China’s Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts under fire over homophobic textbook

Health education text refers to homosexuality as ‘sexual perversion’ and gives suggestions to ‘cure’ it, according to photos posted on social media

Its publisher is discussing complaints and next steps with the authors

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Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts was said to be using the textbook for its student health curriculum. Photo: Baidu

Published: 5:07pm, 10 Jan 2020Updated: 8:11pm, 17 Feb 2020

A top art school in southern China has drawn online criticism after a textbook on its student health curriculum was found to contain homophobic content.

Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts used a textbook that referred to homosexuality and “transvestism” as “sexual perversions”, according to a Weibo post on Wednesday from a user who reports homophobia in publishing and the media.

Photos of pages from the Chinese-language textbook, titled Student Health Education, show suggestions to “cure” homosexuality in LGBT students in a chapter on psychological issues. The uploaded photographs were from a 2018 reprint of the book.

The suggestions include “increasing opportunities to mingle with the opposite sex” and “avoiding fantasising about homosexual romance during masturbation”.

Homosexuality is also described as an “illness” that is “hard to treat, with a high relapse rate and even incurable throughout one’s lifetime”.

In China, homosexuality was declassified as a mental illness in 2001, but school and university textbooks still frequently refer to it as a psychological issue. Photo: AFP