Jing Wu. Journal of Gay & Lesbian Psychotherapy. Volume 7, Issue 1-2. 2003.
The Ancient Time
In general, the ancient Chinese had rather open and accepting views of human sexuality until the 13th century. Today, many historical references available indicate that homosexuality was wide-spread, recognized and fairly tolerated, although not fully accepted, in ancient China (Ruan, 1991; Samshasha, 1997; Chou, 1997). In the last 20 years, gay activists and sympathetic scholars have presented such materials to challenge a modern, mainstream belief that previous societies in China did not have homosexuality and that it was “imported” from the West. Nevertheless, analysis of historical references has revealed that in ancient China, homosexuality was far from being fully accepted–although, unlike in Europe, in ancient China people were not seriously persecuted for engaging in same-sex sexual behavior (Samshasha, 1997).
In addition, in ancient China, there was no concept equivalent to a “gay” or “lesbian” identity; terms equivalent to the adjective “homosexual” were used to describe people’s sexual behavior or a type of romantic relationship. In ancient China, “homosexual” was only an adjective, never a noun (Chou, 1997). Same-sex encounters were only seen as behavior, not the core or some special nature of the person. There was no such concept as a “homosexual person.” A person might engage in sexual relationships with a member of the other sex or with a person of the same sex. In any event, it was important for a man to get married and have legitimate offspring to continue the family line. Once that requirement was fulfilled, other sexual encounters could be tolerated; for example, wives’ homosexual behavior in polygamous families could be an integrated part of family sexual life with the husband at the center (Ruan, 1991). Also, when the young male lovers of upper class men reached adulthood, their “masters” would help them marry women (Samshasha, 1997). Being married was a matter of social status.
Furthermore, in ancient China, there was little questioning about the “cause” of homosexuality. Ruan (1991) reports a few speculations in ancient China on the causes of homosexuality, citing both “nature” and “nurture” as beliefs. However, none of these speculations occurred before the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644 A.D.), a time when the public attitudes of the Chinese people toward human sexuality were beginning to become more inhibited.
Male Homosexuality
Since only the activities of upper classes were recorded, there is little direct evidence in the historical records about homosexuality among common people in Ancient China, although some evidence can be found of its existence in fictional literature. Both Ruan Fang Fu’s Sex in China (1991) and Samshasha’s History of Homosexuality in China (1997) (the latter is available only in Chinese) give vast detailed accounts and citations of such works.
In Sex in China (1991), the famous Chinese sexologist Ruan Fang Fu states: “Male homosexuality may have been a familiar feature of Chinese life in prehistoric times … China’s earliest historical records contain accounts of male homosexuality” (p. 107). The ancient Chinese called men who had same-sex attraction Long Yang or Xiang Gong, and used terms like yu tao (“sharing the remaining peach”) or duan xiu (“cut sleeve”) to denote gay relationships.3 Most of these names are based on allegorical tales which are briefly summarized below.
“Yu Tao” is the story of the love relationship between the king of Wei named Ling (534-493 B.C.) and his male lover Mi Tzu-hsia. One day, when wandering in the king’s garden, Mi found an unusually sweet peach. After tasting it, he saved the remaining half and rushed back to the king, giving it to him. In Chinese, peach is pronounced “tao,” and remaining is pronounced “yu,” so “yu tao” can be translated as “sharing the remaining peach.”
The lord, Long Yang, was a favorite male lover of another king, also in the state of Wei, several hundred years later. One day, while fishing with the king, Long Yang suddenly burst into tears. The king asked him why, and he replied that he was afraid that the king might give him up if he found more beautiful men, just as the king had considered giving up the smaller fish he had just caught. The king reassured him that would never happen, and issued an order that no one would be allowed to mention a more beautiful man in the presence of the king; if they did, the person’s entire family would be executed. Later, Long Yang’s name became a synonym for male homosexual love.
The History of the (former) Han Dynasty (206 B.C.-A.D. 23) (Han Shu) contained a special section describing the emperors’ male sexual partners. Ten out of the 11 emperors of the West Han Dynasty had at least one male lover or expressed attraction to men (Ruan, 1991). “Duan xiu” is the story of Han Ai-ti (who reigned from 6 B.C. to 1 A.D.) and his male lover, Dong Xian. One day, after taking a nap together, the emperor woke up before Dong. He found that the long sleeve of his robe was under Dong’s body. Instead of waking him, the emperor decided to have the sleeve cut in order to avoid disturbing his lover. Thus “cut sleeve” came to refer to a homosexual relationship.
The term “Xiang Gong” originally meant “Your Excellency,” “young master of a noble house,” or “handsome young man” (Ruan, 1991, p. 115). In the Qing Dynasty, it was also used to refer to male actors who played female roles, and later came to mean the male lover of a man. In the Qing Dynasty capital of Beijing, establishments known as Xiang Gong Tang Zi flourished. There, “feminine” men served male clients sexually. These businesses were abolished toward the end of the Qing dynasty and the beginning of the Republic, which was founded in 1912.
Lesbianism
Although there are fewer accounts of lesbianism in ancient China, it was also tolerated, partly because the ancient Chinese believed that the women’s supply of Yin (the substance and/or energy which is essential for the body) was unlimited in quantity (Ruan, 1991). Samshasha (1997) reports that some Western sinologists believe the attitude toward lesbianism in ancient China was more stable than that of male homosexuality, the status of which changed from dynasty to dynasty depending on the perferences of emperors and social atmospheres. The earliest mention of a lesbian relationship in the official historical record may be “dui shi” (dui can mean “facing each other,” and shi means “eating, having a meal”). These were relationships between maids in the imperial court. In some couples, one would dress as a man and the other dressed as a woman and they called each other husband and wife. They ate and slept together. In the Ming and Qing Dynasties, there were erotic paintings which depicted merchants secretly selling sexual toys to maids in the imperial court with which they could enjoy each other sexually. There were also accounts in official and unofficial historical records of queens who were punished by the emperors after they were found sleeping with maids, even though some of these emperors had male concubines themselves. From the Tang Dynasty (617-907 AD) onward, there were also stories about sexual relationships between buddhist and taoist nuns. Ruan (1991) writes that lesbianism was considered inevitable and tolerated in some polygamous families, and sometimes even encouraged. An ancient sex handbook “give instructions for a method that not only allowed a man to enjoy two women at once, but simultaneously permitted pleasurable genital contact between the women” (p. 135).
The term mojingzi (rubbing mirrors or mirror grinding) is one of the traditional terms used to describe lesbian sexual behavior. Ruan (1991) reported that some formal associations of lesbians were found in the early period of the modern China. One of them, Mojing Dang (“Rubbing-mirrors Party”), was active in Shanghai in the late 19th century. “It was said to be a descendant of the ‘Ten Sisters,’ which a Buddhist nun had founded several hundred years earlier in Chaozhou, Guangdong (Canton) province. Members of the ‘Ten Sisters’ lived together as couples. They refused to marry, and some even avoided marriage by committing suicide” (p. 136). There were other names for relationships similar to the “ten sisters,” including “jin lan hui” (golden orchid association), “jin lan qi” (golden orchid contact), “shou pa jiao” (handkerchief relationship), etc. Samshasha (1997) gives detailed accounts of “jin lan hui” between unmarried women who would raise silkworms to support themselves. Some of these women turned their plait (the hairdo of an unmarried maid) into a bun (the hairdo of a married woman) and performed some ritual in the temple to formally announce their decision not to marry. Upon doing so, a woman’s fiancee was not allowed to force the woman to marry, although his family could request her family to return the dowry. The two women would then share the cost for reimbursing the dowry. It might be presumptuous to assume that all of these women were lesbians, but some of them might have been.
Today, modern scholars tend to believe that the acceptance of homosexuality was rooted in the traditional Chinese belief that a person’s sex or gender is not fixed, rather relatively fluid, as is believed in many other non-Christian cultures (Samshasha, 1997; Chou, 1997). It was social class that defined a person’s status. An upper class male’s penis could enter a woman (who was in a lower class than a man), and other “lower-class” men. In History of Homosexuality in China (1997), Samshasha calls this feature of the Chinese culture “pansexualism” and “fuzzy transgender-transsexualism” (p. 12).
Antihomosexual Attitudes
Homosexuality, however, was not totally accepted in ancient China. Samshasha (1997) summarizes some examples of covert and overt antihomosexual attitudes in ancient China. Some are included below:
- Low social status of male sexual servants: throughout the dynasties, male entertainers, who also served as male prostitutes for upper class men, were officially banned from taking official-select exams. These exams were a major means for people to advance their social status. Anyone daring to falsify his identity to take such tests–and who passed–if found out could be killed or in any event immediately removed from their position and publicly humiliated.
- Revelation of same-sex attraction could ruin a career: talented officials or writers could be punished if their attraction to or relationship with other men became known. For example, in South and North Dynasty (420-581 A.C.), a famous poet was removed from his government position after writing love letters to his male lover. Gay novels from the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644 A.C.) tell stories about students who were expelled from school for having same-sex romantic relationships.
- Derogatory and degrading descriptions of people engaged in same-sex sexual behavior: in both official and unofficial historical records, as well as fictional literature works, there exist denigrating expressions used to describe same-sex attraction and romantic relationships.
In any event, compared to medieval Europe, homosexuality in ancient China was treated much more mildly. There was never any serious persecution for homosexual behavior alone.
East Meets West: The Introduction of Psychology and Psychiatry Into China
After losing the Opium War in 1840 and most of the of wars in the ensuing decade fought by the Western powers on Chinese soil, China was forced to sign humiliating treaties, ceding Hong Kong and Macao and parts of major cities like Shanghai and Tianjing, and opened coastal cities along the Yangzi River as ports for international trade. “Semi-colonized” by the Western powers, the Chinese were not even permitted to stop the British from selling opium in China. For the first time in their history, the Chinese people experienced a serious threat from another part of the world. Defeated by Western technology, several generations of Chinese launched a series of “Westernization Movements.” In the late nineteenth century, it was said: let “Chinese doctrine be the foundation and Western knowledge be the tool.” This progressed to the “wholesale westernization” of the early twentieth century (Chou, 1997). However, this was a time when the dominant scientific approach in the West was positivism, and homosexuality was considered a mental disorder (Chou, 1997). Consequently, until the 1920s, “progressive” Chinese intellectuals viewed the traditional tolerance of homosexuality as backward as the Chinese traditions of forcing women to bind their feet, polygamy, pre-arranged marriage, and smoking opium. The “Colloquialism Movement” called for using everyday language to replace the hard-to-understand written language of antiquity. Although this vastly helped in improving literacy in China, it also made it difficult for people to access the historical records. As a result, the existence of homosexuality in ancient China became almost totally unknown after several generations (Samshasha, 1997; Chou, 1997).
For example, the modern Chinese term for “homosexual(ity)” is composed of three characters: tong (the same) xing (sex, sexual, sexuality) and lian (attachment, romantic love, attraction). The term was coined around the beginning of the 20th century. Samshasha (1997) believes that it was probably derived from a Japanese translation of the German term, while Chou (1997) speculates that bilingual scholars, such as Yan Fu, might have been created it. In any event, in contrast to the terms used in ancient China, this term appears to have been adopted as part of the Westernization efforts.
Although psychological ideas can be found in Chinese writings dating back thousands of years (Gao et al., 1985; Lee and Petzold, 1987), traditional Chinese medicine is based on holistic perspectives. The mind-body connection is organically embedded in its principles and practice. Therefore, Chinese medicine did not need a specific specialty to take care of the mind as separated from the body. Modern Western psychology and psychiatry were introduced into China in the late nineteenth century. The first Chinese introduced to Western psychology were students sent by the imperial government to study in the West in the late 19th century. The Chinese Psychological Society was established in 1921 (Gao et al., 1985; Lee and Petzold, 1987). Lee and Petzold (1987) estimate that between 1922 and 1940, 370 books on psychology were published in China. Of these, over 40% were direct translations of texts from other countries, while the rest consisted mainly of textbooks based on Western materials and, to a lesser degree, research reports or monographs by Chinese psychologists. Most of the early leading psychologists in China were trained in the United States, with a handful coming from Great Britain and Germany.
Psychiatry as a specialty of Western medicine developed much later than other disciplines in China. Jon Kerr established the first modern psychiatric hospital in Guangzhou in 1897 (Thornicroft, 1988), but only a handful more of such institutions appeared in major cities in China over the next 50 years (Shen, 1993; Xia and Zhang, 1988.). Dr. Andrew Woods made the first attempt at psychiatric education in China while lecturing in Guangzhou in 1910, then in Beijing Union Medical College (PUMC) in 1919. Later, a few medical courses in major cities offered courses in psychiatry, although only irregularly. However, prior to 1949, there were no psychiatric professional organizations or journals in China and few people studied psychiatry (Xia and Zhang, 1988). As a profession, psychiatry had little impact on the lives of ordinary Chinese; most people with serious mental illness were either kept at home or became homeless (Thornicroft, 1988). Most people would seek help for family members suffering from mental illness from either traditional medicine practitioners or shamans.
Unsurprisingly, for both psychology and psychiatry in China, the initial period of development was dominated by Western schools of thought. These included Wundtian psychology, structuralism, functionalism, behaviorism, psychoanalysis and Gestalt psychology. As each school was introduced, each seemed to flourish, with different schools having greater influence in different parts of China (Lee and Petzold, 1987; Xia and Zhang, 1988). The Western concept of “mental health” was adopted in China in the 1930s and a few courses on the subject were offered in a handful of universities. The Chinese Mental Health Society was founded in 1936, but it had done little work by the time of its first regional conference in Nanjing in 1948 (Chen and Li, 1992). There is little reference to formal psychotherapy in China at that time (Zhong, 1991; Qian, 1994).
1949 to the Late Seventies: Homosexuality in China during the Dark Ages
After 1949, and for almost three decades, information from the West was almost completely unavailable in Mainland China. The changes and improvements in gay rights that were occurring in other parts of the world from the 1950s to the 1970s, or any information about gay life outside China, were rarely reported (Ruan, 1991). The few reports on gay life in the outside world were primarily used as examples of the “decline and evil of Western civilization” (p. 121). These conditions created a sense of isolation for gays and lesbians in China. Nonetheless, homosexual behavior had never disappeared in China.
Arguably, this was the most sexually repressive period in the history of China. During this time, homosexual behavior could be grounds for persecution. Punishment ranged from labor under surveillance to imprisonment for years, depending upon the political atmosphere at the time and the mood of the specific authorities. After the end of the Cultural Revolution in late 1970s, as the government spent several years “rehabilitating” people who had been persecuted, those persecuted due to same-sex behaviors did not receive the same treatment (Wan, personal communication, 1997, 2001).
In fact, there have never been any mention in the criminal laws of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) which specifically address homosexual behavior. An umbrella term, “hooliganism,” which was dropped from the penal code in 1997, covered a wide range of behaviors which included extra-marital and pre-marital sexual behaviors, sodomy and other “socially indecent” and “sexually promiscuous” behaviors, as well as minor sexual assault. The sentence for hooliganism could range from several days of detention up to 7 years of imprisonment. An adult who engaged in sodomy with a minor could be sentenced from 7 years to life imprisonment (Zhang, 1994).
After 1949, China was strongly influenced by the Soviet Union until the break-up of the Sino-Soviet relationship in the late 1950s. During that time, Soviet theories were adopted while Western schools of thoughts were criticized and abolished (Gao et al., 1985; Li, Xu and Kuang, 1988). “Learning from the Soviet Union completely” was the most influential slogan in the early 1950s in China (Zhang, 1988). Academics and professionals underwent “thought reform” (Ding, 1991). Marxism and Pavlov’s high nervous activity theory became the official guideline for psychology in China. Soviet textbooks were translated into Chinese and adopted as textbooks in China.
The role official psychiatry played in political persecution was very different in the Soviet Union and China. As is now widely known, during the Stalin era and later, political dissidents were labeled as mentally ill and locked up in psychiatric hospitals. During China’s Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), mental disorders were seen as the result of either immorality or “backward thoughts.” Psychiatric patients were put in “study groups,” required to read newspapers or given lectures on “correct thoughts.”
At that time in China, only severe mental conditions such as psychosis and mental retardation were considered to be mental disorders, as well as a generic term shen jing shuai ruo which referred to neuroses. Although homosexual behavior was seen as a sexual disorder, it was rarely treated psychiatrically. It was mainly dealt with as a criminal behavior or as a bad habit. The small number of psychiatrists who did treat “homosexuals” between the 1950s and 1970s believed homosexuality was a “thought problem” or a political stand which could be corrected with class-education and labor reform (Chou, 1996).
The 1980s: After the Door Opened
In the early 1980s, the Chinese government adopted the “Open Door” policy. Information from outside China became more available and ordinary people started having more freedom. The Chinese gay and lesbian community rose under these conditions, although its bumpy journey reflects the fluctuation of the political atmosphere in China over the last two decades. The term tongzhi (see below) has been adopted as a name for the community of gay and lesbian people. Currently, the tongzhi communities are fairly visible in all major cities, and there are more than 250 Chinese tongzhi web sites in and outside China. However, the changes have mainly benefited people in large urban centers and in academic circles. The 1997 deletion of “hooliganism” from the penal code is considered to be the official decriminalization of homosexuality. Although the official position viewed homosexuality as a mental disorder until recently, the actual views of scholars and heath professionals have been somewhat diverse for the last 20 years, and some research and advocacy work has been done in the last decade.
One of the direct consequences of the open door policy was that information from outside China flooded in, including information about human sexuality. Despite government attempts to “sweep away the yellow subjects” in the mid-1980s, “a sex [sic] revolution appeared in China in 1986” (Pan, 1993, p. 59). A national survey conducted in 1989-1990 showed that 86% of people approved of premarital sex, while the government estimated, in the late 1980s, that about 30% of (heterosexual) couples living together had not registered legally (Ruan, 1991).
Throughout the 1980s, while gay and lesbian populations were becoming more visible in the West, in China, as a general rule, homosexuality was basically unknown. Ruan (1991) quotes a story reported by Lenore Norrgard, a Seattle-based freelance writer and an activist in 1990: “…two young women who went to the Marriage Bureau to register their bond, and were promptly arrested … Homosexuality is illegal in China, yet ignorance about it is so vast that the two apparently were not even aware of the taboo” (p. 140). Richard Green, in his Series Editor’s Comment on Ruan’s Sex in China (1991) states that when he taught at Meijing Union Medical College (arguably the best medical school in China) in 1988, some of the physicians there told him there were no homosexuals in China.
The concept of bisexuality was even less known in China at that time. Most English-Chinese dictionaries published in China up to the mid-1980 defined the word “bisexual” as “having both sexes” or an “organism with both sexes in it,” with no mention of its meaning as a sexual orientation. In a 1992 paper on the analysis of 1000 “homosexual” cases in the Chinese Mental Health Journal, the authors called the attraction to both sexes “dual orientation” (Lu et al., 1992).
However, in the 1980s people started to learn about homosexuality as something which existed outside China. For example, people in urban centers, especially in academic circles, had access to Western literature; some of them might have met openly gay or lesbian Westerners. Meanwhile, small communities of gay and lesbian people in various parts of China were quietly developing.
The Official Position and Government Practice
As previously stated, after the Cultural Revolution, the illegal status of homosexuality remained unchanged until 1997. In general, the policy was not used to arrest people engaged in homosexual behavior unless they were reported or found in public space. But, in reality, given the isolation and housing shortage, for many gay men, cruising sites were the only places they could find each other. However, once arrested, a person could be detained up to 15 days or sentenced to several-year forced labor or imprisonment, largely depending the political atmosphere at the time (Li and Wang, 1992; Wan, 1997). Police and neighborhood watchdogs often patrolled sites where gay men gathered (usually parks, public restrooms or bathhouses) and made arrests from time to time. Arrested gay men were subject to humiliation and even beatings, as well as charged with fines. In the early and mid-1990s, probably the police’s motivation for arresting gay men had more to do with their economic gain (Wan, 1997). Sometimes arrested people were allowed to leave without pressing charges, sometimes their employers were notified and were asked to take them back (Zhang, 1994). Gay men would rather undergo any humiliation instead of being exposed to their families or employers. However, it varied how the employers dealt with the cases–from no punishment, to reduced salary or no pay for a limited time, to demotion, to firing (Li and Wang, 1992).
From the 1980s to the mid-1990s, the most common punishment for gay men was not legal, but administrative punishment within the workplace. Administrative punishment ranged from demotion or losing pay for a period of time to being fired. This was at a time when the only available jobs were government-assigned. Such punishment also resulted in losing face in one’s community, which is a major concern in Chinese culture. If exposed, gay men with higher social status could lose status, as well as current and potential income. However, they also had more protection. For example, a Communist Party member might lose his party membership, while a non-Party-member could go to jail for the same behavior (Li and Wang, 1992). One attitude of the government and police was that sexually receptive gay men (bottoms) were punished less harshly–sometimes even avoiding any punishment–than insertive gay men who “played the active roles” (tops) (Li and Wang, 1992). This may have to do with the authorities’ conceptualization of sodomy–the penetrating partner was the perpetrator and the receiving one was the victim. Legal and administrative punishments for lesbians are not very common, but they are more vulnerable to social pressures (see below).
The Positions of Psychiatrists and Other Scholars
In the late 1970s, the emphasis of psychiatry in China shifted from “thought reform” to a biological model which conceptualized mental disorders as being like other medical conditions. At that time, this was a natural and progressive reaction to the beliefs of the Cultural Revolution. It removed the blame from the patients and gave more room for the person to receive help. The bio-psycho-social model was introduced in the late ’80s when most psychiatrists tended to see things from a traditional medical perspective.
The standard diagnostic tool in Chinese psychiatry was initially discussed in 1958 and the first version of the Chinese Classification of Mental Disorders (CCMD) was published in 1978 (Shen, 1993). Homosexuality was classified as a sexual disorder, regardless of the person’s attitude toward his or her homosexual tendency. The CCMD-2 was published in 1989, and CCMD-2-R in 1994; both clearly stated that Chinese clinicians were not to accept the changing, non-pathological view of homosexuality emerging in other parts of the world (Chinese Psychiatric Association & the Neurological Hospital, Nanjing Medical University, 1995). Although the official statement did reflect the majority’s view, opinions of people in the field were quite diverse, ranging from “crime” or “disorder,” to “unclear” to “natural,” even to “a matter of minority’s oppression by a majority.” Such viewpoints were also clearly reflected in most psychiatric textbooks and other publications at that time (Zhang, 1994).
Up to the early 1990s, the mainstream of Chinese psychiatry and the social sciences saw homosexuality as “a strange disease that deserves denunciation… a special mistake that is against human nature, an abnormal behavior that should be severely prohibited and punished, and a problem that apparently has something to do closely with morality” (Zhang, 1994, p. 576). Some believed that homosexuality “threatens the social order, destroys the health of youth, and disturbs the harmony of other people’s family” (p. 577). Some psychiatrists believed that gay people tended to sexually violate other people or could convert them to homosexuality. Some also believed that “homosexuals” could not maintain their well-being and productivity since homosexuality was “against the law of biology.” Some even stated that AIDS was nature’s punishment. Some psychiatrists supported the harsh punishments meted out to gay men in parts of China and said it was “understandable and necessary” (p. 577). Some held that homosexuality was caused by capitalist system and beliefs; some felt it necessary to criticize the “bourgeois liberalization” that was taking place in the 1980s as a necessary measure for preventing homosexuality in China. Some scholars strongly opposed any tolerance of homosexuality.
Although harsh about homosexuality as a phenomenon, many Chinese psychiatrists at that time also showed respect to and sympathy for gay people; some considered sexual orientation immutable, although they still viewed homosexuality as a disorder. Many scholars denounced discrimination against “homosexuals” and admitted that punishment would not help in preventing or eliminating homosexuality (Zhang, 1994). Some psychiatrists genuinely believed that the pathological label would protect gay people. Some said, “when the police arrest somebody for homosexual behavior, I testify that it is a disease. Then they release him. Simple as that” (Zhang Beichuan, personal communication, 1998).
In 1992, Lu et al. published a paper in the Chinese Mental Health Journal which analyzed 1000 “homosexual cases” accumulated over 10 years in psychiatric outpatient settings throughout the country. It is probably the largest sample of “homosexuals” studied in China up to that point16 and still one of the largest to date.
The authors concluded that homosexuality was caused by poor discipline in childhood, a lack of male role models (although a small percentage of the sample were females) and dominant mothers. They insisted not to give up on treatment for “real homosexuals,” and believed that more research on the cause of homosexuality would help in preventing it, which would vastly benefit society. However, in correspondence with one of the authors in 1998, I was told they had stopped trying to change people’s sexual orientation; instead, they wanted to use their authority roles to help their gay clients accept themselves.
Some psychiatrists said that they had stopped using aversion therapy because it was inhumane. Others used a method called “desensitization,” similar to guided imagery. Based on the belief that male “homosexuals” had difficulty being intimate with women, patients were asked to relax and imagine being with a young woman in a favorite place (Fang, 1995). In a 1999 survey of psychotherapists by Cong and Gao, respondents reported several therapy modalities that they used in working with “homosexuals,” including cognitive therapy (40.0%), psychoanalysis (25.7%), eclectic therapy (20.0%), behavioral therapy (5.7%), supportive therapy (5.7%), and family system therapy (2.9%). There are anecdotal reports of individuals being treated with psychotropic medications to change their sexual orientation as well.
Non-pathologizing viewpoints within the psychiatric community, although a minority, were also expressed occasionally. In 1985, a leading sexologist Ruan Fang Fu, using the pseudonym Hua Jin Ma, published an article in a popular magazine, To Your Health. He not only addressed the existence of same-sex attraction in many parts of the world and throughout the history of the human race, but also stated that pathologizing homosexuality was a matter of the majority’s oppressing a minority. That was the first statement of this kind made publicly in Mainland China. Ruan’s article received 60 letters from readers, including 56 from gay men from all over China. An analysis of the letters was published in Archives of Sexual Behavior in 1988.
The Rise of Gay and Lesbian Communities
In late 1990, partly due to the AIDS threat, the Chinese government realized it had to deal with the gay population, which led to a series of unexpected events that contributed to the development of the LGB community in China over the next 10 years. The political mood in China affected the vicissitudes of that process. Health educator Wan Yan Hai of the Institute of Health Education, under the Health Ministry, was assigned to do the AIDS prevention work. He eventually turned his work into gay advocacy. In April 1992, he set up China’s first AIDS hotline in Beijing. He and his hotline volunteers went to gay gathering places to distribute educational materials and gradually gained trust from them (Fang, 1995). Then in November 1992, he hosted the first gay men club, “Men’s World,” in Beijing. It offered monthly gatherings for gay men for free discussion. Initially, his work was supported by the government and widely reported in the media both in and outside China (Wan, 1997). However, in late 1993, the political atmosphere changed. Wan was ordered to stop his advocacy work and Men’s World was closed down. Refusing to comply, Wan was fired from his job in 1994, and his supportive superior was demoted.
Following that, Wan became a freelance writer and educator and started his AIDS Action Project, continuing his AIDS education and gay advocacy work. He published a newsletter, the AIZHI Newsletter, with information on gay and lesbian rights and life, sexual education and AIDS prevention materials, as well as related research both in and outside China. He distributed the newsletter free of charge to scholars, government officials, educators, gay men and lesbians, as well as the general public. He hosted workshops and offered lectures on gay rights and AIDS prevention in Beijing whenever possible, and worked with numerous individual gay men, lesbians and people with HIV or AIDS in different parts of China.
In the early 1990s, gay activists from Hong Kong and Taiwan began to go to China to research and help build the community. In the mid and late 1990s, Hong Kong sociologist Chou Wah Shan stayed in China at length and published, both as author and editor, a number of books on the situations for sexual minorities in China from different angles (Chou, 1996, 1997; Wu and Chou, 1996). Hong Kong activist and publisher John Loo also traveled to China many times, and published gay and lesbian fictional writings by authors from Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Mainland China (Loo, 1996; 1999; Cui, 1997).
Activists from Hong Kong and Taiwan also brought into China a new term for the LGB community, tongzhi, the Chinese equivalent of “comrade.” This usage was coined by Hong Kong gay activist Mike in 1987, as a way to translate the term “gay and lesbian” for the 1988 Hong Kong Gay and Lesbian Movie Festival (Chou, 1997). Widely used by LGB communities in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and southeast Asian countries with large Chinese populations, the term was introduced into China in the mid-1990s. At that time of its introduction into China, the gay and lesbian communities had few terms to describe themselves. Ancient terms like long yang and duan xiu (see above) were unknown to young people. The technical term, “tong xing lian,” is too formal and carries negative, even shameful connotations; it had been widely used by psychiatrists to describe a mental disorder, so the gay and lesbian community did not want to use it. Tongzhi filled in a blank.
Despite some setbacks, 1994 continued to see some media coverage of gay-related issues, including a few coming out stories (Wan Yan Hai, personal communication, 1995). Several monographs on homosexuality were published around that time, something which had not happened since 1949. Although homophobic by today’s standards, all of the authors claimed that homosexuality was normal and that they were trying to raise people’s consciousness on the matter. All of those authors experienced difficulty finding publishers.
In December, 1994, a symposium on AIDS and sex education took place in Beijing, hosted by the famous bioethicist Qiu Ren Zong at the Chinese Academy of Social Science. Approximately 50 scholars and other participants reached a 12-point consensus, accepting homosexuality as a normal phenomenon and urging more communication and understanding between different sectors of society. Encouraged by the success of the symposium, the organizers decided to hold a similar meeting in early 1996, mainly for gay and lesbian people. About 70 people registered, and funds were raised, both within and outside China, to subsidize the participation of low-income people. However, at the last minute, the public security department ordered the meeting postponed and it never took place. Nevertheless, the organizers managed to collect papers from the potential participants; the effort to publish them resulted in the establishment of the Friends newsletter in early 1998, published by Zhang Beichuan and his colleagues at the Qingdao Medical College and other institutions.
Tongzhi communities were also developing among overseas Mainland Chinese citizens, mostly students, as a way to end isolation and support each other. Most of such groups were primarily social in nature. In 1997, Wan Yan Hai, Lin Eryan and I, along with some other Chinese students and visiting scholars in North America, founded the Chinese Society for the Study of Sexual Minorities (CSSSM). Its mission was to disseminate updated information on homosexuality and gay rights to the tongzhi community and the general public in China, and to enlist support in depathologizing homosexuality in China. One of the main project carried out by the CSSSM is its biweekly, bilingual webzine tao hong man tian xia (pink color all over the world), written primarily in Chinese with some news summaries in English. The 1997 revision of the penal code was a significant milestone for the tongzhi community. In June 1998, Chinese gay activist Gary Wu organized the first Chinese tongzhi conference in North America in San Francisco. About 150 Chinese tongzhi participated, including some from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, and other countries.
In October 1998, the first lesbian conference in China took place in Beijing; more then 30 women from all over the country attended. As a result, Beijing Sister, a lesbian activist group, was formed. The first lesbian web site in China had been set up in August of that year, and several more appeared soon after. In November 1998, an open lesbian participated in a symposium on feminism hosted by the Chinese Academy of Social Science. Her dialogue with feminist scholars resulted in a panel discussion by lesbians in the following year’s similar symposium. In December 1998, the first delegate from China attended the conference of the Asian Lesbian Network in Manila. In 1999, a lesbian delegate from China attended an international gay and lesbian conference in South Africa. A connection between the Chinese tongzhi community and the international LGBT communities had been established.
Media exposure about gay issues reached a new level on December 20, 2000. Openly gay and lesbian people appeared on TV in China for the first time on Hunan province TV station’s talk show, “Let’s Talk.” Its last episode in the twentieth century was on the topic of homosexuality. Guests included an openly gay male professor and writer, an openly lesbian artist, and sociologist Li Yin He, one of the top scholars in China who has studied gay subculture. More than a dozen people from the audience asked various questions, and expressed their opinions which ranged from opposing homosexuality to viewing it as natural phenomenon. Such an open and friendly discussion would not be imaginable just a few years ago (Hunan TV, 2000).
In 2001, the three major events in the tongzhi community were the lesbian cultural festival in May, the conference on tongzhi web sites and AIDS education in November, and the tongzhi movie festival at Beijing University in December. The lesbian cultural festival was stopped by the police just before it began. The tongzhi movie festival started well and received vast media coverage, but it was ordered to stop early. Only the conference on tongzhi web sites and AIDS education took place smoothly.
Nevertheless, in major cities in China, gay and lesbian gatherings are becoming commonplace and commercial gay bars also exist in all big cities. For example, in Beijing, gay men who participate in some community activities are numbered in the thousands; lesbians in the hundreds. However, these number are a small fraction of the gay and lesbian populations in the city. The majority of people in China attracted to people of the same sex are still isolated. Even in the active gay and lesbian communities, people still have to be very cautious. The common practice in those communities is not to disclose real names, occupations, employers, etc. It is obviously difficult to maintain long-term gay or lesbian relationships in this climate. However, cyberspace can compensate for some of the inconvenience of the physical world. The Internet and the World Wide Web have developed rapidly in China in the last few years, and the tongzhi communities have found this new territory especially useful.
Nonetheless, tongzhi websites, like other websites in China, may face government censorship. If its content is considered pornographic or too critical of the government, a website hosted within China could be warned or even closed down. A website hosted outside China might be blocked and made inaccessible from within China.
It should also be pointed out that although some young people adopt the identities of gay, lesbian or bisexual, the majority of people in China attracted to people of the same sex do not see their sexual orientations as their primary identities. Many of them are married and raise their families. Western readers should not attribute this as only being due to their not having other choices. Although a lack of choices is definitely part of the reason, a cultural tradition that emphasizes social status and family relations plays an important role, too.
Becoming Normal: A New Beginning
The third edition of the Chinese Classification of Mental Disorders (CCMD-III)–passed by the Chinese Psychiatric Association at the end of 2000, and published in April 2001–dropped the diagnosis of homosexuality per se but added a diagnosis of ego-dystonic homosexuality. Considering that in the late 1990s the majority of psychiatrists in China still supported pathologizing homosexuality, this change is quite remarkable (Cong and Gao, 1999; Wan, 2001). As the following account illustrates, it is also the result of efforts by both tongzhi activists and psychiatrists.
In September 1996, the Chinese Psychiatric Association (CPA) formed a task force to revise the CCMD-II-R and produce the CCMD-III. For the first time, the tongzhi community responded in a united way. The AIZHI Action Project soon proposed to depathologize homosexuality in China (Wan, 2001). From October to December of that year, Wan Yan Hai and his colleagues embarked upon a number of projects. They conducted telephone interviews with some of the task force members to ask for their opinions on homosexuality; they searched for and contacted gay-friendly psychiatrists and urged them to participate in the deletion of homosexuality from CCMD. Wan edited a special issue of the AIZHI Newsletter which included information on the current situation of homosexuality in the world, the American Psychological Association’s Policy Statements on Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Issues, and other materials related to civil rights and minority rights issues. The newsletter was mailed to all CCMD task force members, some 170 psychiatric hospitals, and almost 300 psychologists, sexologists and other heath care professionals nationwide (Wan, 2001).
In January 1997, Wan came to the United States as a visiting scholar at Southern California University. In February of that year, the idea of establishing the Chinese Society for the Study of Sexual Minorities (CSSSM) was put forward, and the group was formally founded that September. A major focus of the CSSSM was to contact professional and activist organizations in the West to enlist support for the deletion of homosexuality from the CCMD in particular, and for the development of the tongzhi community in China in general. In regard to the CCMD, information was shared in professional conferences, newsletters and list serves. Due to the CSSSM’s efforts, in 1998, both the American Psychological Association and the American Psychiatric Association wrote letters to the Chinese Psychiatric Association in support of removing homosexuality from the CCMD-III. In March 1998, the American Counseling Association passed a resolution supporting the removal of homosexuality from the CCMD-III. In September 1998, the APA Monitor published an article reporting the revision of CCMD and the work of the CSSSM (Sleek, 1998). Also in 1998, the president of the American Psychiatric Association, Herbert Sacks, MD, at a joint conference with Chinese psychiatrists in Beijing, addressed the importance of deleting homosexuality from the list of mental disorders.
Within China, there was a discussion of the diagnostic status of homosexuality in Zhejiang (Province) Mental Health Information, a monthly newspaper published by the Mental Health Institute of Zhejiang Province and targeted to the general public. It has been called the “first open debate on homosexuality” in the media in China. From August 1997 to February 1998, a total of 11 articles were published, 4 of which supported depathologizing homosexuality and five of which opposed depathologization; the other two articles were ambiguous on whether homosexuality is a mental disorder but nevertheless considered homosexuality to be abnormal. The Jia article which opened the debate illustrates Chinese psychiatry’s anti-gay viewpoint then–and perhaps even now. Jia listed three major “harmful effects” of homosexuality: disturbing societal harmony–including increased sexual crime, disintegrating families, and spreading STDs and AIDS. He regarded Americans who believed “AIDS is God’s punishment of gays” as sensible people. He maintained that the majority of Chinese people would not agree to depathologizing homosexuality as it was contrary to the Chinese moral code and psychological principles. He insisted that any group composing less than 5% of the general population should be seen as deviant, and that since “homosexuals” composed a very small portion of the population in China, it would be reasonable and lawful to classify homosexuality as a sexual disorder. He further went on to assert that the removal of homosexuality from the DSM-III and IV and from the ICD-10, was due to biases caused by social and political demands–and that China should set up a classification system with its own characteristics.
The Chinese Psychiatric Association’s task force conducted a research project using “homosexuals” recruited primarily from the gay and lesbian community in Beijing (Wan, 2001), as well as some individuals who sought mental health services (Liu et al., 1999). Activists praised the task force for going into the community, instead of only using subjects in the clinical population. However, the tone of the report is ambiguous about whether homosexuality is normal. For example, in the discussion section, before stating that homosexuality per se is not a mental disorder, the report says: “Because homosexuality violates the law of biology, differing from the sexual orientation of the majority of human population, it was considered a mental disorder. Currently, it is still in debate if homosexuality should be an object of medical and psychiatric research and treatment” (Liu, 2001, p. 101, translation of author). The main findings and conclusions from the task force’s report were:
- The cause of “homosexuality” is complex and “related to bio-psycho-social factors” (Liu, 2001, p. 89). Nevertheless, the researchers speculated that, given that some homosexual subjects grew up in families with disharmony or were raised by grandparents, a lack of “normal family atmosphere,” particularly the love of fathers and mothers, could be part of the reason for an individual to become “homosexual.”
- Using the EPQ and MMPI, one cannot distinguish “homosexual” people from heterosexuals; however, gay and lesbian subjects have high scores on some clinical scales of the MMPI, such as hypochondria, hysteria, schizophrenia, depression, and hypomania.
- The majority (44) of the subjects had sought mental health or other services to change their sexual orientation but none of them had succeeded in doing so.
- The researchers only identified 6 subjects who had ever needed clinical treatment, therefore concluded that the majority of “homosexuals” were not ill.
- One-third of the subjects had suicide attempts.
- Homosexuality per se should not be considered a mental disorder, but “homosexuals” experiencing distress due to their sexual orientation need mental health services.
The ambivalence of the task force’s report reflects overall attitudes of psychiatrists in China. The most recent data on the attitudes of mental health professionals in China toward homosexuality is that of Cong Zhong and Gao Wenfeng (1999) published in Chinese Journal of Behavioral Medical Science. In 1998, the authors surveyed 47 psychotherapists from all over the country who participated in a workshop that was part of a joint Chinese-German training series on psychoanalysis. The respondents showed some acceptance and tolerance toward gay people. The majority of the respondents (73.9%) believed homosexuality had nothing to do with morality; 17.4% said it was immoral. Almost two-thirds (65%) saw gay people as lawful citizens; 20% saw them as antisocial; 5% saw them as promiscuous, and 2.5% saw them as evil. When asked if homosexuality was legal in China, a year after “hooliganism” was removed from the criminal law, 54.5% said yes, 38.6% said no, and 6.8% said irrelevant.
In considering the question of whether homosexuality is normal, the picture changed somewhat: 56.5% of the respondents considered it “not a disorder but also not normal;” 17.4% considered it totally normal and 26.1% considered it a mental disorder. Regarding the removal of homosexuality from the upcoming edition of CCMD, overall, 48.6% of the respondents supported removal, while 51.4% opposed it. When the sample was broken down into two groups–psychologists and psychiatrists–about 2/3 of psychologists supported removal and about 2/3 of psychiatrists opposed it.
On average, each respondent had seen 7.5 “homosexual clients” in outpatient settings, with the highest number of 45. The majority of “homosexual clients” seen were gay men, with a small number of lesbians and bisexuals. The main reasons for seeking psychotherapy were social pressure (60.5%), difficulty in accepting oneself (44.2%), lack of understanding from family members (44.2%), homophobia (the authors did not specify) (41.9%), desire to change sexual orientation (32.6%), socialization and employment (30.2%), and being forced into heterosexual marriages (23.3%).
About half of the respondents believed the distress their “homosexual clients” suffered was due to a clients’ own weaknesses, while others considered the distress to be caused by society. When asked how gay people’s mental health compared with heterosexuals, 55% respondents thought it was poorer, 42.5% thought it the same, one respondent thought it better. Respondents believed the causes (more than one answer was allowed) of homosexuality included: postnatal psychological development and educational influence (93.0%), seduction by others (41.9%), genetic (37.2%), postnatal physical development (30.2%), social and cultural causes (18.6%), and other (11.6%). Psychotherapy modalities used with these clients included cognitive therapy (40.0%), psychoanalysis (25.7%), and eclectic therapy (20.0%). In ascertaining the therapists’ main goals for their clients, the picture was mixed: self-acceptance (81.4%), adjustment (81.4%), and change of sexual orientation (30.2%). The effectiveness of psychotherapy reported 2.6% totally cured, 15.4% significantly improved, 64.1% improved, and 17.9% no change.
Conclusion
The removal of homosexuality from the CCMD-III–widely reported in China and all over the world–stirred up much discussion in the tongzhi community. Many people welcomed the change, while some others criticized it for incompleteness (Wan, 2001). The actual status of homosexuality in China at this point is that it is “not a disorder but it is also not normal.” The fate of the first gay and lesbian film festival provides an interesting footnote on the current state of affairs. The festival sponsored by the Movie Association at Peking University was planned for December 14 through 23, 2001. It was to show a number of gay and lesbian movies made in China, Taiwan and many Western countries. After the films were shown, it was to include a number of workshops led by renowned scholars on topics from gay and lesbian movies to global gay and lesbian movements (Leinng, 2001). However, around December 20, the authority of Peking University decided to cancel the workshops. As it turns out, some media agencies had not only reported on the festival, they also gave in-depth coverage on gay lives and homosexuality. It was this coverage which prompted Peking University officials to ask the Movie Association to cancel the workshops because “this activity sponsored by the Movie Association was suspected of ‘using this opportunity to rectify the reputation of homosexuals’” (Scat09, 2001). Clearly, the tongzhi community in China has much work left to do before achieving full civil rights. However, simple imitation of the LGB world in the West may not be the solution for the tongzhi community in China. As Samshasha (1997) suggests, part of the answer may be indigenous and found in Chinese history.