moving forward, I want to explore a more “harmonious” way of publishing: it may still possess some kind of ambiguity, but disguising is not the only purpose. It will be a softer form of expression, for example, using gentler, non-violent visual language to communicate violence.
Besides, I want to push for the legitimacy of expression and independent publishing itself by using and discussing it more openly, informing more people about independent publishing as an autonomous way of communication and exchange.
I also hope to generate more grounded, real-world experiences—for example, using physical media to materialize the history of digital publishing, or entering public spaces, collecting and circulating feminist and queer experiences and knowledge through face-to-face communications, so that these voices can be seen and directly connect to more real life experiences, because publishing in its essence is a practice of connection, networks, and solidarity.
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