(SINGAPORE, 4.8.2025) The twists and turns of a prominent sexual harassment case in China, which a local court has dismissed as baseless and unsupportable, has not only damaged the reputation of the prestigious Wuhan University, but also sparked online discussions about whether feminism is being misguidedly weaponized by misandrists in the country to victimize socially disadvantaged males.
In November 2023, Yang Jingyuan, now 25, filed a lawsuit against a male fellow student surnamed Xiao, now 21, accusing the latter of having sexually harassed her four months earlier at a corner in the library of their school, the Wuhan University, Chinese media reported.
On July 25, the court’s verdict was at last handed down. The judgment detailed its examination of every evidence and came to the conclusion that Xiao’s seemingly obscene actions “do not constitute sexual harassment.”
But instead of feeling deflated, Yang wrote in a social media post that she would “happily go on to pursue her PhD,” while Xiao would “have difficulties getting recommended to a Master’s programme.” She even gloatingly remarked that “Xiao might apply to a school overseas? Whichever school it is, I will send them his incriminating materials.”
“Who gave Yang the guts to be so brazen? Wuhan University is to blame. From the beginning, the university’s handling of the entire incident has been an utter mess — calling it lenient and indulgent towards Yang would be putting it lightly,” wrote a netizen.
“Yang’s reaction to Xiao’s so-called ‘sexual harassment’ was extremely abnormal. She did not stop or confront him, nor did she call the police right away. Instead, she secretly spent nearly an hour filming Xiao’s act of scratching at the crotch of his pants. Her composure was unlike that of an ordinary person. One can clearly detect signs of coercion when she finally confronted Xiao and demanded that he write an apology, to which he meekly complied,” the remark continued.
It was later established by the court that Xiao had been intermittently scratching his crotch area that day due to itching from eczema – a certified medical condition that had bothered him for the past five years – while he was seated across a table from Yang, studying by himself in the library.
Even more absurdly, noted another netizen, after the court judgment was handed down, Wuhan University should have immediately corrected its earlier wrongful decision to punish Xiao with a “record of demerit” for “indecent behavior”, and yet it has not. Instead, “it has formed a special working group to conduct a comprehensive investigation of Xiao’s punishment and Yang’s Master’s thesis.”
“Why bundled together Yang’s suspected academic misconduct and Xiao’s punishment as these are two completely different matters? “ asked the netizen.
Due to the sexual harassment row, Yang’s Master’s thesis had come under public scrutiny, where it was found to be a hodgepodge of copy-pasted material with a plagiarism rate as high as 38% and peppered with fabricated facts and invented data.
“Is this the standard of a Wuhan University Master’s degree? And the person who wrote this garbage gets to pursue her PhD? One can’t help but feel great regret for this century-old prestigious institution,” lamented another netizen.
Yang’s brazen misconduct did not stem from powerful connections, one netizen pointed out. Rather, Wuhan University’s unjust handling of the matter reflects systemic injustice and oppression in some circles of China against socially disadvantaged males. Yang’s modus operandi is strikingly similar to the 2023 case in which a female Master’s student of Sichuan University surnamed Zhang falsely accused an elderly migrant worker of filming her in a train.
Both Yang and Zhang are active “feminists” as well as university elites who have secured recommendations to postgraduate programmes and opportunities to study overseas. In their “sexual harassment incidents,” both had resorted to “doxing” and inciting cyberbullying. After their false accusations backfired, both were apparently shielded by their universities and ultimately went abroad to study without consequence, protested the netizen.
Looking further back, the 2020 incident involving a “Qinghua University senior female student” who falsely accused a junior male student of “sexual harassment” in the campus cafeteria and threatened to socially ruin him was not much different. It was clearly a one-sided “misunderstanding” accompanied by blatant online bullying and threats, yet the school surprisingly settled the matter by arranging a “mutual apology” and swept it under the rug.
Another critic pointed out that these so-called online “feminists” do not actually think of protecting women’s legitimate rights and interests. In fact, they show little concern for systemic oppression that truly harms women’s rights. They merely relish creating and stirring panic over “sexual harassment” among women, inciting hatred, and carrying out bullying. This is feminism in no meaningful sense, much less a fight for equality. It is privileged bullying instead.
In the series of “sexual harassment” they fabricated, the victims are mostly ordinary males with no power or influence — common students like Xiao and the male Qinghua student, and an elderly migrant worker, added the critic.
As for real powerful figures, these are untouchables to these “feminists”. CEOs can be allowed to be overbearing, but ordinary men can be pounced on. “What kind of feminism is this? It is overt class discrimination,” he concluded.
