Name Wei Tingting | ||
China Feminist Five - "Do You Hear the Women Sing"
Wei Tingting (Chinese: 韦婷婷) is a Chinese feminist, gay rights, and women's rights activist.
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Early life and career
Wei was raised in China's rural south and attended Wuhan University. According to The New York Times, she was drawn to Western feminist "provocateurs" and staged a production of The Vagina Monologues during her sophomore year. She later became project manager at the Beijing Gender Health Education Institute, where she helped organize an annual AIDS Walk on the Great Wall, attended women's conferences in India and South Korea, and began collecting material for a documentary film about bisexuality in China. She also served as director of Ji’ande, an LGBT rights organization in Beijing.
Activism
In 2012, Wei Tingting and Li Tingting participated in a Valentine's Day protest against domestic violence in Beijing.
In 2015, she and four other activists (Zheng Churan, Wang Man, Wu Rongrong, and Li Tingting, collectively known as the "Gang of Five") were detained by the Chinese government just prior to International Women's Day, the day they planned to execute a campaign against sexual harassment on public transportation. All five women were released a few days later. Had they been convicted, the women could have faced up to three years in prison for "creating a disturbance". Since being released, Wei has said she will continue to fight for gender equality. She said:
I have read so many reports and articles about our arrest and they are so touching and encouraging. I had started to feel despondent and thought this incident would be the end for us young, female activists. But the reaction has started an era of magnificent, new activists. They cannot catch all of us and block us all.
Bustle, an online women's magazine, included the "Chinese Feminist Five" in their list of "14 Women's Rights Activists Around the World Who Will Inspire You".