Yang: foolish advice
She claims to have an IQ of 145. And she reckons there’s no one cleverer or better-looking than her, because “those prettier than me aren’t as smart, and those smarter than me aren’t as pretty”.
Yang Bingyang, better known by her online pseudonym Ayawawa, dishes out relationship advice to her legions of fans (she has 3 millions followers on Sina Weibo, most of whom are female).
Fee-paying students hear at seminars how “women should never come across as too career-minded” if they want to find a husband.
Another of her theories is that gender inequality doesn’t exist. In fact, instead of feeling disadvantaged, Yang believes women should leverage the “gender advantages” of their looks and personalities to win love and financial support from men.
In another piece of advice, Yang has warned that women who think too highly of themselves are “playing with fire”.
Her critics retort that she herself has been playing with fire. Last week Yang got into hot water by asking her students to imagine the Chinese ‘comfort women’ who were forced to provide sexual services to the Japanese army during the Second World War. She then used these ‘comfort women’ as an argument for female gender advantage.
“Do you think they are really miserable? Have you thought of the men during that period of time? Many of them were shot dead but those women survived,” she was quoted as saying at a workshop. “So you see, girls still have gender advantages during wartime. As long as you can exploit the advantages based on your gender, the benefits are beyond measure.”
The media was incredulous at the comments. “Comfort women are victims of the war. The amount of pain – both physical and mental – they suffered is no less than the fighters who fought on the battlefield. So, yes, they survived the war. But this is not the kind of experience they would feel grateful for,” China Youth Daily thundered.
Yang went into damage control mode, apologising for what she called “an inexcusable mistake”.
“I was not aware that all human beings are victims of wars, regardless of gender,” she wrote on her personal weibo. “I’ve been blogging about relationships for a long time and I knew little about politics and military affairs. That’s why I made such a stupid mistake.”
Her apology was not enough for many netizens and a day later, Sina Weibo announced that Yang’s account would be suspended for six months.
“Just six months? You should never let her speak again,” one of her critics complained.
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