战疫背后的“男人故事”

致读者：

从这性别转换中，我们可以注意到一些对女性的描述与男性不同。但是，这篇文章只包括一篇来自官方媒体的报道。它不能作为对整个中国社会性别状况的唯一判断。即便如此，我仍希望这种性别反转思维实验能够启发我的读者每次遇到与性别相关的报道时都进行男女对调，考虑其描述是否带有偏见或轻微的性别歧视。
以上，我将我的标题命名为战疫背后的“男人故事”，这是一个独特的标题能立马抓住人们的注意力。这条横幅使用了一个男性形象。它的灵感来自于百度网站上的一个广告，画面上是一位漂亮的年轻女士，标语是“女性的力量”。以下文章摘自《人民网》，但做了些许修改。仅将“女性”和“男性”,“他”“她”,和一些女性特征的名字“叶爱玲”,“谢琳” 改为中性或男性的名字“叶友令”和“谢森”。通过这些微小的变化，可以对比两性新闻报道的差异。我想让我的观众注意到的一点是，女性被过分强调了她们的努力工作和对自己和家庭的牺牲。虽然从身体素质上女性较为柔弱，传统上女性更应关心家庭，但官方新闻不应该用太多的文字来强调她们的奉献精神，这不利于我们社会的性别平等。因此，从这一性别逆转中，我们可以看出官方媒体话语中对女性略带偏见的叙述，从而能反映出中国社会如何对待女性，以及传统意识形态对人们心理和日常生活的影响。

To my audience:

From this gender reversal, we can notice some descriptions and portrayals of female are different from men. However, this text only includes one report from official media. It cannot be the only judgement of the entire gender situation of Chinese society. Even so, I hope this kind of gender reversal thought experiment can inspire my audience to think critically when encountering gender-related reports: if the character change from female to male (or from male to male), is it the same, or inappropriate? 

The banner uses a male image which is men doing experiment about coronavirus published from a state-run media Xinhua (新华网), which is inspired from an advertisement on Baidu website picturing a pretty young lady with a slogan “the power of women”. The following article is also revised from a state-run media, Renmin news (人民网). I remain it almost intact, only changing a few words, from “female” to “male”, “she” to “he”, and some feminine names like “叶爱玲”, “谢琳” to neutral or male-like names “叶友令”and “谢森”.

By these minimal changes, this article is aimed at contrasting the difference of news reporting between two genders. The peculiarity is the very thing I want to let you notice, that women have been overemphasized about their hard work and sacrifice of themselves and family. Though intrinsically and traditionally, female is physically less strong than male, and cares more about their family, the official news shouldn’t spend too much words to emphasize their devotion compared to man, which is counterproductive in stating our society’s gender equality. Therefore, from this gender reversal, we can catch a glimpse of how women are portrayed in official media discourse, which can further reflect how women is treated in Chinese society and the impact of traditional ideology done on people’s mind and daily life. 

Reference:

105070, Q. (2020, March 10). “Women’s stories” behind the epidemic(战疫背后的“女人故事”). Retrieved from http://health.people.com.cn/n1/2020/0310/c14739-31625889.html