Detrimental clothes
In the 1980s, people in China could land themselves in trouble with the government for their fashion choices.
Flared pants and bluejeans were considered “weird attire.” Some government buildings barred men with long hair and women wearing makeup and jewelry. Patrols organized by factories and schools cut flared pants and long hair with scissors.
I kind of know the feeling. I’m extremely judgmental, and
[by the way I’m so judgmental that I’m annoyed that “judgmental” isn’t spelled “judgemental” because ffs people without the e the g is pronounced as in gun or gone or gulp]
because I’m very judgey I often do have a censorious opinion about what other people are wearing. Yoga pants for instance – don’t get me started. However, I don’t really think my opinions should be the law. I kind of do, but not really.
Now the government is proposing amendments to a law that could result in detention and fines for “wearing clothing or bearing symbols in public that are detrimental to the spirit of the Chinese people and hurt the feelings of Chinese people.”
Ahhh good, because that’s not vague at all, and thus not subject to abuse.
The plan has been widely criticized, with Chinese legal scholars, journalists and businesspeople voicing their concerns over the past week. If it goes into effect, they argue, it could give the authorities the power to police anything they dislike.
Kind of like the way the police enforce gender ideology over on this side of the planet.
China has built a surveillance state with modern technologies, censoring the news media and social media extensively, even banning displays of tattoos and men wearing earrings on phone and TV screens. The ideological straitjacket is closing in on the private sphere. Personal choices like what to wear are increasingly subject to the scrutiny of the police or overzealous pedestrians.
In July, an older man on a bus berated a young woman, on her way to a cosplay exposition — where people dress up as a characters from movies, books, TV shows and video games — for wearing a costume that could be considered Japanese style. A security guard at a shopping mall last month turned away a man who was dressed like a samurai. Last year, the police in the eastern city of Suzhou temporarily detained a woman for wearing a kimono.
Interesting. Here it’s women who wear T shirts or buttons that say “woman=adult human female.”
Without a clear definition, enforcement of the law would be subject to the interpretation of individual officers.
Yup, that too is familiar. Remember the large group of furious cops bullying an autistic teenage girl in her own house? Bullying her and then arresting her and dragging her off screaming?
A friend of mine grew up in China under Mao. She complained that she got no education in history. I guess nobody in Chinese schools at the time knew what was safe to say.
I guess president Xi is making good on his proposal that what went wrong back in the day was that they didn’t Mao hard enough… Do enough of that shit and they’re going to tank their economic gains they’ve secured this century.
It sounds like the scars of Japanese occupation have not healed for members of the older generations. It was a brutal occupation targeting the civilian population with rape and murder. Here’s an article aobut it, and the disastrous role that Chiang Kai-Shek played in losing the second Sino-Japanese war of the 20th century.
Even though many of the survivors of that era have died, their children likely know of their parents’ pain and it would be as painful as the Shoah is for the Jews and Romany, so I can understand why they would not want to see Japanese clothes and culture.
But it’s hard to justify laws on it, any sort of control over how people express themselves can be well-meaning but dangerous. However, the current regime in China, whatever they are, don’t seem to care much for freedom of their people.
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