Masculinity Politics and Cultural Appropriation: Navigating Nationalist Rhetoric in China’s Authoritarian Context

This article examines how social groups navigate masculinity in China’s nationalist and authoritarian context by comparing two online communities with opposing views on male effeminacy: SMEC, which supports non-hegemonic masculinities, and OMEC, which promotes hypermasculinity. Drawing on a decade of community data and 33 in-depth interviews, I show how both groups appropriate nationalist rhetoric in contradictory ways to legitimize their ideals. OMEC aligns with the state’s call to “recover Chinese tradition” by idealizing Maoist soldiers, while SMEC reclaims the effeminate scholarly literati of pre-modern China. In doing so, these communities reshape the wen - wu (cultural attainment-martial valor) dichotomy. Through a bottom-up lens of masculinity politics and cultural appropriation, this study underscores how nationalist rhetoric serves as both a tool and battleground for competing masculine identities in an authoritarian landscape.