Lü Pin
来自China Digital Space
Lǚ Pín | 吕频
Lü Pin (b.1972) is a feminist activist currently based in the United States. She is best known for creating Feminist Voices, a new media platform dedicated to women’s issues and advocacy.
Lü Pin was born in Shandong Province. After attending Shandong University for her bachelor’s and master’s degrees, she joined China Women's News (中国妇女报), a newspaper published by the All-China Women's Federation. In 1995, she reported on the U.N. World Conference on Women in Beijing, a landmark event for women’s rights. The following year, Lü started Gender Watch China (妇女传媒监测网络), a non-profit media platform dedicated to addressing gender discrimination in news reporting. In 2003, Lü held public office as a deputy county chief in Gansu Province before resigning to become a full-time freelance journalist.
In 2010, Gender Watch China started a Weibo account which later became known as Feminist Voices (女权之声), which quickly accumulated followers. In 2012, Lü Pin and other activists launched a series of protests to advocate for gender equality. On the eve of International Women’s Day in 2015, Chinese authorities detained five feminist activists for organizing anti-sexual harassment campaigns. Lü Pin, attending a conference in the United States at the time, was unable to return to China. She has been living in the United States ever since, where she continues to advocate for women’s rights.
The social media accounts of Feminist Voices were temporarily suspended in February 2017, after they published a translation of an article calling for a Women's Strike in the U.S. In early 2018, Feminist Voices became one of the leading media platforms chronicling the #MeToo movement, and Lü Pin herself wrote about the origins and significance of the movement. That March, the platform was permanently shut down on Weibo and WeChat.
In April 2021, Lü Pin’s personal Weibo account was shut down following a cyberbullying campaign targeting feminist activists.
