Beijing activist John Shen went undercover in an effort to expose the use of controversial "conversion" methods that promise to "cure" gay and lesbian people in China.
U.K. television network Channel 4 has produced a new documentary titled, "Unreported World," which follows John, 22, and other members of China's largest LGBT rights group, the Beijing LGBT Center, as they take viewers behind the scenes for a close-up look at a few of the outlandish, horrifying techniques -- including electroshock therapy -- used in clinics across the country. These "cures," of course, have absolutely no basis in science.
Still, the resulting footage is quite unsettling.
"Your current conditioned reflex is when you see the same sex, you feel love," one medical professional at a clinic in Tianjin told Shen in the report. She went on to suggest drugs and electric shocks as methods for ridding one's self of same-sex attraction. "Now what I want to make you feel is scared," she said.
Another clinician is shown physically administering an electric shock treatment at a hospital outside of Beijing.
The report is particularly disconcerting given that it comes less than a year after a Chinese psychological clinic was ordered to pay 3,500 yuan ($560) to a gay man for administrating such treatments. The 30-year-old patient, Yang Teng, had taken the clinic to court for administering electric shocks and hypnosis with the aim of making him heterosexual. He'd voluntarily visited the clinic in 2014 after pressure from family members to marry and have a child, according to the Associated Press.
The court ruled that such "conversion" treatments were illegal.
China dropped homosexuality from its list of mental disorders in 2001. Still, the nation has no anti-discrimination legislation acknowledging the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community in place, and same-sex marriage remains illegal.
You can check out the full "Unreported World" documentary here.
H/T Quartz
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