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Young gay rights activist calls on officials to remove homophobic Chinese textbooks
On Tuesday, LGBT activist Chen Qiuyan met with government officials in Beijing after months of campaigning to have the Ministry of Education remove textbooks which identify homosexuality as a mental disorder.
In 2001, the Chinese Society of Psychiatry removed homosexuality from its list of recognized mental disorders, after the Chinese government decriminalized consensual homosexual acts in 1997.
That said, a study last year by the Gay and Lesbian Campus Association in China found that out of 31 psychology textbooks that have been published in China since 2001, 13 of them classified homosexuality as a mental disorder.
Chen claimed that in one textbook, which was published in 2013, it stated: "Sexual orientation disorder is a sexual psychological disorder that involves being sexually attracted to abnormal objects. It includes pedophilia, zoophilia, necrophilia and homosexuality."
There were also multiple textbooks which recommended treatments that included "aversion therapy" techniques, which involve the use of electroshock therapy, among other techniques.
http://shanghaiist.com/2015/11/25/activist_protests_homophobia_in_textbooks.php
