Interview Notes: I got to know Li Maizi in the spring of 2017. At the time, I was a student at a liberal arts school in New York, and I was under the heavy pressure of writing my thesis. The thesis topic was “The Many Faces of Us: An Oral History of Modern Feminism in China,” and its aim was to record the contemporary Chinese feminist movement as oral history. In March, Maizi came to New York to take part in a conference for the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women. I connected with her through friends, and I approached her looking up with hope. She was a famous feminist activist, one of the BBC’s Top 100 Women of the World, and I had just joined the feminist community and had little knowledge of women’s rights. But Maizi enthusiastically agreed to my interview request. Coincidentally, she was coming to my school to participate in an event, so we arranged to meet in the suburbs of New York. My memory of the interview that day has already grown blurry. I only remember that the weather was slightly cool and there seemed to be some sporadic light rain, but Maizi, like the scorching summer sun, drove away all my nervousness. Maizi had a sincere desire for expression, but no desire for performance. She was like a city without defenses: full of scars but proud of her past. After the interview, I took Maizi to the bus station. We walked side by side in the light spring rain. Trees were sprouting leaves, and we were also full of hope. I wrote on Weibo that day, “When a girl heads towards liberation, a boy is also one step closer to freedom.” However, within a year, Feminist Voices was permanently banned; on social media, feminists accounts were blocked or banned from voicing opinions; clear disagreements emerged within the feminist community. We became “punchers” and everyone shouted and raised their fists. But during these past few years, China's MeToo movement has flourished. Feminist narratives have entered the public eye, sisters and brothers of different backgrounds have joined the feminist movement, and we strive to fight for the right to speak and have agreed to fight with pride. It has been a complicated four years. It has been a tangled four years. It has been a disorienting four years. I’m invited at this moment to reflect on the memories of that spring rain four years ago in New York, and in comparison the vivacious feminist activists Xiao Meili, Hou Hongbing, and Wang Leping all had their social media accounts cancelled overnight very recently. This is the reality of feminism in the Chinese language context. Some people are constantly speaking out, but others are constantly silenced. Before joining in the fight for freedom, please listen to Li Maizi’s story about her own fight for freedom. Li Maizi, born in 1989, is a feminist activist from Beijing. As one of the most resounding feminist voices in the Chinese language, she has faced arrest and interrogation, but she continues to speak out for women's rights and sexual minorities. In 2016, Foreign Policy magazine selected her as one of the Top 100 Global Thinkers, and the BBC nominated her as one of the World’s Bravest 100 Women. 1. In 1989, I was born in Yanqing Mountain district, a suburb of Beijing. I was an only child. My grandma gave birth to four sons, and three of my uncles also gave birth to sons, so I was the only girl in the family. My grandma was particularly fond of me, and took me everywhere, carrying me on the street, and carrying me out in the fields. She said that she and I had an intertwined fate because we were the only left-handed people in the family. But my grandma, who loved me so much, died of tuberculosis when I was three years old. In those days, in our remote mountainous area, tuberculosis was a terminal illness. My grandma was the most classic, traditionally Chinese woman. She dedicated her entire life to the family, and during her whole lifetime she was bullied by my grandfather, who was polite in public and a beast at home. In the end she just suddenly left. I remember the tender love my grandma gave to me, but I don't remember at all what my grandma looked like. After my grandma passed away, I moved to Shunyi [another district in Beijing] with my parents. There was no bus in our village, and my mother could only ride a bicycle to go work at a textile factory. With great difficulty, I adapted to life in Shunyi. When I was seven years old, because of a hukou household registration problem, I had to go back to Yanqing to be able to attend school. Because of my background and my Shunyi accent, I became an outsider in Yanqing, and none of the kids wanted to play with me. Our school was very small; one teacher taught all the subjects and all the grades. One can easily imagine that the quality of education was therefore rather poor. From a young age, I had no concept about scores. After I got an 80 on an exam, I happily went home to tell my parents about this achievement; but in fact, my father was incredibly concerned about me. He had missed getting into a university by three points, so he entrusted all of his hope directly on me. He hoped that I would have a bright and successful future and raise eyebrows and make his hometown proud. For this reason, he worked hard to resolve the hukou household registration problem, which allowed me to return to Shunyi quickly for my studies. But when I finally returned to study in Shunyi, I became an outsider in Shunyi. They made fun of me for being crude and called me a hillbilly. So, my entire childhood was changing places and learning to be the outsider. When I did return to Shunyi, the school was still no good. Because of problems due to the one child policy, the school did not have enough students, and I was forced to transfer. But many of my small girl friends were not as fortunate as I. When the school could no longer continue, parents were unwilling to spend the time and effort to find a new school for their daughters. The girls didn’t study hard anymore. They entered vocational schools early, entered society early, married early, and had babies early. But because of my father's stubbornness, I set out on the lonely road to school. Middle school rushed past, and for high school I went to Beijing’s Shunyi No. 10 Middle School. Because the school’s physics teacher was so terrible, I ended up studying the humanities. 2. I didn’t study hard in high school either, and took advantage of being young and fell in love with girls. My real name is Li Tingting, and my father gave me this feminine name hoping I would become a virtuous lady, but I did not stick to his wishes. Ever since I was a kid, I was like a boy, and everyone called me a tomboy. In our village, everyone said I looked just like a boy, but I always took this as a kind of compliment. In our small village, being a boy was more powerful than being a girl. So, starting from elementary school, I always dressed as a tomboy, and I stopped wearing braids and skirts after second grade. At the same time, I also felt an inexplicable feeling for some girls; when I saw them, my heart would suddenly be over the moon with joy and I would take girls home by bike after school. In middle school, I realized I was a lesbian, and I had a friend close to me who was also a lesbian. She told me, being a lesbian was a kind of illness, and she hoped that I wouldn’t contract the same illness. On the one hand, I didn’t want to be sick, but on the other I fell in love with my best friend. It was not until high school that I revealed how I truly felt, and she felt the same. At that time, the two of us did nothing but study. News and information were very hard to access. We were together, but we were very confused–– then it was over. We were both sick, and now what to do? I still liked her, but she was afraid of being discovered as sick by others, so she broke up with me. I was incredibly hurt and went to another friend and told her everything. She looked at me in disgust and said to me, “You know what your name is? You’re a lala! Lala!” [Lala is a slang term for lesbian in Chinese.] I could not bear this accusation and I cut my wrist to kill myself. I did not die but ended up in a room filled with the smell of my blood. Of my two best friends, one was homophobic, and one had broken up with me. I lost hope. I didn’t want to be Li Tingting anymore. Being Li Tingting was not fun at all. At that time, sometimes I would read articles about ears of rice. I hungered to be as free and grounded as rice ears, so I changed my name to Li Maizi. I always disliked the name Tingting, and I never wanted to be a proper lady. I wanted to change my name and to start over. I studied hard for the college entrance examination, but my poor scores forced me go outside of Beijing to study. In the summer of 2008, I dragged my suitcase and, bearing the name of Li Maizi, ran away from Beijing and started my college career in Xi'an, a deserted place where even birds don’t shit. 3. I attended a school that I didn't want and I studied a major that I didn't want–– public management–– and there were very few classes. I didn't really have much to do every day. Back then, a friend of mine got pregnant by accident and had a miscarriage. Another good friend of mine thought this was a shameful thing to have happened. I told her, “What's wrong, isn't this like an abortion? Doesn't a woman have the right to make her own choices for her body?” Through this incident, I learned about sex education and NGOs, and became very interested in this effort. I started to use peer-to-peer education to develop sex education in universities. Back then, my university was a science and engineering university, and the academic atmosphere was relatively rigorous and conservative. But by using guerrilla techniques, I began my life’s calling as a volunteer. Later, I set up a sex education team at the university under the school's psychological association. I put in all my effort and went through a series of trials and tribulations. In the end I got the deputy director of the psychological counseling center, who had worked in the Women's Federation, to agree to be our group advisor. In 2010, I grew weary of teaching college students how to prevent AIDS, and tired of teaching straight people how to use condoms. I started to devote more energy to LGBTQ activities. As a result of this, along with three other people I co-founded the Xi'an Relax Student Club in a McDonald's. Back then, I was very young, and from my perspective, as long as I dared to try, there was nothing I couldn’t do. Also, during my time in college I got access to the internet and started seeing homosexuality no longer as a disease. As a lesbian, I hoped I could do something practical and highlight the feminist perspective on gay issues. So, in the process of establishing the student club, I hoped the concept of feminism would run through our work, and I also hoped that lesbian identity would be highlighted in our activities. I started to get in touch with NGOs, and I participated in many youth training programs organized by NGOs. I took part in many projects, some of which lasted for a year. I made friends from all corners of the world, and everyone was idealistic and wanted to do more public welfare projects in college. In 2011, during a training session, I was exposed to the concept of performance art. I thought this idea was awesome because though the Yirenping Center in Beijing’s training looked very simple, the content was like a breath of fresh air. In the years before that, whether it was sex education or public advocacy for lesbians, it seemed that the focus was about public education. But this center used the power of local civil spaces to spur government policy changes, and they had succeeded in making a breakthrough on the Hepatitis B issue. In 2009, the Employment Promotion Law was promulgated, which eliminated institutional barriers to Hepatitis B virus carriers. As a result, I became enormously interested in these types of campaigns. In 2012, we did our first demonstration, "The Bloody Bride." Along with Wei Tingting (one of the Feminist Five) and Xiao Meili, we dressed up as brides, and staged the performance on Feb. 14, Valentine's Day. Together we marched down Qianmen Street for 20 minutes. Afterwards, the police came to clear the scene and said we were a group of abnormal women. I really couldn't laugh or cry. I was so happy I shouted slogans on the street: “Hitting is not intimacy, swearing is not love, stay far from violence and love well,” “Love is not an excuse for violence," and other slogans. These slogans released my stress and soaring adrenaline. Since we knew that China really does not like gatherings like rallies and demonstrations, we also harbored a tiny bit of fear in our hearts at that time. However, in reality, security just told us to leave quickly, and did not expressly prohibit us from engaging in activities. Sometimes where the boundaries are is really hard to say. The next day, mainstream media and online media reported on our demonstration because we were female college students, and the event was spread all over the news. Encouraged by this first demonstration, I started preparations for the second event, Occupy Men’s Room. The idea first emerged in 2010.A friend in Hong Kong proposed the idea of occupying men’s toilets and genderless restrooms. I found this to be very original and worth trying. That same year, on Feb. 19, I went to Guangzhou to mobilize a group of female college students, and they all joined me in the Occupy Men’s Room demonstration. It is undeniable that the Occupy Men’s Room has been the most successful of all our actions, because toilet policies in various places began to loosen. Beijing, Nanjing, Xi’an and Guangzhou are all in the process of putting forth policy to expand women’s toilets. Most importantly, in December 2016, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development issued the Design Standards for Public Toilets, clearly stipulating that the ratio of male to female toilets should be 2:3 and that for places with dense populations, an increase in toilets should be based on the gender ratio. 4. Just when I thought everything was going well, things took a turn for the worse in 2015. We planned to launch a street photography campaign against sexual harassment on public transportation on International Women’s Day. We had started recruiting volunteers at the end of 2014 and discussed the whole process on WeChat, and it was a widely-known fact that our WeChat was being monitored. On the day before the event, a number of volunteers were questioned by authorities, and four other women’s rights sisters, including me, were summoned by the police on criminal charges and, 24 hours later, detained in the Beijing Haidian District Detention Center. I spent International Women’s Day in prison as a feminist. The five of us spent an endless 37 long days there, and in order to prevent us from boosting our morale and sharing information with each other, we were detained in different rooms. I was interrogated nearly 50 times in those 37 days, and it was like the police had only two days off, complaining about the hard work of dealing with us. At the beginning, the official reason for our criminal detention was that we were suspected of provoking troubles. After 30 days, when the detention center’s pre-trial office submitted information to the prosecutor's office, our crime was changed to assembling a crowd to disrupt public order. The well-known human rights defender Xu Zhiyong was sentenced to four years in prison for this crime. Therefore, I believed that Haidian Public Security simply followed the same pattern to fabricate our case. I'm a person with a big heart and handle myself. From the moment I stepped through the gate of the detention center, I knew that I would be there at least a month, so I didn’t panic too much, but rather felt a sliver of excitement. During my preliminary hearing, the police said I would be going to the Haidian District Detention Center along with about 3,000 other people, and that it was said this was the largest detention center in Asia. When they told me this, it was with some pride, which I found particularly ridiculous. In those 37 days, my identity as a lesbian was constantly attacked by those working at the detention center. They said I was a young girl, or just like a man which was a real shame. They said my girlfriend and I were abnormal, that it’s only normal when a woman has sex with a man, and that we two were just disgusting. In detention, I saw the most a person could see in a lifetime. I met many sisters in the detention center, and their experiences strengthened my determination to continue to be an activist in the feminist movement. The young girl I formed the closest relationship with turned 20 this year. She told me that she graduated with a major in computer software, but after graduating and working at a software company, her professional skills were not taken seriously. In the computer industry, as a woman, she could only do administrative work, serving tea and pouring water. She felt that her abilities were ignored. No matter how diligently she studied, no matter how good her foundation was, she was always seen as just a woman. So she resigned, and through an ex-boyfriend’s introduction, she started reselling credit cards for profit. She told me that it was a very happy time for her. If she had not been caught, she would have continued on in her job, and when she as released, she would return to her old career. I was in a difficult position. I couldn’t advise her to change her bad habits. On the one hand, I knew she had done something wrong. On the other hand, I knew that society did not provide many resources and opportunities for women like her, and her professional skills would not be put to use. How could she be self-reliant, and how could she enjoy the same rights as men? During another interrogation, a 10-year-old boy entered the hall in handcuffs. The police said he had been brought charged with rape. He looked at me, and I looked at him. I could not believe my eyes. If such a small child did not have anyone to teach him not to rape an eight-year-old girl, how can our society blame the young girl for not having self-awareness? This little boy was handcuffed at such a young age. How much more suffering would be added to his life? Even in the detention center, there is blatant sexism. One time on my way to an interrogation, I encountered a male prisoner let out for exercise and fresh air. On my way back, I discovered that the female prisoners were not let out for fresh air. Later, I found out that male prisoners were allowed out on weekends, but women prisoners were not. In addition, it was widely known that the prison system arranged for conjugal visits for male prisoners on holidays, while female prisoners couldn’t enjoy this treatment. Do women not need this same tenderness? Don't women want sex? I think this is blatant deprivation of women's rights. Everything in the detention center made me solidify my determination of feminism’s innocence. I couldn’t stand being in detention and losing my freedom, the dry and dull boredom, wasting my life. But I knew that I hadn’t committed a crime. I needed patience, persistence and courage. I wanted to keep a diary, but I didn't want my weaknesses to be discovered, so I wrote it in English. In fact, in the detention center, we were forbidden to keep diaries as pen and paper were not allowed. This is a right that detainees should have, but we were deprived of the right to keep any records. Fortunately, my guard was a very good person. She secretly gave me paper and pen, and she also provided basic necessities many times. Because of this small bit of hope, I survived. Happily, the procuratorate refused to approve our arrests on the grounds of insufficient evidence. So finally, 37 days later, we were released. I packed up all my clothes and bedding at the detention center. Except for some food and shampoo, which I left for fellow detainees, I packed everything in two bags. When the female police officer looked at me carrying bedding on my shoulder and carrying a washbasin and other toiletries, she was stunned: “I have been a police officer for more than 10 years and have never seen anyone like you.” At that time, there was only pride in my heart. I was proud that I could walk out the main gate of the detention center with all my belongings. The detention center had many doors, and when I came out at midnight, the first door opened. The two armed policemen in charge of me swiped their cards and asked me: “What’s your name?!” I answered: “Li Tingting.” Armed Police: “What crime did you commit?!” “I didn't commit a crime!” I replied firmly. 5. On the day I was released, my father came to pick me up. As soon as the outer door of the detention center opened, my father welcomed me with a bear hug. At that moment, I was overwhelmed because my father and I were not that close. One of the reasons I became a feminist was because I had witnessed my father's violence against my mother since I was a child. When I was still young, he often beat my mother in front of me for any small unpleasantness. I would jump up and beat my dad with a fly swatter. My mother was very weak. Whether it was mentally or physically, she was always dependent on my father. And because of these estrangements and barriers, I seldom expressed emotions like this with my father. Hugging my dad, I said to him, "I have to keep everything!" "Okay." It meant that he understood what I meant. For men, you always have to show that everything is under your control. After I got home, my friends updated me on everything that happened while I was in detention , helping me integrate back into society as fast as possible. Before I was arrested, I had been mentally prepared. If you are an NGO worker in China, it means that you risk being regarded as a hostile force and arrested. I told my mother that I might still be arrested in the future. She knew my character and my stubbornness, so she didn’t exhaust herself trying to persuade me. She wanted me to change my career and have a more stable job, but she knew that I was an activist and would not give up. The movement must continue. For me, there is no such thing as taking risks in the feminist movement. I am not anyone’s hero. On the contrary, I think the emergence of authority in the feminist movement is something to be wary of. I am just doing what a feminist should do. Feminism is not only about political correctness, but also about lifestyle. It sets the boundaries for your life, and you have to use wisdom and your brain to live it. Yes, I describe the experience of detention as “feminism makes you suffer.” And I calmly accepted this unfair imprisonment. For me, I have been a victim of the system. Constant grumbling and complaining makes people feel powerless, but I hope that after having such an experience, I will not ignore it, will not despise it, and that this road of feminist activism will continue. I am a feminist, and I am also a lesbian. These are my inseparable characteristics. In the detention center, I had so much time to think about what kind of person I wanted to be and what I wanted to do in the future. In prison, my female identity and homosexuality were constantly stigmatized, and I started to realize, in China, on this piece of land, the feminist cause and the LGBTQ equality cause are inseparable. Speaking for myself, I have always emphasized that I am a feminist. Because China has two different translations for the English word feminism ––women’s rights and female-ism. In my opinion, feminism in the context of China is more of a depoliticized expression, and it does not sound so radical. And I think that the women’s rights I emphasize must stress rights and power, and that the personal is in fact political. So, if there is no problem, it’s ok to avoid the political, especially when we are still living under a dictatorship. But the current space in which China can talk about women’s rights is indeed full of uncertain elements. Just like other rights spaces in China, the suppression of human rights lawyers, the sentencings of pro-democracy activists, and the complete failure of liberalism all indicate that China is suffering from a real tightening of civil society. From forbidding previous activism to banning the most influential alternative feminist media, Feminist Voices, and blocking personal feminist accounts for days on end, all of this reflects China’s public censorship of women’s rights. It’s not because of the street activism that these were stopped again and again. And in this kind of political climate, how do we find a space for us where any sound we make will actually resonate? This has become a question that Chinese feminists need to think about. 6. Now I spend most of my time introducing Chinese women's rights abroad. The work of people I have contacted abroad has helped me reflect on and continue my feminist activism. And I plan to continue to study for a master's degree in law and become a human rights lawyer. In 2017, I went to the United Kingdom to give lectures and then came to the United States to engage in performance demonstrations. I stood in front of Trump Tower and proudly held a sign against sexism. In my eyes, discrimination against women is an international act. In China, some people call me a feminist bitch, and in the United States, Trump always used nasty woman to attack Hillary Clinton. A strong woman will be controversial wherever she is. But I am not afraid; Li Maizi has nothing to fear. Many people advise me to stay abroad because they know that my safety is more secure abroad, but I know very clearly in my heart that an activist cannot leave her home soil. What I want to change is here, not anywhere else. Going to other countries, I will never be grounded. Even if the government has no reason, it will block me; even if I am simply walking in my village, villagers will gossip in strange tones behind my back. But I know I cannot leave, and I will not leave. I am not anyone’s hero; I am just a feminist, and feminism is innocent. I know that it may not get better in the future, but we must strive to survive and give feminism space to survive, so that we can continue to grow. Maybe I’ll keep going until I get tired one day; then I will stop. Maybe when I'm 50, I will get into animal protection. Animal rights are also really bad in China. And I am a cat person, so why not?