“I’ve been warned not to talk about it,” the woman wrote, before revealing snippets of the day she says she was arrested for publishing gay erotica.
“I’ll never forget it - being escorted to the car in full view, enduring the humiliation of stripping naked for examination in front of strangers, putting on a vest for photos, sitting in the chair, shaking with fear, my heart pounding.”
The handle, Pingping Anan Yongfu, is among at least 8 in recent months which have shared accounts on Chinese social media platform Weibo of being arrested for publishing gay erotic fiction. As authors recounted their experiences, dozens of lawyers offered pro bono help.
At least 30 writers, nearly all of them women in their 20s, have been arrested across the country since February, a lawyer defending one told the BBC. Many are out on bail or awaiting trial, but some are still in custody. Another lawyer told the BBC that many more contributors were summoned for questioning.
I dare say that that’s probably not the cause why women today want to have no or fewer children.
I suspect it’s more about economic factors, such as the prospect of having a stable job for the next 40 years, and the prospect of stability that this brings. Society changes so rapidly that it would be absurd to think that people are still gonna have well-paying jobs in 40 years. We’re already seeing a Cost-of-Living crisis today, or rather, a crisis of jobs not paying a living wage. That’s only gonna get more severe over time.
Compare that to other cultures around the world (consider developing countries such as rural africa was 30+ years ago, and medieval europe). They had rough lifes and often didn’t value women. But they had Stability: They could be reasonably certain that their living conditions should be roughly the same in 40+ years from now, so they can have some children. If they can feed them today, the children will be able to feed themselves in 40 years. Because society was static like that.