Weaponizing Intimacy: Emotional Proxy Repression against Feminist Activists in China

This article examines how the Chinese party-state employs "Emotional Proxy Repression" (EPR)—a strategy that weaponizes intimate family relationships to suppress feminist activism without direct state violence. Drawing on in-depth interviews with twenty-five Chinese feminist activists conducted between 2013 and 2023, I demonstrate how authorities transform parents and family members into unwilling agents of political discipline by exploiting cultural norms of filial piety, gendered expectations, and emotional bonds. The analysis reveals EPR operates through four interconnected mechanisms: state orchestration of family pressure, weaponization of parental fear, deployment of cultural scripts legitimating intervention, and creation of sustained emotional coercion. EPR proves particularly effective against young, unmarried, economically precarious women whose intersectional vulnerabilities—gender, age, sexuality, class—make them susceptible to familial control. The consequences include profound betrayal trauma, enforced silence, withdrawal from activism, and collective movement deterioration. This study contributes to scholarship on authoritarian adaptation, Violence Against Women in Politics, and affective dimensions of political control by revealing how contemporary authoritarianism displaces repression into intimate spaces, making resistance feel like familial betrayal rather than political courage.