Community notes on a controversial subject

Editor's note: Sudeshna Sarkar, a special commentator on current affairs for CGTN, is an India-based journalist and editor who has covered sexual minority issues extensively in South Asia. She also worked in China for over a decade. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily those of CGTN.

When I first started covering sexual minority issues – taboos, problems, crimes and rights –one of the first incidents I came across as a reporter based in South Asia was a knife attack on a gay man. He was slashed in the neck and left bleeding in the street to die.

That was in Nepal more than two decades ago. Fortunately, the man survived and since then, there has been a sea change in the former Himalayan kingdom, with the new constitution guaranteeing extensive rights for the lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender-queer community.

Transformative changes have also overtaken other countries in Asia, once considered more conservative and tradition-bound than the West.  Several of them occurred in China.

In 2023, Hong Kong co-hosted the Gay Games, a quadrennial event often called the Gay Olympics. The Chinese mainland decriminalized homosexuality in 1997. In 2001, homosexuality was struck off the list of psychiatric disorders.

But while states advance, it takes time for individual mindsets to change, especially if the individuals are not well educated, belong to older generations, or live in small cities and rural areas. This is something viewers need to be aware of when they watch films like Correct Me If I Am Wrong, a 23-minute documentary screening at the Doc Edge Festival in New Zealand this month.

The apparently autobiographical short by Hao Zhou, who is described as from southwest China, is about a Chinese filmmaker's family getting worried that the son and heir doesn't show any desire to get married. They conclude something is wrong with him and bring in a shaman or exorcist to "cure" him.

While shamans, exorcists, witch doctors et al were once part of traditional cultures all over the globe, in today's era of science and modernization, faith in them exists only in small pockets mired in poverty, lack of education and lack of access to medical care.

But viewers, especially those who have never been to China, may consider the situation projected in the documentary as a prevailing social trend in China. Critics of the Chinese government may consider it as a useful tool for bashing the Chinese authorities.

However, the facts on the ground say something different. In 2015, a man's family had him forcibly admitted in a psychiatric hospital in central China and the hospital diagnosed him to have "sexual preference disorder." He was then medicated without consent. After he was released, the man sued the hospital and the court ordered the hospital to make a public apology and pay him compensation.

In 2020, a Beijing court ruled in favor of the employee of an e-commerce platform who was dismissed for asking for sick leave to have "gender reassignment surgery." The court said the terms of employment in the employee's contract remained valid, entitling the employee to receive salary till the arbitration date. 

The court also reportedly said that "social tolerance is a blessing of the rule of law," and the "diverse ways of living" should be respected and the "dignity of transgender people" protected.

If you look at the psyche of the Chinese nation, it is not one based on carnalities but a higher vision that is a legacy of Confucianism, Taoism and other indigenous philosophies that are also an actual way of life in the country. The "Chinese dream" is a collective desire for a moderately prosperous society and national rejuvenation. The goal is to uplift all of society, not just some individuals, and to achieve that efforts are being made to ensure that everyone has access to the benefits of progress and modernization, and no one is left behind. This inclusive progress embraces people of all ethnicities, religions and sexual orientations. 

And to usher in this progress, the Chinese are doing things that are pragmatic, innovative and tangible, like developing the highest-yield seeds, the fastest railways, the cheapest large language models, and one of the most tenacious space exploration programs. There is a deadline for reaching the national goal and the clock is ticking. Creating new personal pronouns to express new sexual persona is not the priority now.

Having said that, it is also worth mulling what the filmmaker's dream was while making the documentary. Was it to initiate change? If so, can that be done by showing the film in New Zealand and Germany? Moreover, if a filmmaker could not communicate with his own family and modernize them, can he do that with a foreign audience?

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