Women’s rights activists yesterday criticized teaching materials designed for high-school health education, saying they contain content on sex education that is backward, heavily influenced by religious dogmas and could spread misleading information among young people.
Members of Taiwan Womens’ Link yesterday told a news conference in Taipei that while inspecting health education textbooks, printed by private-sector publishers, they discovered issues ranging from gender stereotypes, stigmatization of homosexuals and prejudice against premarital sex, and that some of the content is in violation of the Gender Equality Education Act (性別平等教育法).
For example, a health education textbook published by Youth (幼獅文化) said: “Homosexuals are people aged 18 or older who have had bodily contact on numerous occasions with someone of the same sex, resulting in orgasm,” group members said.
Another textbook, published by Taiyu (泰宇出版) says that characteristics displayed by some homosexual people include shame and a sense of guilt, adding that gay people often feel lonely and are “strongly oppressed,” they said.
Regarding biases against premarital sex, a textbook published by Hsin Hua (智業文化), says that having intercourse before marriage — with or without the use of condoms — prevents the couple from developing “real love,” as it leads to a relationship centered on carnal desires.
“Males engaging in premarital sex are prone to developing impotency due to uneasiness, anxiety or a sense of guilt,” according to content printed by the New Wun Ching Developmental Publishing Co (新文京出版社).
The group also panned the use of the term “religious teachings” to describe sexual intercourse in teachers’ guides; some of which cited excerpts from religious journals.
For example, a teachers’ guide published by Han Lin Publishing Co (翰林文教), which urges people to defend their virginity, substitutes the term “safe sex” with “safer sex,” saying that even when wearing condoms, there is a 43 percent chance of contracting HIV.
Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Lin Shu-fen (林淑芬), who attended the news conference, criticized the publisher for what she said were exaggerations of the risks associated with the use of condoms, saying such information could cause people to believe that using condoms is pointless.
Lin said that publishers should also include advice on how to behave sensibly after breakups in chapters related to sex education.
In response, National Academy for Educational Research official Wu Wen-lung (吳文龍) said he would forward the opinions gathered yesterday to the curriculum review committee.
A K-12 Education Administration official would conduct a review on teachers’ guides and ask publishers to remove misleading content, Wu said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching