Also: if children are nearby or you are somewhere unsuitable for this episode, please use headphones or listen at another time.

In the Dalian Polytechnic University notice incident, a woman’s private conduct was circulated without permission and swiftly placed within debates about the “university’s reputation” and “national dignity.” Yet when a man is suspected of breaking the law, threatening someone, or harassing them, the public seldom asks whether he has harmed the honor of his school, employer, or country.

This cultural logic persists in film and television. From The Flowers of War to City of Life and Death, women are placed at the visual and emotional center while deprived of a true subject position as human beings.

Beginning with the Dalian Polytechnic University incident, we trace how women’s bodies were incorporated into the orders of family, state, and nation. We revisit familiar historical narratives and cinematic images to ask:How are women and their bodies turned into symbols within grand national narratives? When burdened with too much symbolism, how much possibility remains for women to be seen as people?

 

- The Dalian Polytechnic University notice: why must women always answer for collective honor?

- From Biographies of Exemplary Women to Sex, Law, and Society in Late Imperial China: how was female chastity incorporated into family and state order?

- Why is the nation imagined as a mother rather than a father? Why are state and nation feminized?

- From motherhood to national duty: how are women required to serve a grand national narrative?

- War, occupation, and reckoning: why are women’s bodies always treated as proof of national victory or defeat?

- The Flowers of War: when women are both national symbols and bodies to be watched

- Maiden China: how did female students become a shared projection of progress, purity, and male desire?