He-Yin Zhen (, ) was an early 20th-century Chinese feminist and anarchist.
She was born as He Ban in Yizheng, Jiangsu, but took the name He Zhen (何震, He "Thunderclap") when she married the noted scholar Liu Shipei in 1903. Despite this, she signed her published writings as He-Yin Zhen (何殷震) to include her mother's maiden name. She published a number of strong attacks in anarchist journals on male social power, arguing that society could not be free without the liberation of women.
Biography He-Yin was born into a prosperous Jiangsu family and received a good education in the Confucian classics, despite being female. She married Liu Shipei in 1903 and moved with him to Shanghai, where she continued her education at the Patriotic Women's School run by Cai Yuanpei.
She and Liu fled from the Manchu government to Tokyo in 1907, where she became an active member of a Chinese anarchist group and a major contributor to several journals. She contributed to Tianyi bao (Natural Justice), which published from 1907 to 1908, as well as to the Paris-based journal Xin Shiji (New Century or New Era), edited by the anarchist group led by Li Shizeng and Wu Zhihui. She and her husband both wrote under pen names, and many of her articles were misattributed to Liu.
He-Yin also founded the Women's Rights Recovery Association (Nüzi Fuquan Hui), which called for the use of force to end the male oppression of women, and advocates resistance to the ruling class and capitalists, while endorsing traditional values such as perseverance and respect for the larger community.
In 1909, after a falling-out with the conservative but strongly anti-Manchu scholar Zhang Taiyan, she and Liu returned to China to work with the Manchu government. After the 1911 Revolution, Liu worked with the new government and was a faculty member at Peking University.
The end of He-Yin's life remains uncertain. Following Liu's death from tuberculosis in 1919, there was a rumor that she became a Buddhist nun and ordained under the name Xiao Qi. However, there were also reports that she died of heartbreak or a mental disorder.
Philosophy
He-Yin had a different approach to the "Women Question" and women's oppression that were raised in China in the late 19th century. She believed that gender and social class were inseparable, and analyzed the misery endured by Chinese women for millennia from the perspective of labor. She distinguished herself from contemporary feminist thinkers in that she considered anarchy the one condition in which women could be fully liberated. Unlike many of her contemporaries, such as Liang Qichao, who viewed the liberation of women as a means to revive China, He-Yin made resolving women's oppression her ultimate goal.
He-Yin's feminism was also formed through her critiques of capitalism, especially of inhumanity. In her opinion, women would never be free if capitalism persisted. This line of critique provided a logical and powerful philosophy against mainstream western feminism of the time, which prioritized women's suffrage as the ultimate liberation of women. He-Yin criticized not only the social forms women were subjected to but also the political and cultural suppression that limited the freedom of women.
Labor Theory According to He-Yin, the organization of capital around the wage relation relied on less visible forms of social production, such as the unwaged reproductive labor in which women engaged. Approaching the concept of labor theory from a historical point of view, she argued that throughout history, Chinese women were relegated to closed quarters, such as the home and family, and prohibited from connecting with the outside world. They could not provide for themselves, which made them dependent on their husbands, and thus subject to their power and authority. She argued against male thinkers who denounced women for dependence on their husbands and their inferiority to men, criticizing their hypocrisy. She pointed out that since women were not allowed to leave their inner quarters, it was unthinkable for them to find a job to support themselves. Although lower-class women were part of the workforce, they were forced into labor because they had to subsidize their family income, thus whose labor was not viewed as their own production but something insignificant in a male-dominated society.
One popular proposal to solve the purported problem of women's lack of productivity was to call women into the labor force. However, He-Yin saw the flaws in this solution promulgated by male feminists of the time. She pointed out that under capitalism, women remained exploited even if they achieved professional independence in factories as workers or in offices as secretaries. In workplaces, women had to obey their superiors and follow orders since they depended on them for wages. The capitalist system put women into a situation where their work was undervalued: even if women received their full wages, the wages were still low to benefit the capitalists. Women would never rise up and earn a fair share in a capitalist society. He-Yin also observed that modern machinery reorganized technological knowledge that "Western skills are being transmitted as specializations in schools" but "poor women have no money for tuition." Ultimately, joining the labor force would not liberate women from their shackles, because regardless of their type of work, women's bodies and labor were still exploited.
He-Yin thus saw the solution for the "Women Question" as the liberation of the working class. Concerned with the commodification of women's bodies, she emphasized labor as an autonomous and free practice among humans, contrasted with its commodified model in classical and neoclassical political economy. Labor should represent both economic liberation and intellectual liberation, as women became free in their actions; however, in a capitalist society, women were commodified, with their bodies and labor being exploited for the benefit of others, over which they had no control. For He-Yin, labor was not only an economic concept but also a fundamental impact on human society. She refused the commoditization of labor, and insisted on seeing labor as a ontological concept rather than a mere economic concept. As long as a system of exploitation monopolized production, where women remained commodities dependent on society, "professional independence" remained "professional enslavement." Thus, to liberate women from their subjugation, He-Yin concluded that the capitalist system must be broken and a communal system must be established.
In her essay What Women Should Know About Communism, He-Yin described the communist society as one in which "the things required for eating, clothing, and daily use, will all be available in one place, and all, regardless of whether they be men or women, provided that they participate in work, will be able to take whatever they want, in whatever quantities, like collecting water from the ocean."
Anarchism
He-Yin also argued against any type of established government. He-Yin's anarchical ideas are evident in her criticism of the parliamentary governments of the west. She did not believe in the women's suffrage movement, although she praised suffragists for their courage. He-Yin cited the Norwegian women's suffrage movement as an example, arguing that since only women from a noble background or a wealthy family could become elected in the parliament, how could one ensure that the elected women would not act against their fellow women from the lower-class, and only act in favor of her fellow members of the upper-class?
He-Yin believed that electing women into office only added a third tier of suppression for working-class women, in addition to the oppression by men and by the government. For the same reason, she did not believe that leftist parties, such as the Social Democratic Party in the United States, would act in favor of the common people. Once they were in office, the governmental system would lure these leftist parties towards power and authority and neglect their fellow suppressed commoners, including working-class women. These leftist parties would diverge from their original goal of liberating the lower class and abolishing capitalism. He-Yin concluded that women's liberation could only be achieved through the action of the common people, without the intervention of the government. She provided as an example the working class in the United States who did not benefit even when the Social Democratic Party was elected, Let alone the women, who were barely represented in the party.
He-Yin did not agree with the agenda of many leftist parties or how they listed their end goals to be elected. She believed that without the government, men and women from the lower classes could focus on improving their livelihood instead of diverting their attention into other fields that interested the government and the upper classes.
Instead of endorsing participation in a society governed by bourgeois elections, He-Yin proposed an ideal communal society in which women and men were equal and shared the same responsibilities and production. Her ideal society would be similar to a socialist or communist country in the 21st century, but without a central government. In this ideal society, children would be brought up in "public child care facilities," therefore freeing women of their motherly duties and leveling the playing field for women do that they could assume responsibility equal to men. He-Yin also proposed that if men and women were raised and treated equally, and the responsibility assumed by both genders was equal as well, then the distinction between "men" and "women" would become unnecessary. Hence, neither men nor women would be oppressed by their duties. He-Yin attempted to rebuild a system where women could actively participate in society and have real power to decide their future. Her solution to gender inequality and the oppression of women was to liberate women from any form of oppression, including oppression by an established governmental system, regardless of its ideology.
Some recent scholars argue that He-Yin's anarcho-feminist arguments should not be separated from her political life in Tokyo, and modern portrayals of He-Yin as a pure anarcho-feminist could oversimplify her later political commitments and overlook her unstable political circumstances at the time. According to Deng, He-Yin's anarcho-feminist writings emerged mainly during a brief period, 1907-1908, when she and her husband Liu Shipei left the Revolutionary Alliance in China and joined socialist-anarchist communities in Japan. However, both He-Yin and her partner later abandoned anarchism and were viewed by contemporary revolutionists as counter-revolutionary. Deng argues that He-Yin's anarcho-feminist ideology could be shaped by the year she spent with the Tokyo socialist groups as well as the conflicts between the Revolutionary Alliance and the broader crisis of Qing politics. Thus, Deng believes that rather than viewing He-Yin as a feminist with lifelong commitments to anarchism, it is important to situate her thought within the unstable political environment of the late Qing dynasty.
Feminism