National Shame

Using the Dalian Polytechnic case—expelling a woman for sex with a foreigner—the essay argues that under patriarchal nationalism the nation’s frontier is drawn on women’s bodies: either “national assets” to be protected or “national shame” to be policed. Moral panic is algorithmically weaponized; a named woman is stripped of agency and reduced to bare life. The piece contends that feminism is fundamentally incompatible with nationalism, urging a refusal of the state’s claim over bodies and a dismantling of patriarchy—up to the radical gesture of “claiming national shame” to break the narrative.