"Do not approach men. You will be miserable.": Feminist humor in "misandry" memes on Chinese microblogging.

This study investigates a type of internet memes, namely, "misandry memes," which often exhibit critical evaluations of heterosexual males and traditional masculinity in China. Drawing on the notion of feminist humor, we examine how "misandry" memes assemble semiotic resources for humorous effect, reveal perceived sexist realities, and disrupt dominant gender ideologies. Data were collected through keyword searches on the most visited microblogging site in China, i.e., Weibo, totaling a dataset of 63 memes. A multimodal analysis identified seven themes emerging from the data, including mystification of males, jocular abuse against males, reversal of gender ethics, parody of popular stereotypes of males, demonstration of feminine superiority, satire of males' genitalia, and sexual objectification of males. The findings demonstrate that misandry memes in our dataset playfully challenge traditional gender ideologies that privilege men over women via positioning women in the social hierarchies of power, while simultaneously unsettling heterosexual males' privilege, supremacy, and hegemony in a humorous discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]