Welcome to Sisyphus Highway: In Depth.

In the previous episode, we discussed how media change affects the spread of rumor and how platform mechanisms alter an individual’s position within public opinion.

Here we continue examining the forces behind rumor, focusing on gender.

Many of the most widespread rumors about Barbie Hsu concerned marriage, property, and love: who took and who gave, who was a “gold digger,” and which former husband was “devoted.”Even when a woman possesses greater financial means and social resources, public opinion still often casts her as dependent, grasping, and morally indebted.

Meanwhile, romantic narratives of the “wife-chasing crematorium”—in which a man cruelly loses his partner and then desperately pursues her—continually reinterpret what has already happened:a man’s harm can be covered over by later regret and devotion, while the harm a woman suffered becomes proof that the love was real. Such narratives shape our understanding of relationships and perpetuate different standards for men and women.

Beginning with property disputes in intimate relationships and fantasies of romantic love, this episode discusses how rumors about women repeatedly gain belief and circulation through traditional gender narratives.

 

- Why women are always cast as the ones “taking” property

- The “wife-chasing crematorium”: a millennium-old cultural fetish

- The “wife-burying crematorium”: how the “madwoman” narrative is completed

- Rethinking sexual rumors: silence is no longer the best defense

- What prevents women targeted by rumor from speaking for themselves?

- From reality to film and television, why can women trapped in sexual rumors only “prove their resolve through death”?

 

- The Death of an Entertainment Reporter (television drama)

- Xue Jing, The Empire of Rouge: Online Romance Novels and the Politics of Women’s Discourse (book)

- Dan Ariely, Misbelief: What Makes Rational People Believe Irrational Things (book)