When I first fully understood the term feminism, I was in my first year of high school. When one of my friends told me she is a feminist and hopes the world has more and more feminists. Feminist, a word that I didn’t hear very often.

“What do you mean by a feminist?” I asked her.

 “A person who supports women’s rights and the equality between genders,” she answers. 

Since I don’t go to the same school as all my three best friends, we formed a group chat to stay connected with each other, share interesting things that happen in school, and anything we want to share. It is a place where we share almost all of our days and feelings, we also use it to debate topics that we have different opinions on, sometimes the topic is based on the daily news and tops on trending.

I wake up and check my clock for the time, 7 am. It is a Sunday, which is cold and cloudy as other usual winter days. I feel the coldness in the air, and need to put a long sleeve coat on to protect myself from the freezing air. My plan for the weekend is to sleep till 10 am and get some good rest, but my schedule for myself didn't work out. I get my phone from the table and start to check my messages from friends and other notifications from all kinds of apps. The cloudy weather made my room even darker with my closed curtains, blocking the very little light from outside. Waking up in a room with not much sunlight coming through makes me have a morning depressed mood. 

 Clicking into WeChat is the first thing I do every day I wake up. I see a lot of messages in my best friend's group chat. I wonder why my friend wakes up so early and sends so many messages to the chat group. 

“She’s probably staying up overnight again, why are there so many messages? Maybe something important will happen.” I think in my mind.

Then I entered the group chat to ask her why. Before I even type out my wondering, I see Sun say “ Go check on Weibo, the number 1 topic.”

I bring my confusion with me to Weibo (a platform just like Twitter) and try to find out what Sun is talking about, then I see the number 1 topic “Xuzhou Chained Woman, Forced to Give Birth to Eight Children.” This shocks me, a lot. I’m shocked that in the 21st century, a woman is chained. I started to search more about the chained woman news, and soon I realized a lot of women are the victims of human trafficking.

The trend brings me back to a day in my memory, my 6th-grade summer. Visiting my family in China. My hometown is a small village. Back to my hometown excites me since there is a great change and I want to go out and check out everything. But my grandpa reminds me not to go out when it is very dark outside, don’t go far, don’t go out alone if I can. I asked him why, and he told me that there is human tracking going on, and young girls are most likely to be their target. “They might murder you and sell your organs,” Grandpa said to me. This sentence is the most unforgettable part of the conversation. I was scared of human traffickers after this conversation.

I found the interview on the chained woman’s family and one of the family members replied to the question of why the woman is chained. “We locked her up because she has some mental issues and she hurts others, to avoid injury from happening, we need to put a chain on her for safety.” Then, the news reporter goes to check on the chained woman. The room that the chained woman is in is a small room with no windows, the opening door by the new reporters brings a little light to the room. This allows me to clearly see the chained woman’s facial expression from the interview video. I go back to WeChat and share with my friends what I find. I say “ They put a chain on her just because of her mental issues, that’s ridiculous. How can they treat a human being like an animal, the news makes me so mad.”

 “Many women are forced to marry and give birth. Also, 80% of human trafficking victims are women and children, and most women are sex trafficked.” Sun replies. 

     Sun’s words give me a brand new view, I never know that women make up a large percentage of trafficking.

  “Before today, I thought there were fewer women trafficking than years ago because the current world isn't a feudal society like before.” I sent in the chat. 

Sun replies “Because most times, women trafficking are happening in countryside areas where there is no internet, no access to the world, and many won’t be reported. Without the report on the news, we never know what is happening to those poor women.” 

“Is there any way that we can help those victims?” 

The only thing on my mind is that I need to take some action and give some support to those victims. who are separated from their families for years, abused by traffickers, raped, and forced to give birth by the “buyers” who buy those victims for some reason.  There are several kinds of abuse that victims experience.  In physical abuse, victims are often beaten, raped, and sexually abused. There is also psychological abuse, threatening victims, and cutting the connection with the outside world. Sun disappeared and didn’t reply to me. I decided to have my breakfast while scrolling through social media to find more information, waiting for her answers. Make coffee for my breakfast, with dark-colored liquid inside the cup. A warm and herbaceous smell floated out. A slip of caffeine keeps my head clear. Sourness and bitterness inside my mouth.

Time flows fast, it is noontime. With the shift from morning to noon, I finally receive sunlight falling on my face, which makes me want to close my eyes to escape the shininess that uncomforts my eyes. The notification sound steals my attention away from  hiding from sunlight.“A way that I always use is to share the news and let more and more people know about it, when it is well-known, the government will give more attention to it. This is a way we can help them receive justice” 

After her answer, I started reposting the post about the chained woman to my account. Even sometimes my repost and the original post get deleted, and I will find the new one to repost again. To spread the news is my goal. I start to ask most of my friends “Did you ever hear about the chained woman? Do you know how many women each year have been kidnapped and forced into labor” If they reply no, I would explain the details to them. Speaking up for victims can be a small help to them but it is better than staying silent, being a bystander to those social injustices, and letting those tragedies happen again and again. Most of the time, human traffickers escape imprisonment and live their happy lives with the wealth they get from selling those victims. But for those women that are victims of human trafficking, they have their whole life ruined, spending time that's worse than imprisonment. Sometimes, some victims run away and go back home, but their shadow of life also follows them back home and continues to torture them mentally. “她是她 她是你 她是我” is a phrase that I saw on one of the posts, I’m not just speaking up for the victims, but also myself and others who might have the unfortunate chance to be in this kind of situation in the future.