New Party presidential candidate Yang Shih-kuang (楊世光) made a series of male chauvinist and misogynist statements at a recent news conference.
“I am pro-unification, I am a man. Anyone who is pro-independence is a woman,” “I really want to know if my adversary is a man or a woman” and “[President] Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) has no right to talk about the next generation, because she has no children,” were just some of his comments.
Yang thinks that women are incapable of taking on major responsibilities, that being a woman is humiliating and that a woman who has not had a child is incomplete.
Although this series of statements set off a wave of indignation and condemnation, it is very unsettling that despite the fact that same-sex marriage has been legalized and although a woman has been the nation’s president for more than three years, reactionary male chauvinism continues to exist in Taiwan.
Tsai’s achievements are clear for all to see and she would do well in any evaluation of her performance.
Still, she is neither perfect nor a saint, nor has her policy implementation been flawless, but this is something that requires reasonable criticism of her performance, not of her sex.
However, there is a group of people today who think that she is not suitable to serve a second term simply because of her sex, and that is simply absurd.
Ever since antiquity, the contributions of women to state and society have never been inferior to the contributions of men.
Historically, women have led people, they have taken part in academic development and they have reformed societies and cultures. Housewives in traditional families have also made great sacrifices, for family, children, the environment and animal protection.
The power of women must ever be underestimated.
Former US secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton said in her concession speech after losing the 2016 presidential election against Donald Trump that she believed that “the future is female,” a phrase that originated as one of the slogans of the lesbian feminist movement in the 1970s.
Hopefully we will continue to see women shine in all sectors of society in the future, but that requires a free and safe national and social environment.
This is the reason all women compatriots working hard to safeguard the sovereignty of Taiwan must speak up and say that: “We are pro-independence, we are women!”
Wu Xin-en is a transfeminist.
Translated by Perry Svensson
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