• hogposting [he/him,comrade/them]
        ·
        4 years ago

        That seems like too broad of a statement. From Wikipedia, which certainly isn't the most generous source:

        Same-sex sexual activity has been legal in China since 1997.

        Note that this was a few years before the U.S. struck down all of its laws criminalizing same-sex sexual activity.

        Additionally, in 2001, homosexuality was declassified as a mental illness. Same-sex couples are unable to marry or adopt, and households headed by such couples are ineligible for the same legal protections available to heterosexual couples.

        Same-sex marriage (i.e., giving LGBT couples the same legal protections available to heterosexual couples) was only legalized nationwide in the U.S. in 2015. It was 2017 for same-sex adoption. I don't know the U.S. history of classifying LGBT folks as mentally ill, and I don't know how often that diagnosis was used in China until 2001.

        In 2018, a gay kindergarten teacher sued his former school after he was dismissed from his job, following a social media post he had made about attending an LGBT event. The case was accepted for hearing by a court in Qingdao... In March 2019, it was revealed at the UN that China aims to adopt an LGBT anti-discrimination law within a year.

        Fighting discrimination in the courts and political promises of action sounds like the U.S. in the recent past.

        The section on the acceptance of LGBT expression looks far behind where the U.S. is, but there are some notes like these:

        Mr Gay China, a beauty pageant, was held in 2016 without incident.

        There's also this note:

        Transgender people allowed to change legal gender after sex reassignment surgery.

        The section on conversion therapy also looks similar to where the U.S. is at now, or at worst where the U.S. was at in the recent past.

          • hogposting [he/him,comrade/them]
            ·
            4 years ago

            Things are getting better but you are kidding yourself if you think it even approaches the liberal attitude of the West.

            "The liberal attitude of the West" is far from universal and pretty recent if we're talking about modern societies. My point is that our progress is pretty recent (watch the movie Idiocracy, from 2006, if you want a flavor of how recently stuff like anti-gay slurs were mainstream and uncontroversial in the U.S.), which should make us question how real that progress actually is and also how long it will take China to catch up to us.

              • hogposting [he/him,comrade/them]
                ·
                edit-2
                4 years ago

                But LGBTQ+ folks are mostly accepted these days especially in numerous clusters of liberal cities. In the West, they are also protected by political correctness

                This is a very new phenomenon, though. That's 2006, and that wasn't the last piece of mainstream media with all sorts of non-accepting, non-PC elements.

                I feel like there is still a long way to go, especially if you consider how much “face” (or social reputation) plays a major role in Chinese society.

                The cultural difference might make more of a difference there than it does here, but this can change really fast.

      • kristina [she/her]
        ·
        4 years ago

        apparently theyre more ok with trans people which is a strange thing that appears to be common in asia