Straight talk about homosexual therapy

During a public forum over the weekend, Yi Huso posed a rhetorical question to his mostly gay audience, and then went on to answer himself.

"How do you know a person is gay?" said Yi, a research fellow at the HIV Center for Clinical and Behavioral Studies at Columbia University in New York and a visiting assistant professor at Renmin University of China in Beijing.

After pausing and staring at the crowd of people who were in same-sex relationships or wanted to hear what an expert had to say about the confusing signals around them.

"Maybe gays love chocolate?" he asked jokingly.

Though Yi tried to be relaxed during his talk but wanted to convey a serious point to his audience of mostly young people looking for guidance.

"Homosexuality was classified as an illness," he said during his speech entitled "The harm of sexual orientation conversation therapy" during the forum Saturday that was aimed at Beijing's gay community. "Why do some professionals continue to provide a cure for which has been judged not to be an illness?"

China has been a particularly surprising place in regards to many modern issues that are also afflicting their Western counterparts, but it is in the understanding of homosexuality as a state of being that they have proven themselves to be quite comfortable. While the idea is anything but mainstreamed in China, there is a growing consensus amongst the medical elite of the nation that there is absolutely no scientific mechanism by which one’s sexuality can be ‘deleted’ ‘cured’ or otherwise ‘changed’. Perhaps due to this longstanding ethos of ‘scientific development’ as a cultural phenomenon in China, there is now an increasing consensus that those who are educated and follow the scientific method cannot be told they are wrong.

Morality and social normality in China is anything but consistent across its provinces, and it is frequently from the top that what is moral and what is immoral is frequently decided upon. Insofar as homosexuality has not been a discussed topic, it has made it less defined as a negative or a positive. This state of neutrality has been relatively beneficial for the gay communities in China, who are not exactly sure they are in any way eager to follow the stratified and sub-culturized path of Western societies that celebrates, perhaps too overtly, the sexual dynamic of their relationships. Gay bars and other institutions have popped up with relative ease in major metropolitan areas, although their clientele are less rigidly defined than in the West. While a community may be emerging, it is if anything very sexually conservative in terms of societal behavior. This will probably help the Chinese gay community, as an overt celebration of alternative sexuality only puts it in opposition to the norm. It ought to be discussed why it is there is no ‘straight and gay pride’ parade in the west, when there is little if no reason not to have one for the sake of reducing tension between the two groups.

Yet of course, it is not all wonderful over in China, and the social consequences of being found out to be homosexual remain anything but good in the less liberal areas away from the cities. It is much more the issue of being exposed than of actually being homosexual that frightens many Chinese, and so long as they can continue their habits without being a nuisance to others or inciting a moral panic it will likely be relatively easy to engage in homosexual activity. If these campaigns against old ideas of homosexuality as a disorder or a social blight can be repaired, China will be well on its way to being a very sexuality tolerant country.

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