Feminist podcasting: a new discursive intervention on gender in Mainland China

The recent decade has witnessed thriving discourses of feminism on social media in mainland China. Feminist podcasting rose in popularity in 2019. By analyzing 35 podcasts, I sketch a landscape of Chinese feminist podcasting in terms of discussion subjects, content, and business mode. Through close textual analysis of Surplus Value (剩余价值) and Bie Renxing (别任性), supplemented by interviews with three feminist podcasters, I will argue that feminist podcasting combines academic depth and social immediacy, complementing feminist discourse in both academia and popular culture. Its subscription technology offers a bargaining chip to feminist podcasters, perhaps more than any other social media, to negotiate with censoring power. The pleasure of evading and teasing the authorities is not only felt by podcasters but also shared among listeners, leading to a consolidation of the host-audience alliance.