Sexism in Chinese Characters

There are so many examples of sexism in almost every language and it’s common that female radicals have frequently negative meanings. I would like to present you some interesting facts about certain Chinese characters, from which you can easily observe its etymology and understand more about the meanings.

However, just like most languages, these words have been around a long time. If you track them way back into the times they were created, maybe the intentions of the origins were totally different. Now they’re just words, and their original misogynistic meaning is very diluted and unimportant, meaning you’re not a horrible person if you use these words in your day-to-day life.

Despite that how terrible or ridiculous some of the meanings of these Chinese characters are, we can still take away a lot of other things.

Unlike English letter, each component of a Chinese character has its meaning. Chances are you don’t know how to pronounce a character, but instead you can pretty much understand its meaning. See how easy it is to figure out the meanings of characters by breaking them up into radicals? Let’s start with the basic here, man and woman.

男: Man

Now it’s high time to look at “man”. This character consists of a rice paddy (田) and power (力). Who’s the power on the rice field? That’s the dudes, of course. Look at our big muscles.

女: Woman

The character isn’t particularly interesting on its own, but it’s important to look at first, because it always plays a role in the misogynistic character to come, appearing over and over again.

好：Good, nice

The widely accepted meaning of this word is that the words “female” (女) and “child” (子) were put together to form a compound, because it was a good thing for women to have a child. However, a broader interpretation is that the second character, 子, also means “of” or “son”. So another possibility could be that it meant two children, a boy and a girl next to each other, which is a good fortune to have a boy and a girl. Lastly, it could mean that the “attitude” of a girl was considered good.

安: Contented, Relax, Safe

This is a woman inside of a roof. A woman safe inside the house. When a woman is safe within a house, she costs a lot less and you (the man) can go out and do your manly things while feeling relaxed and contented that there’ll always be a meal ready for you when you get home.

嬲: Ridicule, Tease

So, when there are two guys (男) around one lady (女) it’s no longer flirting. Now it’s ridiculing and teasing… at least they got the “apparently most guys were jerks during the kanji-creation period” thing down right in this kanji.

For their love life, the character is 嬲 niǎo (to tease, pester, flirt). In different dialects, the word has different meanings and usages aside from its literal meaning. Taken pictorially, the character reads 男 (male) + 女 (female) + 男 (male)-  a different kind of threesome.

 

嫐: Flirt

Two ladies (女), one dude between them (男). Why not add three or four more ladies while you’re at it, wishful-thinking-monk?

The sex character for them, 嫐 nǎo, means “frolic, play with, flirt with”. It is made up of three building blocks that are radicals and characters on their own at the same time. From the left to right, the character is made up of 女 (female) + 男 (male) + 女 (female).  I think we can work out what type of sex this refers to…

The meaning of many Chinese characters’ meanings falls firmly line with their pictorial roots, but some words’ pictorial meanings may not be the same as actual meanings, and could be taken the wrong way, sometimes with funny results.