About this Event
Sociologist Xinling Li talks on Taiwan’s #MeToo movement, tracing its emergence from the Netflix series Wave Makers and its impact on survivor empowerment.
Li's new book, Wave Makers and the Rise of #MeToo in Taiwan, demonstrates how fictional storytelling mobilized real survivors and then tracks how the movement spread—and met its limits—through Taiwanese social media. It further examines cultural obstacles to reporting sexual harassment and assault in Taiwan and shows how narrative empathy and parasocial contact in the show helped challenge and overturn these obstacles.
About the Speaker
Xinling Li is a writer, academic consultant, and independent researcher based in New York City. He received his PhD in Sociology from the University of Cambridge and subsequently served as an Associate Professor of Sociology at Southwestern University of Finance and Economics in Chengdu, China, from 2016 to 2022. His research has appeared in academic journals including Chinese Sociological Review and The International Journal of Taiwan Studies.
Li is the author of Black Masculinity and Hip-Hop Music: Black Gay Men Who Rap, published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2019, and Wave Makers and the Rise of #MeToo: Media, Empathy, and Digital Testimony, published by Anthem Press in 2026. His work explores questions of culture, identity, media, sexuality, and contemporary social change.
Why are we charging?
YCW is a volunteer-run initiative depending on the grace of the venues we work with to host our events. Our free events have had completely wild attrition rates ranging from 30% to nearly 80% no shows. This makes it extremely hard for us to both give venues the heads up as to how much space we need, and to know how many volunteers we need to staff them.
We DON'T want to earn money from you, and so the ticket will get you something commensurate in value (in this case, drinks & snacks). But we would like to nudge you to come if you sign up.
Interested in contacting us day of? Join our WhatsApp community through this link.
Event venue & nearby stays
Manhattan Mandarin, 153 East 70th Street, New York, United States
Concerts, fests, parties, meetups — all the happenings, one place.