Aggression, Disempowerment, and Feminism in the “Scum Men” Discourse on Chinese Social Media

This study presents an analysis of the Chinese Internet slang "渣男" (scum men) by examining Weibo posts containing this term from 2011 to 2022. It is found that "scum men" is only on the surface an aggressive expression to condemn male infidelity, especially during outbreaks of celebrity scandals. This main usage manifests not only women's resignation and evasion due to a lack of social mechanisms to address male infidelity, but also tendencies including women's self-discipline and self-sluttification by introducing scum women into the scum-men discourse and associating "scum" with physical attraction. Further behind the rise of such usage is an underlying acceptance of a gendered trade-off where men's wealth is exchanged for women's physical attraction, with fidelity added to material wealth to form the ideal manhood. On the side, the "scum men" discourse has also begun to touch on feminist themes such as domestic violence, sexual harassment, and gaslighting since the late 2010s.