Early in college, Ou Jiayong had already learned two things. One, textbooks can be wrong. And two, it can be hard to change them — especially on topics as sensitive in China as homosexuality.
In 2016, during her first year at South China Agricultural University in her hometown, Guangzhou, she stumbled across a psychology textbook that described being gay as a mental disorder.
As a lesbian, Ms. Ou felt that was unacceptable, but the complaints she made went nowhere. So Ms. Ou, who also uses the name Xixi, brought a lawsuit demanding that the publisher remove the reference and publicly apologize.