Chinese sex education classes still terribly sexist

By Wang Han Source:Global Times Published: 2016/7/3 18:03:00

Illustration: Lu Ting/GT



"Premarital sex has a tremendous negative psychological and physical effect on girls," says a controversial high school sex education textbook being used in Jiangxi Province. "Girls that devote their virginity and bodies to boys cannot increase the love they receive from boys, but rather will be seen as degraded by their conquerors."

Such terminology has sparked a backlash in China after a netizen recently posted passages from the textbook on Sina Weibo. Many people accused the school of promoting double standards in premarital sex for males and females. For instance, one netizen argued, it is usually boys who persuade girls to have sex, so why does the textbook pin all the blame on girls? Other online commentators said that the true purpose of sex education should be to guide students toward safe sex as opposed to outright discouraging sex or making students feel guilty about their natural sex drives.

As a Chinese female in my early twenties, I was not surprised to read that such gender-biased mores still exist in today's schools. In fact, back in March, I wrote a column titled "Frisky Chinese students need more sex ed from parents" where I decried the hyper-traditionalist attitudes of many Chinese parents and teachers whose conservative methods of sex education have led to a rising number of abortions and sexual diseases among today's teens.

Despite the many advances that global women's liberation movements have made this century, the preservation of female virginity is still highly cherished in modern Chinese society. Men from every class and background generally prefer to marry "in tact" women over females who have had lovers. A quick glance online reveals thousands of social media discussions between Chinese men who, while having little compunction about dating devirginized girls, refuse to actually marry one.

One popular Chinese blogger with a PhD in chemistry wrote a controversial post saying he would never marry a woman who has any sexual experience because he cannot tolerate his wife's vagina "contaminated" by other men's sperm. Though his harsh words were criticized by female netizens, the post was liked and shared by many more men who agreed with him.

Such hostile attitudes toward "used" Chinese women has driven us to feel ashamed about having premarital sex. One of my university roommates dated several boys in her undergraduate years but claims to have never slept with any of them because she feared they would discard her after. As such, she refused to indulge in any penetrating sexual contact that wouldn't allow her to stay "intact" for the man she would someday marry.

But for those girls who do go all the way, hymen repair operations are a very popular form of plastic surgery in China. Hymenorrhaphy, as it's called, only takes 30 minutes and allows females to re-build their "proof" of virginity so that they will bleed on their wedding night. Deceptive, yes, but extremely effective in helping men and women save face.

A large reason why virginity is still prized in China is the shoddy so-called sex education that teens receive in our country's schools. Shanghai's very-first primary school-level sex education textbook wasn't even published until 2011. Up until then, pretty much everything students in Shanghai were taught about sex came straight from their teacher's mouths. Shanghai is, ironically, considered China's most progressive city, so imagine just how backwards sex ed is in other provinces.

Take my hometown in Wenzhou for example. I attended the best schools in my province, but never once did I have a sex-ed class. My only memory of learning about sex was during a middle school science lesson. Our science book had one chapter about "how human beings develop from a fertilized ovum to an adult." The teacher was so shy about this chapter that he straight-up told us to just read and study it on our own. That was it.

I'm quite glad to see the online backlash that has ensued following the exposure of that shameful sex-ed textbook in Jiangxi. After the story was picked up by the international media, the Education Department of Jiangxi was forced to revise their curriculum and the book. But this is not a happy ending for today's generation of Chinese students, because the sad fact remains that for every sexist sex-ed textbook being used in our schools, there are dozens more schools who simply don't have any sex-ed classes or books.



The opinions expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Global Times.



Posted in: TwoCents, Metro Shanghai

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