Talking back from the ‘grassroots’: A subaltern feminist counterpublic and the challenge to the ‘leftover women’ discourse on Bilibili

Abstract

This paper examines the formation and suppression of a digital feminist counterpublic through the case of Wang Huiling, a rare and outspoken content creator whose critiques of patriarchal marriage norms foreground the experiences of rural and working-class women in China. While digital feminist activism has gained increased visibility in recent years, it continues to prioritize urban, educated, and middle-class perspectives – leaving women from marginalized socio-economic backgrounds largely excluded from feminist discourses and representations. Focusing on Bilibili.com, this study analyzes how Wang challenges the dominant ‘leftover women’ discourse from a subaltern perspective, and how the platform’s distinctive bullet comment (弹幕) feature facilitates networked engagement that amplifies this counterpublic’s voice. Yet, the same technological infrastructure that enables feminist expression also facilitates a distributed network of control, where platform governance, state censorship, and participatory surveillance converge. Wang’s intersectional feminist critique experiences intensified scrutiny and precarity under Billibili’s logic of bidirectional governance, culminating in the total erasure of this counterpublic.