Forced gay scenes
Gay Chinese man wins legal battle over forced conversion therapy
A gay man in central China has won an apology and compensation from a mental hospital over forced conversion therapy, reports say.
The man, identified only by his surname Yu, had been admitted by his wife and relatives to the hospital in the town of Zhumadian in Henan province in 2015.
He was forced to take medicine and have injections over 19 days.
But the court create that forcing him into a mental institution if he did not pose a danger infringed his rights.
Last month it ordered the hospital - which had diagnosed Mr Yu with "sexual preference disorder" - to publish a public apology in local newspapers and pay the 38-year-old $735 (£570), AP said citing a copy of the judgement.
However the court did not communicate an opinion on the practice of gay conversion therapy.
Homosexuality was considered to be a mental disorder in China until 2001, and attitudes remain conservative.
In 2014 gay rights activist Peng Yanhui went into a private conversion therapy clinic in Beijing to investigate the electroshock treatments it was advertising.
He later sued the hospital over the suffering
How can a sense of belonging be forged in a setting where one’s existence is forbidden? That is the question that LSE’s Dr Centner and his co-author Harvard’s Manoel Pereira Neto explore in their groundbreaking investigate into Dubai’s expatriate gay men’s nightlife.
But it was not an easy topic to research. Dr Centner explains: “It's an illegal, or criminalised, identity and place of behaviours and practices, so in a very general perception, it's a taboo. And taboo subjects are very often under-researched, sometimes because people have a hard time gaining access, gaining that trust, but also because, even if people gain that access, there could be significant repercussions for themselves as researchers, or for the people who are the research participants.
“As two queer researchers, we were fit to enter the worlds of relatively privileged Western gay expatriates. Secrecy is often the norm, but the field was familiar to us, through previous visits and research projects.”
These were indeed ‘parties’ ...[but] not bars identified as gay. Not a solo venue’s webpage uses the pos ‘gay’ or related euphemisms, nor do they hint at targeting
Since last year’s let go of Chemsex, described by the Guardian as a “scary but valuable documentary”, the drug-fuelled sexual practices of some gay men hold increasingly become a matter of heated debate, both within the gay society and in the national press. Most recently, papers include picked up on the story of barrister Henry Hendron, whose partner died last year after overdosing on GHB at the couple’s London flat.
But unfortunately neither last year’s documentary nor most news stories since have managed to suspend moral judgement when addressing the topic. “Chemsex” is not receiving the depth of critical analysis it badly needs. According to most accounts, including the one put forward by the documentary, male lover men are driven to long sessions of “chemsex” because they are lonely and suffer from internalised homophobia. It is for those reasons, the narrative goes, that some of us conclude up pursuing human contact through “inauthentic” and “dangerous” means: “inauthentic” because connection is catalysed by drugs, and “dangerous” because it often involves unprotected sex.
The Chemsex documentary is a textbook train in how direct culture is still obsessed with queer sex. It
Sexual health for lgbtq+ and bisexual men
Having unprotected penetrative sex is the most likely way to pass on a sexually transmitted infection (STI).
Using a condom helps preserve against HIV and lowers the risk of getting many other STIs.
If you’re a man having sex with men (MSM), without condoms and with someone recent, you should have an STI and HIV assess every 3 months, otherwise, it should be at least once a year. This can be done at a sexual health clinic (SHC) or genitourinary medicine (GUM) clinic. This is important, as some STIs do not generate any symptoms.
Hepatitis A
Hepatitis A is a liver infection that's spread by a virus in poo.
Hepatitis A is uncommon in the UK but you can fetch it through sex, including oral-anal sex ("rimming") and giving oral sex after anal sex. MSM with multiple partners are particularly at risk. You can also get it through contaminated food and drink.
Symptoms of hepatitis A can arrive up to 8 weeks after sex and enclose tiredness and feeling sick (nausea).
Hepatitis A is not usually life-threatening and most people make a entire recovery within a couple of months.
MSM can escape getting hepatitis A by:
- washing hands after se