Comedian gag sparks gender debate

Last month, major online Chinese shopping platform JD.com announced on its official social media account that it would discontinue its collaboration with controversial female stand-up comedian Yang Li for its Singles Day shopping carnival that fell on Nov 11. The move came in response to protests lodged by shoppers in social media posts in which many asked for a refund or said they would uninstall the JD app and never use it again.

This is not the first time consumers have protested against 32-year-old Yang's participation in promotions for brands such as Shede Spirits, a white liquor brand, Intel, the computing giant, and car brands like Mercedes-Benz and Xiaopeng.

It all dates back to the summer of 2020, when Yang's gag about men who look mediocre but are self-absorbed on the popular stand-up comedy program Rock &Roast Season 3 provoked fierce discussions online, leading to the coining of the term puxinnan (mediocre but self-absorbed guy).

Although it was a joke, the term apparently offended a lot of people, especially men, who according to market consultancy QuestMobile, account for 58.3 percent of JD's 600 million active users.

Soon after the show was broadcast, the topic "Has Yang Li gone too far in the fifth episode of Rock& Roast Season 3?" was viewed more than 2 million times with nearly 1,500 users posting replies on Zhihu.com, a Quora-like knowledge-sharing platform.

Many Zhihu users, men and women, said they found Yang's jokes funny, especially within the overall context of her performance.

"I'm a man and I can totally accept it. That part about a woman turning to a male friend after breaking up with her boyfriend in particular. After the male friend says: 'But nothing can be done', I laughed out loud, because it's a typical male answer," wrote a user called Liuchuanfeng, whose post received thumbs-up from nearly 5,000 others.

Another "mediocre man" nicknamed Skald also applauded Yang's performance, saying that male stand-up comedians on the program also made a lot of jokes that could be considered offensive to women, but they weren't bombarded by men complaining.

"What is the biggest barrier for woman comedians in the industry? These men with double standards," he wrote in the post.

Analyzing the skill of Yang's performance, Skald said that it was carefully structured — step by step she pushed the performance to its emotional and sarcastic climax.

"What she talked about is social reality, that women are told not to be too sharp-tongued, because what they say is 'not important', so a lot of women tend not to express their thoughts, which is what needs to be changed," he writes in the post.

He continues that the point of Yang's sarcasm is that because men dismiss women, they don't care if they get criticized by them until, as in this case, they get a slap in the face at the end of a performance and realize they have just been scolded but, he writes, it is "those who take jests seriously that are problematic".

So far, more than 3,600 users approved of his post.

Still, many people feel that the term puxinnan has aggravated the antagonism between the sexes in China, especially after it was taken out of context.

One 41-year-old doctor in Beijing, who requested anonymity, says he was offended when he was labeled a puxinnan by women online.

Having graduated from a top medical university, and working at a first-class hospital in Beijing, he says he is confused by the definition of the term.

"I have no idea what kind of men do not get called puxinnan. Just those who are rich, handsome and powerful?" he asks.

He says he was called a puxinnan during quarrels online several years ago, before he knew what that term meant, and had not known about Yang until JD's recent publicity crisis.

He says that by offending some men, Yang wins more support from women, who are willing to spend money on products she endorses.

"This is what they mean by 'being unafraid to offend people'. The more you offend, the more returns you get," he says.

Even worse, he says, is that marketing teams in search of profit stoke argument between the sexes, adding to the bitterness, which had already been there when he was younger and has only become worse since, especially online.

"Because, when you argue with people online, you can attack each other using awful language and blacklist people once the conversation ends, which is impossible in real life," he says. "It's common for women and men to attack each other online, especially in the comments posted on short videos."

Although "mediocre but self-absorbed guy" was originally a joke on a stand-up show, after spreading online, it has developed a much broader meaning, so that when a woman now uses it to describe a man, it becomes a real offense, he says.

"Some people say not to take things so seriously, stand-up comedy is the art of offending, but the audience should be the ones to determine whether something offends or not. If we think it's an offense and feel uncomfortable, then it is offensive," he says.

Zhu Chuchu, a 31-year-old freelancer in Zhangjiajie, Hunan province, agrees that the term aggravates the divide between the sexes.

"No matter what we talk about online, one casual tag terminates the desire to understand each other because the tagged person reacts defensively," she says. "It's impossible to summarize a complex person with a simple tag.

"The fragmentary information and anonymity online exacerbate the divide between the sexes, even though I know that's not the intention," she continues.

To solve this argument, it might be better to find a way for the two sexes to talk peacefully and friendly, says Zhu.