Enhancing men's morals
Fang Gang, the sexology professor, said he started thinking about starting the class more than a year ago. He and other White Ribbon volunteers started sifting through brochures used by women's rights and support groups abroad to develop their curriculum and activities.
There have been reports about "women's morals" classes in China in the past, and such classes were widely criticized for their attempt to make women docile and dependent on men.
In past interviews, women who attended such classes told the Global Times they were told by the instructors that "men should conquer the world, but women can conquer a man, that's enough," "divorce can make your children turn into criminals," or "women should learn how to cook, sew, arrange flowers and write calligraphy."
Fang Gang wanted to do something different, to train Chinese men to be good husbands and fathers, things he believes there are not enough of today.
His actions correspond with the global trend towards gender equality and with the Chinese leadership's calls to improve women's rights. Last September, UN Women launched the HeForShe campaign dedicated to gender equality and the empowerment of women, asking men to "commit to taking action against gender discrimination and violence."
When the campaign came to China in April, hundreds of students signed declarations saying that they are committed to gender equality at an event held at the prestigious Tsinghua University, attended by academics and senior Chinese officials.
Gender equality is also a hot topic on the Internet. Starting from last year, a new phrase - "straight man cancer" - spread online. The phrase describes chauvinistic men who believe that a woman should be demure, domesticated, and have no other goal in life than to serve men.
People started describing online their ex-boyfriends, fathers, or coworkers who fit this definition. During the Spring Festival this year, when a comedy show hinted women should make themselves "goddesses" instead of "behaving like dudes," netizens were furious. Some described this Internet phenomenon as a wave of feminist awakening.
But netizens make up only a small part of the population. When one looks at the local level, one finds the concept of gender equality is still too abstract for many people to understand.
Li confessed that when he was hitting his wife, he hadn't thought about her as a separate individual, and it didn't occur to him that she had certain rights.
Back then, he and his wife were living in a village and domestic violence was not unusual in their community. He has friends who have slapped their wives in public because of something they said.
Li also grew up in that kind of household. Even though he hadn't witnessed it, he knew his grandfather often beat his grandmother, and the atmosphere in his house was always tense. Family members didn't know how to effectively communicate with one another and often lashed out verbally.
Long way to go
He remembers that after his high school graduation, he didn't want to go to college, and his father said to him, "If you go on like this, one of these days you'll get shot dead by the police."
"These words had left a scar on me," he said. "It's not so easy to forget."
Li found what he wanted in the class. There was a discussion on "effective communication," which taught him about how a couple should sense each other's needs and tend to one another's moods when communicating, instead of focusing on themselves. He said he wish he knew about this sooner, but it's not too late to learn.
The final verdict in their divorce came on Monday. Li's wife made some compromises and the court ruled Li will raise their son. Li agreed his wife can also take his son for around a third of the time and hopes she visit him often, because "a boy should have the love of his mother."
The fact remains that only a small percentage of men have sufficient awareness of the problems common in China to take this kind of class. In 2014, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development conducted a poll on how much time men in 29 countries spend on household chores, and Chinese men ranked fifth from the bottom, only doing 48 minutes per day.
Traces of these attitudes can also be seen from comments on Fang's Weibo, after he'd announced his class. Some replied, "Why would men need to take this class? They just need to hand in all their money to the women."
But that doesn't stop people like Li and Wang from enjoying what they learned. They may have been clumsy during the class and slow to understand the concepts discussed, but it is a start. Li said he will talk on his local radio station about stopping domestic violence and supporting women's rights.
Wang hopes sitting through the class will make him more popular on the marriage market. The 24-year-old said he had a girlfriend for three months but that they then broke up because he "wasn't a good enough listener."
"In the past, when she complained, I always tried to offer her solutions, then I'd get confused about why she was complaining about the same issues over and over again," he said. "But I was wrong, all she wanted was somebody to listen and comfort her."
