A poster made by a university student for his department’s first-year orientation session has been criticized for referring to female classmates as “whores,” with one student’s father, who is a lawyer, threatening legal action.
A poster made by a male student to welcome first-year female students to National Tsing Hua University’s Department of Quantitative Finance and the College of Engineering read: “Female quantitative finance students in the courtyard of engineering” (工廷計女), the Chinese characters for which have the same pronunciation as the phrase “palace whores” (宮廷伎女).
One senior female student reported being called a “whore” (妓女) by her juniors and demanded that formal apologies be made within a week.
A post that appeared on Saturday on a new Facebook page made to protest the incidents asked readers: “What kind of mind would come up with this filthy phrase?”
It also asked perpetrators whether they considered the whole school their “hunting grounds.”
Students commenting on the post expressed their anger, leaving comments such as: “Do you know how disrespectful this is to the female students in this department?” and “Quantitative finance is made up of two words. Against all reason you chose to use the abbreviated expression ‘quantitative women’ (計女) instead of the expression ‘finance women’ (財女), [which sounds like the Chinese for ‘talented woman’ (才女)].”
The student who made the poster later came forward to explain his actions, saying that he planned the poster as a type of “21-gun salute” and that he felt the phrase, which plays on the abbreviated nomenclature for the two areas of study, would be creative.
He added that he welcomes discussion on the poster from concerned classmates.
Other students said that they had no problem with the poster, saying that the expression invoked through the word play in fact refers to female performers in the palaces of ancient China and that the idea of those performers being prostitutes was a misunderstanding of their role.
One senior female quantitative finance student, whose parents are lawyers, wrote an open letter to her junior classmates complaining of being involuntarily given the nickname “prostitute” because of their actions.
She said she realizes that the junior students were trying to attract more interest in this year’s orientation activities, but that the poster has had the effect of female students being joked about in a derogatory manner.
The student said her father learned of the incident when she received a text message from a friend during dinner that read: “Hey whore, do you want to go for dinner?”
She said her father has demanded that the responsible students apologize within a week or else he would take legal action against them.
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