Leading sexologist blasts China's poor sex education after attack during speech

A leading sexologist has criticised the lack of an official mainland policy supporting sex education, which he said has led to 99 per cent of Chinese adults being ill-informed on the subject.

Peng Xiaohui, a professor in the school of Life Sciences at the Central China Normal University, made the comments to the Beijing News after he had been slapped in the face by a woman, who also threw what was suspected to be faeces at him, last week while he giving a speech at the Guangzhou Sex Culture Festival.

The incident went viral on the internet, promoting heated debate about sex education and leading Peng to say: “I’ve been to too many speeches and seminars. This is the first time my being attacked in public.

“I was in shock and found it hard to fall asleep and eat the first few days after the attack. The physical pain is gone, but the mental trauma continues,” he said.

Peng said some Chinese anti-pornography websites had published photos of the attack and celebrated his humiliating experience.

“They treated my attack as fruits of their anti-porn battle. They used to call me a ‘pervert’ in television shows,” he told the newspaper. “Sexology is not pornography… No one can deprive my rights to teach and spread knowledge on sexology.”

Peng said that it is too hard to teach sex education in China because it is not a required class and because of the “opposing voices from the society”.

The Chinese authorities have conservative views on the subject on sex, not only related to public education but also regarding media policy, he said. “The state bans advertisements on condoms and birth control pills, but allows the advertisements on abortion. It’s like putting the cart before the horse.”

The attack on Peng and his comments come after the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television had said internet programmes depicting extramarital affairs, polyamorous relationships, one-night stands, sexual abuse or containing pornographic content should be cut or deleted. Between April and November, the internet police launched a crackdown on online obscenity and shut down more than 100 websites related to pornography content.

Also in a related development, the Guangdong Province Aids Association warned on Monday that there were more than 150,000 people, some as young as 16 years old, in the province with sexually transmitted diseases. The number of syphilis and gonorrhea affected patients in Guangdong was the highest in any province in the mainland.