“I’ve been warned not to talk about it,” the woman wrote, before revealing snippets of the day she says she was arrested for publishing gay erotica.

“I’ll never forget it - being escorted to the car in full view, enduring the humiliation of stripping naked for examination in front of strangers, putting on a vest for photos, sitting in the chair, shaking with fear, my heart pounding.”

The handle, Pingping Anan Yongfu, is among at least 8 in recent months which have shared accounts on Chinese social media platform Weibo of being arrested for publishing gay erotic fiction. As authors recounted their experiences, dozens of lawyers offered pro bono help.

At least 30 writers, nearly all of them women in their 20s, have been arrested across the country since February, a lawyer defending one told the BBC. Many are out on bail or awaiting trial, but some are still in custody. Another lawyer told the BBC that many more contributors were summoned for questioning.

  • partial_accumen@lemmy.world
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    23 hours ago

    “The Chinese government wants to promote traditional family values and liking danmei novels is seen as a factor in making women less willing to have children,” Dr Ge explains.

    • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de
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      2 hours ago

      It’s the same among “Conservatives” in the US, Russia, and now apparently China.

      They all say that we’d need “high birth rates”, which is just not true.

      Think about it: Automation and AI have the potential to put lots of people into unemployment in the next 20 years. For the sake of preventing that unemployment, it’d be good if people had fewer kids. Yet for some reason, governments struggle really hard to comprehend that simple connection.

      • Master167@lemmy.world
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        31 minutes ago

        Automation and AI have the potential to put lots of people into unemployment in the next 20 years. For the sake of preventing that unemployment, it’d be good if people had fewer kids. Yet for some reason, governments struggle really hard to comprehend that simple connection.

        Because they assume all people will be consumers of goods. So if they have more people, there will be more consumers to buy things.

        Now the assumption falls apart in any rigor since automation means that less people are needed for labor and would have money to buy gods. But that requires a government that thinks beyond the limited lifetimes of those running the government.

    • idiomaddict@lemmy.world
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      19 hours ago

      I generally want to have sex with my husband after reading erotica. You know, because it’s arousing. How did this not occur to them?