The sampling methodology has been described in detail in “Levels of Change in Adolescent Sexual Behavior in Three Asian Cities”.
The present study addresses this gap in the research literature by exploring adolescents’ and young adults’ perception of homosexuality and related factors in three Asian cities whose cultures are, at root, Confucian.ĭata for this article come from a 2006 cross-sectional survey of 17,016 male and female, married and unmarried adolescents and young adults, aged 15–24 years, conducted in urban Hanoi, Shanghai, and Taipei and rural areas included in their large metropolitan districts by a team of researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the Population and Health Research Center in Taiwan's Bureau of Health Promotion, the Shanghai Institute for Planned Parenthood Research, and the Hanoi Institute for Gender and Women's Studies. However, most studies on these issues have been conducted in Western populations, and adolescent's perceptions of homosexuality have seldom been established in non-Western societies that have been largely Confucian in orientation. Efforts to improve the perception of homosexuality require an understanding of the factors related to those perceptions. It is clear that homosexuals face considerable challenges from the heterosexual population as well as from themselves. More seriously, the homosexual may suffer tendencies leaning to deliberate self-harm and suicide. In coping with such negative feelings and the related emotional pain, the homosexual may use or abuse substances such as tobacco, alcohol, and drugs. The homosexual might suffer a variety of negative feelings and psychological problems such as loneliness, anxiety, and depression. The less knowledge of homosexuality people have, the more negative view of homosexuality they hold.Īs a result of these negative views from both the heterosexual and the homosexual communities, homosexuals are exposed to various forms of discrimination, prejudice, and physical and verbal abuse which have contributed to their marginalization and made them vulnerable to a variety of health problems. Meanwhile, people's view of homosexuality may be largely influenced by their knowledge of sexual and reproductive health especially about sexual orientation and homosexuality, which can be learned from books, other people, Internet and movies/videos, etc.
Thus, homosexuality may be seen to jeopardize human reproduction and the maintenance of the family line and to violate traditional standards of what men and women should be. Traditional family values and gender role values, important components of Confucianism, emphasize the continuity of the family lineage-regarded as the most significant duty of the family-and emphasize the cultural standards of femininity and masculinity, respectively. In contrast to Western countries, in East Asia extending from China across Korea and Japan and into Vietnam where Confucianism dominates the value system, people may hold a more negative view of homosexuality. The World Values Survey and national statistics for 35 countries also document that while positive attitudes toward homosexuality have increased from 1990 to 2002, an overall negative perception was still prevalent.
Results about attitudes toward the legalization of homosexual relations (1977–2002) indicate there had been little change over four decades. Public surveys on the causes of homosexuality, a critical component of people's overall perception of homosexuality, have shown the percentage of respondents who attributed same-sex attraction to biological causes has risen over time, but is still not the view of the majority. According to public opinion polls conducted from 1977 to 2004 in the United States, Americans’ attitudes toward homosexuality (gay men and lesbians) have evolved. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality-thought of as “sexual desire or behavior directed toward a person or persons of one's own sex” -has not been classified as mental illness by the American Psychiatric Association since 1973, by the World Health Organization since 1993, and by the Chinese Psychiatric Association since 2001 and is now considered an alternative lifestyle.Īlthough with the normalization of homosexuality, people's positive perception of homosexuality has gradually increased, negative perceptions-for example, negative attitude, heterosexism, and homophobia-nevertheless widely abound. The tenth revision of the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems states “Sexual orientation alone is not to be regarded as a disorder”. Sexual orientation is generally defined by whether one is erotically attracted to males, females, or both.