When Judy* saw the wave of #MeToo accusations filling her news feeds, her first thought was “finally”. She had long hoped that Taiwan would join the pushback against sexual harassment and abuse that first exploded overseas half a decade ago.
“Me and lots of my friends have faced sexual harassment, and even worse situations before,” Judy tells the Guardian in Taipei. “Finally we started to have some focus on this topic.”
She lists the questions she’s fielded since coming forward: What were you wearing? Why didn’t you object? But is your boss handsome?
“I’m already vulnerable and sad and hurt, and I have to answer your questions,” she says.
The young Taipei resident says she was repeatedly sexually harassed by the owner of the company she used to work at, including him groping her under the table at an overseas business dinner.
“I felt so vulnerable at the moment. Before it happened I thought I could totally stand up for myself, but when it happened I couldn’t,” she says.
When she got home she quit, but didn’t make a complaint or tell her parents. Her mother had warned her as a teenager to expect workplace harassment, but she “should just smile and ignore it and try to get away from it”.
Then in late May, a former staffer in the ruling Democratic Progressive party (DPP) named Chen Chien-jou accused a film director working with the party of having groped and harassed her in 2018, and the head of the party’s women’s affairs department of having dismissed her claims.
Chen’s post went viral overnight, prompting hundreds of other complaints and started a national reckoning over harassment in Taiwan, though activists say generational divides and entrenched social expectations still threaten to hold it back
Perhaps motivated by a forthcoming election, Chen’s post prompted two separate apologies from Taiwan’s president, Tsai Ing-wen, an internal investigation which found Chen’s complaint was mishandled, and several party resignations, which appears to have encouraged other victims to come forward, prompting more investigations and resignations in the DPP and in other parties.
Chen has said she was inspired to share her allegations by Wave Makers, a Taiwanese Netflix series following the fictional campaign team of a presidential election, with a core plot line centring on sexual harassment. Her post quoted one character telling a victim: “Let’s not just let this go.” It has become a rallying cry in Taiwan.
“I knew that if this first story could be handled well, then more people will find the courage to come forward as well with their stories,” Chen later told the China Project. So the first case really is the key if the hope is for there to be a movement.”
More than 150 others – mostly women but also some men – have since come forward with allegations against high-profile political figures, celebrities, academics and lauded pro-democracy activists. The fallout has been messy, with denials, counteraccusations, and defamation suits against accusers. But there has been real change.
Taiwan criminalised sexual harassment only in 2009. Last week Taiwan’s parliament amended the three relevant laws (separately governing workplaces, schools, and elsewhere), to introduce harsher penalties, lengthen reporting periods, and close loopholes. The workplace law was also amended to define “sexual harassment with an abuse of power”.
The amendments were welcomed, but observers worry they don’t go far enough to address abuse and harassment in religious organisations and cram schools, and warn Taiwan also needs cultural change.
“The amendments will not mark the end of the improvement of laws and policies but a starting point, we hope,” says Dr Tingyu Kang, from National Chengchi University’s journalism department.
“Laws are not the only way that shapes people’s behaviours,” Kang says. Despite its progressive reputation “Taiwan, like most other countries, is still influenced by patriarchal norms and misogyny
“Online misogyny has been on the rise in Taiwan over the past decade, with news articles on sexual harassment or rape often attracting sarcastic comments and victim-blaming.”
Refusing to stay quiet
Government surveys this year revealed almost 80% of women who say they’ve been harassed in the workplace choose not to report it. Sexual harassment has been accepted quietly for so long that it has its own colloquial term. It is referred to as chi doufu or “eating tofu”, because of a historical association with women being the primary sellers of tofu, and frequently subject to harassment by male customers.
Wang Yueh-Hao, the chief executive of the Garden of Hope Foundation which helps victims of gender-based violence says this is because of distrust in the justice system, but Taiwan also has strong traditional expectations that people defer to elders and those in senior positions.
Last week Taiwanese writer and comedian, Vickie Wang, said this was being exploited, declaring in a widely shared opinion piece that “Women in Taiwan Are Tired of Being Nice”. “In spite of all of Taiwan’s progress, our society remains patriarchal and hierarchical,” Wang wrote for the New York Times. “People are expected to respect and yield to their elders and superiors – in short, the powers that be.”
Learning from the wrong places
Taiwanese journalist Hui-chen Fang says the movement and the government’s response are a “wake-up call” to older men who “weren’t taught to respect boundaries”.
Fang posted her own #MeToo allegations in June, against a high-profile media executive, who has denied the claims. Overwhelmed and isolated by the media coverage of herself, Fang began collecting and publishing other #MeToo stories. Women began asking her directly to post their stories – ranging from mild harassment to accusations of rape – anonymously.
“They were afraid of the men who did that to them,” she says. “These guys have absolute power over your career.”
“But one of the slogans of Taiwan’s #MeToo movement is ‘I don’t want you to be alone’, so they shared their stories.”
On a Saturday night in Taipei’s central Daan park, celebrities and activists gathered for a #MeToo rally and concert. Attenders wrote messages on cards, tying them to a wire fence. Several carry variations of “I don’t want you to be alone.”
A group of Taiwanese friends in their 20s tell the Guardian they’re supportive of the movement but aren’t optimistic about changes to come. Wave Makers was realistic about Taiwanese society, they say – until it depicted actual consequences for the perpetrators.
As well as social expectations like chi doufu and generational differences between today’s youth and older people who grew up during four decades of martial law, the group also say that inadequate sex and consent education for their own age group has contributed to the problem.
“We learn a lot of things from the wrong places,” says Chia-Mei Liao, citing mainstream and adult films. “I think some people just really don’t know how to act the right way.”
They later discuss “how people in other countries figure out boundaries”, and if it should be schools or parents teaching. “Can we take the lessons from them and help the movement?”
Garden Of Hope’s Wang is cautiously optimistic, and hopes the people of Taiwan will “not just let this go”.
The organisation has seen a 20-fold increase in calls for assistance since May.
“In the past they [victims] tended to believe they were alone in these situations, they didn’t know until now there were so many victims like them,” she says. “This movement has changed the values of Taiwanese people.”
* Name has been changed
Additional research by Tzu Wei Liu
• This article was amended on 9 August 2023. An earlier version said that the meaning of chi doufu or “eating tofu” was to stay quiet about sexual harassment, when it fact it means the sexual harassment itself.
