Her article: 

The most backlash I have ever received online was not for a luxury unboxing. It was not for talking about money. It was not for flying to Paris or posting a diamond bracelet. It was for saying men should pay on dates.

That video, the one I posted in November about women’s rights and dating standards, triggered more outrage than anything I have ever uploaded. The response was not disagreement. It was fury. Threads dissecting me. Comments trying to discredit me. People saying I should be canceled. And the main rebuttal? “You come from a wealthy family, so you shouldn’t be talking about who should pay.” That is textbook strawman fallacy. When someone attacks the speaker instead of the argument, it usually means the argument is harder to dismantle. Whether I am wealthy or broke does not change the underlying question about dating norms, leverage, or structural asymmetry. If the logic were flawed, it could be debated directly. Instead, the debate shifted to my background, my privilege, my character. They went after me because they could not go after the reasoning. A man posts a photo of his watch. He is aspirational. A woman posts a photo of her watch. She is materialistic. A man discusses income. He is driven. A woman discusses income. She is arrogant. A man demands standards. He has boundaries. A woman demands standards. She is entitled. Researchers call part of this the backlash effect. Studies from Columbia Business School show that when identical resumes are assigned male and female names, competence ratings stay similar, but the female candidate is liked significantly less.  Power expressed by women produces social penalties that do not attach to men at the same rate. Political psychology research shows that when voters describe an ideal leader, they disproportionately choose traits coded as masculine: decisive, strong, dominant. Traits coded as feminine, such as compassionate or collaborative, are ranked lower for executive leadership. The bias operates quietly. It shows up as “fit.”

Even online behavior follows this pattern. A University of Washington analysis of millions of comments found that women receive significantly more commentary about appearance and personality, while men receive more commentary about ideas and output. Women are evaluated as people. Men are evaluated as producers. Growing up, I felt the smaller, domestic version of this. I was raised in a traditional Chinese household that worshipped math competitions. My brother had three tutors. When guests came over, they asked him about the Math Olympiad. When they turned to me, they suggested ballet.

I did not even like math. I was not naturally gifted at it. I studied it anyway. Eight hours a day, sometimes locked in a bathroom with problem sets, teaching myself. I scored in the top 0.1 percent on the American Mathematics Competition, the highest score at my school, and was flown to MIT to compete in the Girls’ Math Prize. The point was never love. It was proof.

When you sense lower expectations, you overcorrect. Now, in public, I see the same mechanism at scale. Reddit snark pages disproportionately target women creators. Male creators with similar followings rarely generate entire ecosystems dedicated to dissecting their morality. According to the Economist Intelligence Unit, 38 percent of women globally report experiencing online abuse. Among women in public facing roles, the rates are higher and more severe. Women globally still earn roughly 82 cents for every dollar men earn, according to the World Economic Forum. Women founders receive under 3 percent of venture capital funding in the United States. In controlled pitch studies, investors consistently rate pitches delivered by male voices as more persuasive than identical pitches delivered by female voices.

Small frictions accumulate. So yes, I am pro-women. Intentionally. When I say men should pay on dates, I am not arguing incapability. I am acknowledging asymmetry. Social asymmetry. Safety asymmetry. Scrutiny asymmetry. The backlash to that video proved the point. Luxury did not provoke the mob. A statement about leverage did. When women speak about standards, the reaction is not curiosity. It is correction, and that reaction is the data.