So just who is the real sissy, then?

Gender roles are changing but prejudice persists, even in the privacy of a household and among the highly educated.

Lin Shaohua, a noted translator of Japanese literature, gave a lecture to a class of master of public administration students the other day. In the question-and-answer session, a student asked him how he managed his time well enough to be so prolific in translation and writing, on top of his job as a university teacher. Lin said the trick is in "not doing any household chores".

As he described it in his microblog, the male students all laughed while the women kept silent. So he turned to the latter and said the wear and tear on men of cleaning pots and pans would remove their manliness and ambitions, turning them into effeminate creatures, at the same time turning women into tomboys.