“Women’s Fist-ism,” or nǚ quán (女拳) is internet slang that originated on Chinese social media as a wordplay on “women’s rights,” or nǚ quán zhǔ yì (女权主义). The term cleverly — and mean-spiritedly — incorporates the character for “fist” or “boxing,” quán (拳), characterizing feminists as aggressive extremists.

The term first gained academic attention in a 2020 article from Tsinghua University’s School of Journalism and Communication, which looked carefully at the term’s problematic and derogatory nature. By 2021, the magazine Motherland (祖国杂誌), a bimonthly publication with nationalist leanings, adopted the term in an article that characterized feminists with what it felt were more extreme views — such as blaming their personal setbacks on men — as engaging in “Women’s Fist-ism” as “hostile toward men” (敌视男性) and aspiring ultimately to “return to a matriarchal society” (回到母系社会).

The phrase went viral in April 2022 following controversy over a Chinese Communist Youth League (共青团) Weibo post celebrating male contributions to nation-building while overlooking women’s roles. After female users criticized the post, Beijing Evening News (北京晚报), a newspaper under the municipal propaganda department, ran a commentary condemning these critics as practitioners of “extreme feminism” (极端女权) and “Women’s Fist-ism” who were “stirring up trouble” (兴风作浪).

The goal of the linguistic framing achieved by this derogatory term is to relabel women advocating for equality as simply attacking men. It creates a distorted narrative of feminism, reducing substantive gender equality discussions to stereotypical emotional outbursts — a rhetorical strategy that undermines legitimate discourse on women’s rights in China.