Seventh International Conference on Communication & Media Studies

Abstract

This paper investigates the media portrayal of masculinity in crisis as signifying a crisis of the nation-state in postsocialist China. More specifically, the media depiction of the phenomenon of ‘fake women’ is condemned as an epitome of the loss of Chinese manhood and a threat to the nation-state, reflecting powerlessness, inferiority, feminized passivity, and social deterioration, reminiscent of the colonial past when China was defeated by the colonizing West and plagued by its image as the ‘sick man’ of East Asia. This paper argues that the media has made effeminate men a scapegoat upon which anxiety over social problems is displaced.