Indicating the different attitude of younger Chinese toward sex, a sex-education textbook released in Jiangxi Province is getting a lot of flak from netizens.
The textbook speaks against premarital sex for women because it causes them to lose love. It also described females who engage in sex before marriage as sacrificing their bodies and becoming degraded.
“High School Sex Education,” the controversial textbook, also warned of the “tremendous negative psychological and physical impact on girls” when they indulge in premarital sex. The textbook, which was published in 2004 initially by 21st Century Publishing Group, pointed out that “Girls do not increase the love they receive from boys by sacrificing their bodies, but rather are seen as ‘degraded’ by their ‘conquerors.’”
For 12 years since its publication, the textbook – distributed to 2,000 students in the province - did not elicit negative reaction from students, but a teacher in southern China questioned in a recent Weibo post why did it limited the warning to women only which the teacher views as a form of sex discrimination, Time reported.
Li Yinhe, a sexologist at the Institute of Sociology at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, accused the textbook writers of parroting old Chinese beliefs. Describing warning toward premarital sex as “obviously wrong,” Li Yinhe noted that lack of unified sex-education textbooks in China which results in each province making its own.
Jue Ruen, a postdoctoral researcher at the SGS of the Harbin Institute of Technology, observed that Chinese attitude toward sex and hook-up had changed. Jue Ruen cited the case of Kris Wu, the former member of Chinese boyband EXO who last week filed a lawsuit against women that claimed to be his ex-girlfriend.
Jue Ruen pointed out that the alleged female partners of Kris Wu were the ones who posted online their alleged intimate photos together. She contrasted it with the scandal of Chinese actor Edison Chen in 2008 when his intimate photos with the women were leaked online without the female partners’ consent which led to slut shaming, reported Hong Kong Free Press.