Weibo reverses brief ban on a lesbian page after outcry
China’s media censors still consider homosexuality an “abnormal sexual relationship”
Homosexuality is not illegal in China, but the LGBT community still faces censorship on social networks.
Online protests broke out on Chinese social media after a Weibo community page for lesbians was shut down on Sunday. It’s not clear what led to the sudden ban, given that the social network did not censor any other LGBT-related content.
How Weibo became China’s most popular blogging platform
Netizens then took to other related hashtags, including “I am les” and “les super topic is banned”, to protest. The “I am les” hashtag was read more than 290 million times and has drawn more than 600,000 posts.
“Not having a voice means that even dying is quiet,” reads one of the most liked posts under the “les super topic is banned” hashtag.
Weibo’s super topic function is similar to hashtags, but super topic pages allow users to apply to become page moderators, allowing them to promote high quality posts and block bad ones.
By Monday afternoon, the lesbian super topic page was restored.