Today’s class discussion revolved mostly around the short stories in The Bridegroom, and the topic of reputation when it comes to gender. Even though, these short stories are fictional they are really good to debate on the messages hidden in them. Furthermore, in the short story, “Broken,” it brings up how women are treated when it comes to the importance of someone’s reputation, based on the environment.
For example, in “Broken,” it leaned towards keeping a mans reputation and slut-shaming a woman for being apart of adultery. On this matter, after Benchou had an affair on his wife with a woman named Tingting and got caught, both faced consequences. Benchou’s wife filed for divorce and he got sent to work at some cargo service train station, everyone forgot about him basically but not Tingting. was not forgotten. Later on, Manjin went to the theaters, and as he was walking in he saw Tingting enter the same theater. Manjin was struck by surprise when a woman, whose face he could not see, put his hand on her thigh then things escalated from there. The woman ran away in a hurry and Manjin chased after her and saw a woman standing in the lobby, he went to go hug her and saying, “Honey, lets do that again.” The woman turned around in fear and screamed for help, surrounding men became chasing after Manjin. Fast forward to the interrogation with Manjin, Bofan (his boss) and three other men questioned why Manjin did that to the woman. Solving the misunderstanding, Manjin was off the hook with not meaning to grab that woman, however, officers still didn’t believe what happened to him in the story. Officer Shen leaned over to Manjin and said a few things but the one that hit hard was, “Even if you don’t go to jail, your political life will be over if you can’t clear your name.”Manjin then mentioned he saw Tinting there… this is where it erupted. Bofan kept saying how she was must have gone back to seducing men and still slut-shamed her. Searching Tingting’s apartment they found a handkerchief and since Manjin mentioned one in his story, they just said it was her because she was involved with adultery in the past. Even though, the woman who did that with Manjin could not of been her but Bofan pushed it was her just because of what she was involved in, in the past and everyone believed him.
This shows how someone’s reputation in business is more important to defend and direct the fault on someone else than to own up to their own guilt. This can still be seen today in society, people in the workforce spread rumors and give labels, so when the time comes everyone will have those labels in their mind when coming to a conclusion on a matter. Which makes it unfair for someone becoming the perpetrator when they really are the victim at fault.