Fudan sets up course about homosexuality
16/8/2005 7:18
Xu Weixin/Shanghai Daily news
The city's first
undergraduate university course about homosexuality and gay culture has proven
more popular than expected, as hundreds of students have tried to sign up for
one of 100 seats in the class at Fudan University.
Fudan became the first
university in the city to offer a postgraduate course about homosexual health
concerns, a class that focused heavily on AIDS prevention, two years ago. About
2,000 students have taken that course so far.
The new course focuses more on
the sociological aspects of homosexuality than medical issues.
Hundreds of
students have expressed interest in the new course, according to Sun Zhongxin,
the professor in charge of the course.
"The previous course mainly focused on
how to prevent AIDS in homosexuals, but now we will pay more attention on how to
have a proper view about homosexuals," said Gao Yanning, who will lecture
students in the class. "We will give students an equitable judgment on
homosexuals and help eliminate students' discrimination."
"In addition to our
own teachers, we will invite sociologists like Li Yinhe and a well-known Taiwan
writer Pai Hsien-yung to give lectures on homosexuality and the status quo in
China and the world," Gao added.
Students who have participated the previous
course, said most young people don't have a clear understanding of homosexuals,
as they don't meet many out homosexuals in their daily lives.
"At first, my
tutor suggested I select the course, since I felt uncomfortable about the
topic," said Liu Binyi, who took the homosexual health course last year. "But I
am now relaxed talking about homosexuals and have started to accept
homosexuality now."
Local scholars said the course will give students a fair
understanding of homosexuality, which is still a taboo topic in the nation. "In
China, there are about 30 million homosexuals. But our society doesn't accept
them. So, opening such courses in university can be very helpful to dispel
prejudice and understand such people," said Zhang Youde, a sociologist from
Shanghai University.
"I think it's necessary to get to know about the
culture, background and the attitude of other countries to homosexuals. And such
courses can be very beneficial to us," said Liu Yu, a student at Shanghai
International Studies University.
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