Job Discussion Forums

[chinatwin88]

[chengdu4me]

China being a conservative society, as well as a society that has "regional" views on pretty much any subject is going to be pretty difficult to pin down on this subject.

Shanghai you can get away with almost anything. Beijing, the same, but only in certain parts of the city. The less "metropolitan' it is, the less tolerant the locals, the officials are going to be of "independent" thinking or behavior.

So, the bottom line is this...what you can get away with in one city will get you five or ten years in a re-education camp in another, only deported in another, and maybe just fired from your job for breach of contract in yet another. Yes, homosexual conduct is illegal in China. It is a social crime, much like prostitution and the "cure" is a few years or more at very hard labor while you think about your behavior. Yes, you agreed not to break the laws of China when you signed your contract. Yes, if you get fired, deported, jailed, or fined, it is entirely your fault. Please remember that in China, you have no rights, no recourse. If the local police decide you are going to a re-education camp, you will just disappear, you do not get a phone call, you do not get to write Aunt Millie, your school wil not be notified, neither will the US consulate( or your country of citizenship) and there will be no "trial" Re-education camps are not part of the penal system. You are not be punished, therefore there is no need for a trial. You are being "educated" in moral behavior and learning to live in a manner that is reflective of the views of society. Class usually begins the moment you are in custody with a good beating!

Having said this, all that is left is your decision whether to flaunt the issue and take your chances, or keep your private life very, very discreet and exercise your lifestyle perogatives when you head for the big city on your breaks.

Whatever you do, be careful.

[chinatwin88]

Gay sex was decriminalised in 1997 in China. Before that, people used to be prosecuted under �hooliganism� laws which included homosexuality, sex in public, group sex, sex by force or sex with a child. Chinese Psychiatric Association and Psychiatrists in 2001, China no longer classify "tongzhi" as having a pathological condition. Didier Zheng was the first openly gay internet tv host on an internet show called Tongxing Xianglian or "Connecting Homosexuals". I am not sure if it is still available.

In the 1970s, a similar shift in attitude in the US served to open people minds to alternative lifestyles, so they are only 30 or so years in the rears of other countries social awareness.

[lerenah]

Wow, this is definitely a wealth of information. Thank you to everyone for expanding my awareness on this issue in China. To answer an earlier post's question, I am living in Shanghai. I don't plan on flaunting my orientation, but I just wanted to get a good feel for what would happen if I'm out on the weekends and get spotted with my partner by a manager or something. The information provided here definitely helps me to keep it in perspective. It seems as if I'm going to have to be quite discrete to play it safe because I definitely would not want to lose my job. Basically, this is the question I mostly wanted to get answered from this discussion, whether or not schools have equal opportunity laws set in place to protect their employees from discrimination. And from what I gather so far, they don't have them. So, I'll have to keep my proper distance from people I don't trust.

[Hansen]

"If the local police decide you are going to a re-education camp, you will just disappear, you do not get a phone call, you do not get to write Aunt Millie, your school wil not be notified, neither will the US consulate( or your country of citizenship) and there will be no "trial" Re-education camps are not part of the penal system. You are not be punished, therefore there is no need for a trial. You are being "educated" in moral behavior and learning to live in a manner that is reflective of the views of society. Class usually begins the moment you are in custody with a good beating! "

The above comment is a fantasy, something contrived by an overactive and paranoid imagination. While these camps may exist for the local people, the idea that a foreign citizen would essentially be kidnapped by the authorities and disappear into a gulag is unbelievable.

In the case of serious criminal activity, one might be incarcerated. In most cases deportation would be the best choice.

[chengdu4me]

Hansen , if you beleive that, then you are the one living in a fantasy. While deportation might be the easiest way to resolve the situation in most officials view, there have been and are today, westerners in re-education camps. I personally know of a Brit that spend three years in a reeducation camp in Yunnan province for "encouraging adultery". He had an affair with a married woman while teaching in Kunming. His reward for this was three years of his life that probably took 30 years off of it. He is in terrible health now, with many chronic and untreatable problems. He was not given any warning, trial, phone call, nothing! He got picked up, taken to the police station, beaten, taken to a camp and dropped off. No one on earth heard from him again until he was released and deported. He was released 8 months ago.

Beleive what you want, live how ever you want, but if you think that a quick trip to the airport is the resolution for social crimes committed by a westerners is always the path taken, you are sadly mistaken.

[IT2006]

[Tainan]

[kev7161]

[The Ever-changing Cleric]

[lerenah]

I agree with Ever-Changing Cleric on this one. I have a friend who happens to be Chinese and she's very curious about homosexuality. She's open-minded to differences and she enjoys learning about them. To say that the Chinese people aren't open-minded about this topic would be an assumption. Given their communist history, most of them are trying to get as far away from it as possible. This attitude makes them more interested in the western world. It seems the younger generation is trying to be more individual like the western world. Also, because they've been so conditioned to study things (rope learning), they tend to approach sensitive subjects from a very logical perspective more than an emotional one, which is quite different from western approaches.

[Renegade_o_Funk]

When first coming to China from a Western Country, one may think Lesbians are rampant among Chinese girls, as they are walking around holding hands everywhere. Unfortunatly that is not the case Im not sure exactly why they do it, part of being close friends or they feel safer that way

Anyways, in Beijing most locals don't go bars, and would probably have no clue which bars were gay bars. As mentioned above, if your boss showed up at a gay bar, you probably would not have much to worry about.

[alter ego]

[lerenah]

I'm not necessarily contradicting myself, more than I'm agreeing with what's become an underlying discussion within this discussion. As I stated in my earlier post my reason for posing the question was to get a 'feel', by getting a 'feel' I mean taking what I already know and inviting other opinions to expand my awareness. Now, given that since I've posted this, the topic has gone in the direction of not just discussing how homosexuality is viewed in China and on the job, but in the direction of whether or not certain Chinese people are open-minded enough and mature enough to openly discuss it in an educational way. This topic is slightly different from my original question. Therefore, to answer your question. No, it is not a contradiction. Another reason for posting is to get a good discussion going. I'm always intrigued with the intelligence I find on forums like this and thought there's no harm in simply posting a question, even if I may have my version of the truth to get a good feel for how other's might see it as well. What's so wrong about that? And even if I were to have my mind made up at the beginning and were to change my mind towards the end or middle of the discussion,which I haven't, what would be so wrong about that? So, why would I post if I already knew? Because I don't know it all.

[lerenah]

Are we in a courtroom?