Chinese activist continues fight for LGBTQ, intersex rights from U.S.
Yanhui Peng, co-founder of LGBT Rights Advocacy China, a Chinese advocacy group, in 2014 sought to expose doctors and therapists who practice so-called conversion therapy.
He saw an ad on Baidu, a Chinese search engine, for a therapist in the city of Chongqing who used electroshock therapy to “cure” a person’s homosexuality.
The therapist charged patients $5,000 (34,506 Chinese yuan) for 30 treatments. “They will make sure you will be straight,” Peng recalled to the Washington Blade during a May 19 interview in D.C.
Peng decided to receive a treatment, which cost $90 (621.12 Chinese yuan) and lasted an hour. “He asked me to lay down on a sofa and he started to hypnotize me,” recalled Peng. “He asked me to close my eyes, calm down, breathe in, breathe out.” Peng described the room in which he was as “small” and “very uncomfortable.” “He then started to ask me to think about a situation, having sex with men, and see if I have some mental or physical reaction to move my fingers … he didn’t wait until I moved my finger.
