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NEWS: AFP: Chinese Social Media Platform Sina Weibo Bans Gay-Themed Content


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#854626



Joined: 04 Apr 2016
Posts: 171
PostPosted: Sun Apr 15, 2018 5:39 am Reply with quote
Mercenaries holy crap. That game is barely available in the states. Unless you own an Xbox original and know your way around ebay. So 400 million people can't talk about grand theft auto or masturbate to yuri on ice now? Lame.
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Juno016



Joined: 09 Jan 2012
Posts: 2377
PostPosted: Sun Apr 15, 2018 7:07 am Reply with quote
I'm all for non-Western countries sticking to their ground on culture and deciding what they want and don't want to culturally accept... but with so many LGBT Chinese people, and with Chinese LGBT communities having long established their own subculture there, I'd have hoped the Chinese government would at least catch on and care. Are these people really doing harm to traditional Confucius principle?
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Lemonchest



Joined: 18 Mar 2015
Posts: 1771
PostPosted: Sun Apr 15, 2018 8:12 am Reply with quote
I was under the impression that Chinese law had been moving in the opposite direction for the last 20 years, with homosexuality being decriminalised, no longer considered a mental illness & with legal protections against discrimination. What law prompted this ban? Is it because it's "foreign" gay media?
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wohdin



Joined: 10 Jun 2011
Posts: 352
PostPosted: Sun Apr 15, 2018 8:22 am Reply with quote
China has never been pro-LGBT. They've only barely been better than Russia toward their LGBT community.
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Hellsoldier



Joined: 21 Jun 2013
Posts: 752
Location: Porto,Portugal,Europe,Earth,Sol
PostPosted: Sun Apr 15, 2018 9:15 am Reply with quote
Juno016 wrote:
I'm all for non-Western countries sticking to their ground on culture and deciding what they want and don't want to culturally accept... but with so many LGBT Chinese people, and with Chinese LGBT communities having long established their own subculture there, I'd have hoped the Chinese government would at least catch on and care. Are these people really doing harm to traditional Confucius principle?


So... If, say, a bisexual woman, who also happens to be very kinky, is born in a place without an LGBT subculture, and that is sexually prude, she should be deprived of access to LGBT Culture, or really, LGBT-oriented entertainment, and socially ostracized for promiscuity. Is that your logic? Supression of Civil Liberties, and I dare say, Human Rights, on the grounds of a Public Morality? Furthermore, is everyone in China a follower of Confucian Religion/Philosophy or influencedby it? Even if 99,99% are, 0,01% have all the right to live as they please, in accordance to the Principle of Harm.

Civil Liberties and Human Rights trump Cultural Harmony. All Human beings should be born free.
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michaeltanzer



Joined: 25 Nov 2010
Posts: 168
PostPosted: Sun Apr 15, 2018 10:45 am Reply with quote
WTH right? This doesn't make any sense!
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Wtv



Joined: 02 Nov 2014
Posts: 157
PostPosted: Sun Apr 15, 2018 11:04 am Reply with quote
Lemonchest wrote:
I was under the impression that Chinese law had been moving in the opposite direction for the last 20 years, with homosexuality being decriminalised, no longer considered a mental illness & with legal protections against discrimination. What law prompted this ban? Is it because it's "foreign" gay media?


You might want to research it better since it's just something I read elsewhere, but apparently, China has a law against the display of "abnormal relationship". It doesn't say anything about homosexuality, but some homophobic politicians use it like that because the law is too vague.
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Kadmos1



Joined: 08 May 2014
Posts: 13541
Location: In Phoenix but has an 85308 ZIP
PostPosted: Sun Apr 15, 2018 11:15 am Reply with quote
Article said "In a statement on Friday, Sina Weibo said it would remove 'illegal' content including 'manga and videos with pornographic implications, promoting violence or (related to) homosexuality.' According to The Global Times, the main targets included 'pornographic, violent or gay-themed cartoons,' as well as content such as "slash, gay, boys love, and gay fictional stories.'"
Unless they are using "gay" in the context for both sexes, it sounds like they are only banning content with homosexual males. Thus, lesbian content may still be permitted. If that's the case, we have sexism against gay men.
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Usagi-kun



Joined: 03 Jul 2013
Posts: 877
Location: Nashville, TN
PostPosted: Sun Apr 15, 2018 11:23 am Reply with quote
This is alarming news, and slow burn when it comes to censorship.
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PsychoPearl



Joined: 27 Oct 2016
Posts: 152
PostPosted: Sun Apr 15, 2018 12:15 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
slash, gay, boys love, and gay fictional stories."


Are they only targeting male homosexuality? This ban is dumb..
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Hellsoldier



Joined: 21 Jun 2013
Posts: 752
Location: Porto,Portugal,Europe,Earth,Sol
PostPosted: Sun Apr 15, 2018 12:48 pm Reply with quote
PsychoPearl wrote:
Quote:
slash, gay, boys love, and gay fictional stories."


Are they only targeting male homosexuality? This ban is dumb..


It's a ban. It's meant to be stupid.
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michaeltanzer



Joined: 25 Nov 2010
Posts: 168
PostPosted: Sun Apr 15, 2018 12:51 pm Reply with quote
One, China is known for censoring anything and it's a restricted country and Two, the censorship might be way worse than I thought.
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Nacirema



Joined: 21 Mar 2015
Posts: 58
PostPosted: Sun Apr 15, 2018 2:11 pm Reply with quote
For more context, there been stories from 2014 and 2011 respectively about how yaoi/gay erotica/slash fiction websites got shut down and female writers got arrested for this. On the Buzzfeed link, they show the police arresting female writers and the family members being interviewed talking about how ashamed they are of them.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/kevintang/inside-chinas-insane-witch-hunt-for-slash-fiction-writers?utm_term=.ob24D4AO0#.cyReOeN1m

https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2011/03/21/32-chinese-women-arrested-for-writing-gay-erotica/

The crackdown on gay content has been going on for decades really. I found a academic article where a BL artist talk about how Chinese gov. been targeting gay content since the 1990s. Also it go in-depth about how the Chinese gov. been basically waging war against gay content.

http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue20/liu.htm

Also the reason crackdown isn't really for religious reasons. CCP has been for decades targeted groups that they don't have full control over: feminists, ethnic minorities, religious minorities including followers of traditional Chinese practices, etc. and even rival communist fractions. There been purges like this going back decades.

Quote:
So, China is an oppressive dictatorship, so what this has to do with anime?

It probably got to do with yaoi and BL which might get shared with Chinese fans online. Also, didn't you post in another Chinese related thread about how China were more free than the US, that it were the savior of the anime industry, and that censorship wouldn't affect anime/manga unless it explicitly call for overthrowing the Chinese government.
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Chrono1000





PostPosted: Sun Apr 15, 2018 2:33 pm Reply with quote
That China is going after gay-themed content might help it make the news but this type of censorship is typical for a communist country. While China isn't as harsh as they used to be and there are countries that are a lot worse it is important to remember that communism and individual rights are mutually exclusive.
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HolsteinCrab



Joined: 07 Dec 2017
Posts: 42
PostPosted: Sun Apr 15, 2018 2:47 pm Reply with quote
Having lurked around weibo for some of the bl/seiyuu fandoms for several years I am not surprised that China has pulled this but am nonetheless thoroughly unimpressed.

I imagine bilibili is the next big target although last time I visited it, there were bl/yaoi uploads still there. Chinese fujoshi have always been pretty adept at finding slash content (or creating it) and distributing it with each other and in my experience weibo never seemed to their predominant sharing location, sometimes they'd share a link there but the host would be bilibili or baidu.

I've long admired the way Chinese fangirl communities have been able to find ways around The Great Firewall of China (particularly the twitter ban) and share information it tries to block. I imagine this won't stop them but I still feel it's a shame that they have to resort to skulduggery for some slash. But the way this is discriminating LGBT content is an even bigger shame.

Instead of achieving their goal, they’ve probably just made the people they wanted to suppress even more determined to find ways to resist them.
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