Broadly: Oral Sex and the Alarming Rise of HPV-Related Throat Cancer in Men

The leading cause of tonsil cancer is tobacco use, but Bolnick, who is married with two kids, didn't smoke. His doctor told him that his cancer was caused by human papilloma virus, or HPV. It was only three years earlier that Maura Gillison, now a professor of internal medicine at Ohio State, published the results of a seven-year-long population study that discovered people with head and neck cancer were 15 times more likely to be infected with HPV in their mouths or throats than those without. [...]

HPV is the most common sexually transmitted disease in the US—there are more than 100 types, though not all cause health problems. But today, more and more people, predominantly men, are being diagnosed with oral HPV-related cancer. That's not surprising, since a recent report from the CDC found that between 2011 and 2014, more men (6.8 percent) than women (1.2 percent) had high-risk oral HPV, or a strain of HPV known to cause cancer. Within 20 years, health experts expect the majority of head and neck cancers to be caused by HPV-positive carcinomas instead of smoking and alcohol, and by 2020, the rates of HPV-related oropharyngeal (area encompassing the throat, tonsils, and back of the tongue)cancer will surpass those of cervical cancer. [...]

Currently, the only way to safeguard from developing any HPV-positive cancer—whether it's oral, cervical, penile, or anal—is to be vaccinated. But the vaccine only works for people who have not been exposed to the virus yet, and about 14 million people become infected with some form of it each year. That's why the age requirements are fairly young: The CDC recommends the HPV vaccine for young women at age 11 or 12, through 26, and for young men through 21.

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Broadly: Restricting Abortion Access Is Class Warfare

Abortion is subjected to much harsher restrictions than any other kind of legal medical care, despite being one of the safest surgical procedures in the world. It’s because of these restrictions that accessing abortion is becoming increasingly expensive; for obvious reasons, the rising cost disproportionately affects low-income women. Conservative legislators have enacted hundreds of medically unnecessary restrictions on abortion providers in the past decade—needlessly mandating that they be outfitted like a surgical center, for instance, or forcing them to enter into agreements with nearby hospitals. Laws like this have contributed to the closing of dozens of abortion clinics across the country—so much so that 87 percent of all US counties have no abortion provider, forcing women to travel incredibly long distances to terminate unwanted pregnancies.

The lack of providers also contributes to longer wait times for appointment availability, pushing some women past the legal time limit to obtain the procedure in their state. Twenty-seven states also require women to receive counseling, then wait a certain amount of time—between 24 and 72 hours—before getting an abortion. Fourteen require patients to get this counseling in-person, meaning they must make the trip to the clinic twice. This has the potential to increase travel costs by hundreds of dollars, or to necessitate an overnight stay, depending on your zip code.

Perhaps the most flagrant offense against low-income women is the Hyde Amendment, passed in 1976, which prohibits Medicaid from being used to pay for abortion services, making it prohibitively difficult for the 6.5 million American women who obtain health care through Medicaid to get a safe and legal abortion. This legislation is particularly cruel, given that 75 percent of abortion patients are poor or low-income. And it's especially harmful to women of color, who disproportionately rely on Medicaid for coverage. (According to Planned Parenthood, 30 percent of Black women and 24 percent of Hispanic women are enrolled in Medicaid, compared with just 14 percent of white women.)

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Broadly: The Black Feminist Who Argued for Intersectionality Before the Term Existed

But while Crenshaw was the first to use the term, intersectional approaches to understanding struggle and oppression can be traced back to at least a century ago. In the early 1900s, Black feminists such as Mary Church Terrell, Nannie Burroughs, and Fannie Barrier Williams were already schooling folks on the ways in which patriarchy, racism, and sexism intertwine in America. Among them, too, was Anna Julia Cooper, a Black feminist trailblazer, and one of the first to formally introduce the concept of intersectionality. [...]

Although it may seem (hopefully) obvious to some today, Cooper asserting at the time that the intersection of race and gender is something that should not be overlooked was extraordinary. She made it known that Black women had unique experiences that were best expressed through their own voices, and argued that racial progress could not be defined solely through Black men’s perspectives nor through the lens of white male experts. [...]

Cooper also challenged white feminists to broaden their notion of liberation to include women of color and Black men. She wrote in A Voice, “The cause of freedom is not the cause of a race or a sect, a party or a class,—it is the cause of humankind, the very birthright of humanity. Now unless we are greatly mistaken the Reform of our day, known as the Women’s Movement, is essentially such an embodiment, if its pioneers could only realize it…”

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Broadly: As Ukraine's Rape Epidemic Goes Largely Ignored, Survivors Plead for Help

Sexual violence—including rape, sexual slavery, and forced prostitution—is a common method of torture in Ukraine’s conflict zone, according to local NGO Justice for Peace in Donbas (JPD). One in three women and one in four men have suffered or witnessed sexual violence at the hands of officers on both sides of the conflict, JPD documented in a December 2017 report based on 300 interviews with survivors and witnesses.

Human rights organizations disagree over the extent to which sexual violence can be considered a weapon of war in Ukraine. While EUCCI says it has been used "consciously and deliberately" as a form of torture and political intimidation to achieve victory in the conflict, a 2016 UN monitoring mission report concluded that it found no evidence of either side using it systematically for strategic ends. [...]

According to the UN, by the end of 2016, Ukraine’s Chief Military Prosecutor’s Office had launched only three criminal proceedings involving allegations of conflict-related sexual violence. The military prosecutor’s office said the cases have been closed due to lack of evidence, and derided allegations of impunity as "unjustified rumors," Newsweek reported.

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Broadly: Man and Wife and Wife: The Dark World of Polygamous Wedding Ceremonies

In recent years, Order weddings have become even more atypical: After David and Daniel, two of the highest ranking elders in the Order, went to prison for incest and rape—they are married to several of their own nieces, half-sisters, and cousins, some of whom were underage at the time of the weddings—the protocol changed. "They started taking the bride and the groom and whomever was going to marry them... into a separate room, after they walked down the aisle, so that no one can witness their wedding," Julianna explains. "Then people can't legally say that they saw the couple get married—and it's usually women that are underage, and it's an older guy, and they're related."

The underage brides, though, are nothing new. When Julianna was 15 years old, she dreamt that she should marry her then 19-year-old nephew, Jacob Kingston, the son of her half-brother, Order figurehead John Daniel Kingston. Because their religion—a fundamentalist interpretation of traditional Mormonism—believes that prophecies from God can come to you in your sleep, as they did to the original Mormon prophet Joseph Smith, members of the Order place special significance on the literal interpretation of dreams. [...]

"The men can dance with whomever they want, but not with a married woman they're not married to," she continues. "And if a girl is married, she's not going to dance with anyone except her husband, or maybe her dad or brother. But the married men can pretty much dance with any of the single women."

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Broadly: This Man Got a PhD in Threesomes

Still, fewer women than men have had threesomes. According to one Canadian study published earlier this year, eight percent of women and 24 percent of men reported having had a mixed-gender threesome. This research also shows that participants were also kind of lazy about arranging threesomes—unless they were men. "It is likely," authors Ashley E. Thompson and E. Sandra Byers note, "that any increase in [mixed-gender threesome] experience among heterosexuals will be driven by men rather than by women." [...]

One reason for the difference between female and male interest in threesomes is that pop culture has traditionally pitched threesomes toward a male gaze. Researchers including Breanne Fahs and activists including Shiri Eisner have written of how TV and porn cultivate an expectation of women's "performative bisexuality," involving men as spectators and participants. And while the idea of being with two women is often exciting for a man, Scoats' research with women suggests that many are initially intimidated by the idea of a threesome with two men—but this is only if the expectation is that the two men won't touch. If all three are interacting sexually, women are more turned on. [...]

Admittedly, Scoats' findings have been limited in scope to middle-class white college students. "We have predominantly found it among younger white British guys," he says of the greater open-mindedness when it comes to straight men's sexual boundaries, "but... there's also some research from the UK [of this happening with] of people from lower socioeconomic classes; there is some research starting to come out with people of color." [...]

In fact, much of the increasing male tolerance of mixed-gender threesomes seems to be limited to the MFM variety, where the two men don't touch each other, rather than MMF, where it's all hands on deck. (The letter in the center corresponds to the person in the middle of the sex sandwich, so to speak.) As one Reddit user on a thread about threesomes notes: "I don't want this dude touching me even if it's by accident."

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Broadly: Dogs Will Lie to Get What They Want, New Study Says

Next, the dogs were taught how to lead a person to food. They watched as sausages (their favorite treat) and dog biscuits were placed in two identical boxes, which were then set on the ground with a third, empty box. During the test, the dogs was asked to "Show me the food," during which they lead their human partner to one of the boxes on the ground. They were tested twice with the cooperative partner and twice with the competitive partner. While the cooperative partners rewarded the dogs with whatever was in the box, if it wasn't empty, the competitive partners kept their findings. [...]

In other words, more than half of the dogs realized taking the competitive person to the box of sausages would not benefit them in the least, so they lied when asked to show her the food. In fact, two dogs named Arwen and Nelson were so smart, they always led the cooperative person, never the competitive person, to the sausages. Baxter, Cicca, Barni, and Caju also never led the competitive partner to the sausages, although they were less consistent with the cooperative partner. [...]

The question is: Should dog owners start to side eye their pets a little more? Marianne Heberlein, the lead author on the study, suggests maybe so. "A dog still is a loyal, lovely companion," she tells Broadly. "However, the study shows that dogs, like other animals, try to optimize [their] own profit. They seem to know what they want and also can manipulate humans to reach their goal." She recommends owners "be careful and precise in rewarding your dog" as it may have faked a behavior just to get a reward.

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Broadly: Satanists vs. Republicans: A Battle for Abortion Rights Rages in Missouri

The Satanic Temple is a fairly notorious organization; it describes itself as non-theistic religion centered on the literary figure of Satan. This particular group of Satanists don't worship the actual devil—they don't believe in the devil, or any sort of supernatural being, for that matter—but they contend that "religion can, and should, be divorced from superstition." Since their founding in 2013, they've taken religious freedom laws to their logical extreme as a form of political protest, essentially arguing that any legal exemptions that apply to Christians should apply to Satanists as well. [...]

This assertion is antithetical to two of the central tenets of Satanism: that one's body is inviolable, subject to one's own will alone, and that one's beliefs should conform to the best scientific understanding of the world. "There is no medical or scientific purpose for mandating an abortion waiting period, nor is the idea that 'life begins at conception' a scientific fact," explains Jex Blackmore, a spokesperson for the Temple. For this reason, Mary Doe presented a letter of exemption to staff at the Planned Parenthood in St. Louis, which was the only abortion provider operating in the state at the time. [...]

The oral arguments in the federal appeal will take place on September 20, and Blackmore says the state-level hearing on Monday went well, though she's "not so confident in the impartiality of Missouri's legal system, which is largely conservative." If the Satanic Temple succeeds in their appeal, she believes the decision will set an important constitutional precedent. And, ideologically, it will send a message to those in power: If the moral convictions of " those who believe in a supernatural being that demands total servitude under the threat of eternal damnation," as Blackmore puts it, are worth protecting under law, then the moral convictions of Satanists are worth protecting, too.

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Broadly: No One Knows Why These Medieval Statues Are Pulling Their Vaginas Open

"Odd" is an understatement. Sheela-na-Gigs are medieval stone figures—often found on the walls of churches or castles—of women caught mid-squat, thighs spread, using their hands to yank open their vulva and display their vaginas. Some of them have cheeky grins; others are wizened hags; one is depicted wiggling out of a demon's mouth. What they all have in common is the fact that they are proudly exposing their chiseled vags to anyone walking past.

The Church Stretton carving is one of hundreds of Sheela-na-Gigs found in England, Ireland, France, and Spain. Some anonymous prude had attempted to censor the image, obscuring her open genitalia with a stone, but Harding could still tell perfectly it was covering up. "I got fascinated, basically. I started recording them, because there are quite a few in the area."[...]

But the Sheela-na-Gigs aren't giving up their secrets so easily. Nobody can conclusively say where they came from, or what they mean. There are a few competing schools of thought; Harding is part of a broad consensus that believes that they are an example of Romanesque architecture brought over with the Norman invasion of England and Ireland in the 11th and 12th century. As for what they symbolize, he thinks that they are meant to depict the sin of lust—a warning to medieval Christians to keep their thoughts pure. [...]

The lack of context also makes it difficult to decide what they were built for. Some Sheelas—like the one getting devoured by a monster—might be seen as a hellish warning to the church congregation. Others appear to have been placed above doorways as a token of luck, or a talisman against evil. There are Sheelas in the collection of the National Museum of Ireland whose vulvas have been worn to a nub from medieval churchgoers rubbing them as part of a religious ceremony.

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Broadly: The Legacy of Robert Spitzer, Psychiatrist Who De-Pathologized Homosexuality

Dr. Robert Spritzer, the physician responsible for the 1973 declassification of homosexuality as a mental illness, died on Friday, December 25, 2015. Until 1973, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) had considered homosexuality pathological. Their Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), originally published in 1952, is the widely respected diagnostic tool for mental health providers in the United States. It was in the DSM that several normal human qualities, including homosexuality, were portrayed as disorders and ailments rather than normal, natural human behavior. [...]

Dr. Ronald Bayer is a professor of Sociomedical Sciences at Columbia University. "If [you were] homosexual and [felt] deeply distressed about it, that was a psychiatric diagnosis that was treatable by psychiatry," he said in an interview Broadly, adding that this thinking also eventually evolved. "[Spitzer] was deeply involved in [asking], 'What are the criteria used to define a mental illness? Is it simply subjective distress?' If a person felt distressed about being black, we wouldn't say, 'Well, maybe we can turn them into a white person... The African American Civil Rights Movement played a significant role shaping the discourse at that time," Dr. Bayer explained. [...]

Spitzer's advocacy culminated with the release of the new diagnostic manual, DSM III. Not only was homosexuality declassified, but neurosis itself was removed, which challenged the status quo of mid-twentieth century mental health medicine. "[It] was a huge watermark. Finally, in DSM III, they actually eliminated the concept of neurosis as a conceptual framework for psychiatric disorders, which was a central contribution of psychoanalytic thought," said Dr. Bayard, noting that this constituted a remarkable rupture in dominant thinking a the time. "Psychoanalysis was the dominant paradigm in psychiatry through the 1950s and 60s. Every major school that taught psychology was chaired by people with psychoanalytic training."

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Broadly: ‘We Exist’: Inside India’s Secretive Gay Nightlife Scene

Being gay isn't technically a crime in India, but it is illegal to engage in "carnal intercourse against the order of nature," according to Section 377, a controversial part of India's penal code that specifically lists anal and oral sex. This colonial-era law was reinstated by India's top court in 2013, and threatens up to 10 years in jail for those who breach it. Unsurprisingly, it was poorly received by India's LGBTQ community, as well as large numbers of the country's young heterosexual people. [...]

Although there are no exclusively gay bars or clubs in India yet, most straight bars in metropolitan cities such as Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, and Chennai regularly host gay nights. Websites and groups such as Gay Bombay, Salvation, and Gaysie Family are amongst the top online resources involved in both organizing and promoting queer friendly events, as these remain some of the few "legal" ways for the gay community to interact with each other in the open. [...]

But to Sridhar Rangayan, a filmmaker whose work has highlighted queer issues, there still isn't enough visibility when it comes to LGBTQ events. "Despite the huge gay clientele that come to these parties, the community and the party circuit are still very invisible," he says. "If you are new to the city, you wouldn't know [the scene] even exists. It all depends on how connected you are." This is because most of LGBTQ events cannot be advertised openly due to the fear of being misinterpreted as dating events. Invites are therefore usually word of mouth or shared through closed Facebook groups. [...]

Also largely absent from the gay social scene are lesbian women, who often choose not to attend. Since a majority of the public events are open to everyone, including the heterosexual crowd, most women attending these parties are straight and simply there because they feel comfortable in the company of gay men. This is an obvious deal breaker for women looking to meet other women, who now only show up at private house parties. "I don't go to most open LGBTQ events because they largely cater to gay men or straight women looking to have a good time without being hit on," says Akanksha. "I've met almost each one of my exes at a friend's party or online. It's disappointing to see one portion of the community getting so much attention while lesbian women are just ignored."

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Broadly: The Queer Dancers Fighting to Take Part in an Annual Gender-Bending Celebration

Chiapa de Corzo, like many towns in Mexico, holds an annual festival in honor of its patron saint, St. Sebastian. But the Fiesta Grande in Chiapa de Corzo is different: On this date, a traditional character called the chunta is represented by hundreds of men (and some women), who dress as a female character called the chunta and dance through the streets.

This role has typically been played by straight, cisgender men dressed as women—but in recent years, gay men and trans women have fought for their place in the chunta tradition, despite mounting resistance. An upcoming documentary film, Our Fire Blooms, goes behind the scenes with the dancers. [...]

The Fiesta Grande is a syncretic mix of Catholic indigenous spirituality, and the chunta dance from homemade altar to homemade altar. Here, an altar to Saint Antonio Abad is lush with flowers and candles. Photo by Catalina Ausin.

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Broadly: The Photographer Showing Burkinis in Objective, Abstract Light

However, burkinis are not the sole focus of Burkini. Burkini is a meditation on life in Abu Dhabi from the point of view of an expatriate. "Burkinis were a base, but I was trying to see the big picture. How people live there. It's really important to say that I'm an outsider. I have travelled there many, many times, but I am still an outsider. I didn't grow up in this culture. [Burkini] is just a way of observing. That's an important point, that I'm an outsider."

The closely-shot images are detail-oriented and have a diaristic feel. Many were taken in and around cars or from moving vehicles. "I was also really interested in finding colours and shapes and form. Those were also things that I was looking for in the images," she says. The closeness of the shots allude to a laser-focused abstraction, where fabric floating through water becomes a study in movement, where car windows become frames for distant skyscrapers. "It was very important for me to take the images really close, because one thing I wanted understood was that so... well, the burkini is, in a way, just a fabric. A car is just a car. It was important to photograph them really close—visually really close—just to observe it as it is.

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Broadly: Dogs Will Lie to Get What They Want, New Study Says

In other words, more than half of the dogs realized taking the competitive person to the box of sausages would not benefit them in the least, so they lied when asked to show her the food. In fact, two dogs named Arwen and Nelson were so smart, they always led the cooperative person, never the competitive person, to the sausages. Baxter, Cicca, Barni, and Caju also never led the competitive partner to the sausages, although they were less consistent with the cooperative partner. [...]

The question is: Should dog owners start to side eye their pets a little more? Marianne Heberlein, the lead author on the study, suggests maybe so. "A dog still is a loyal, lovely companion," she tells Broadly. "However, the study shows that dogs, like other animals, try to optimize [their] own profit. They seem to know what they want and also can manipulate humans to reach their goal." She recommends owners "be careful and precise in rewarding your dog" as it may have faked a behavior just to get a reward.

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Broadly: Witches Allegedly Stole Penises and Kept Them as Pets in the Middle Ages

In the Middle Ages, witches were thought to have various magical dick-ruining capabilities, the most sinister of which is the ability to make the sex organ vanish entirely. According to Smith, the Malleus Maleficarum details three specific case studies in which witches were said to have magically deprived men of their penises. The first two simply involve men having their genitals hidden by some magical illusion—witches "can take away the male organ," Heinrich Kramer writes, "not indeed by despoiling the human body of it, but by concealing it with some glamour." [...]

Gonad-bearing flora were not uncommon in the Middle Ages. In a 2010 article published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine, historian Johan J. Mattelaer states, "Between the end of the 13th century and the early 16th century, the phallus tree was quite a phenomenon." Penis trees flourished throughout Europe, according to his research: A 14th century French manuscript contains two images of nuns harvesting penises from trees and tucking them into their robes; a wood carving from the early 15th century currently kept at a museum in Germany depicts a woman casually plucking penises while her lover peruses a vulva tree; and a decorative badge found in the Netherlands "shows a couple making love under a phallus tree, possibly being watched by a voyeur."

In 2000, archaeologists uncovered a particularly impressive penis tree specimen: a massive mural from the 13th century, located in Tuscany. It depicts a tree covered in male sex organs ("It is indeed a phallus tree!" Mattelaer notes jovially), all of which were "disproportionately large and... clearly in an aroused state." By the noble plant's roots stand eight women, two of whom appear to be fighting over a penis and one of whom is trying to knock one off a branch using a stick. Beside them is another woman who appears to be mostly uninvolved—but who, upon closer inspection, as Mattelaer notes, "has one of the fruits of the tree protruding from her bottom." George Ferzoco, the director of the Center for Tuscan studies, has argued that the mural constitutes "the earliest depiction in art of women acting as witches," citing ancient Tuscan folklore about witches keeping penises captive in nests.

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Broadly: 'We Sell a Lot of Dicks': Inside a Factory Making Male Sex Dolls for Women

In 2016, Sinthetics wants to further revolutionize sex with manikins marketed towards women. The Kellers first started designing male manikins for gay customers, according to Bronwen. "The gay market felt underrepresented," she explains. Then a woman purchased a doll, and Sinthetics decided to produce silicone men specifically for women. Now they'll see if women can surpass the stigmas surrounding sex dolls. They see the risk as worth it. But they're also creating the manikins for more personal reasons: "This is a passion project," Bronwen says.

Matt designs each manikin based on clients' custom orders. Like most people in sex industries, Matt did not originally intend to go into this specific career path. He went to school for industrial design. For nearly a decade, he worked in the "Halloween industry," designing life-size scary decorations, which he loved doing. "We started out high-end," Matt explains. Then, according to him, his employer began outsourcing to China and selling to Wal-Mart. Matt's handmade art had been turned into mass-produced pieces of shit, so he quit. [...]

The couple has altered their product for women. Matt builds gay customers silicone men that weigh 108 pounds and stand at 5'9", but Bronwen says female buyers need smaller dolls. "Imagine a very heavy man you have to carry and clean," she says. "A crushing stigma [surrounds sex dolls]... Nobody is gonna call her girlfriend and ask her to help her move a doll."

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Broadly: 'Keeping Up With The Kattarshians' Is Iceland's New Reality TV Show About Cats

The show's premise is simple: four kittens, all from a local animal rescue shelter, are made to live together in an oversized dollhouse rigged with hidden cameras. The kittens: Guðni, Ronja, Briet, and Stubbur have captivated an Icelandic—and global—audience. Though viewing figures aren't available yet, Inga says that the show (which is available to stream online) has already attracted the highest-ever traffic to Icelandic broadcaster Nutiminn's website. [...]

How difficult was it to create the world's first reality TV cat show in an ethical way?

It took about a year to put together, because we wanted all the animal welfare authorities to approve it. And here we are, a year later, with the first reality TV show starring kittens. All the people who were laughing then aren't laughing now. [...]

What will happen to the cats after the show ends?

All four cats now have been adopted, so we're going to be putting a new litter in here in the coming days—probably next week. We'll fix up the house, put another camera or so in there, and then have more orphan kittens ready to move in.

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Broadly: When Mental Illness Is Mistaken for Demonic Possession

Whether it's shamans from Ecuador to Russia or Christian religious leaders from the US, various regions and religions across the globe use faith healers. Religious healers may have little to no psychology or medical related background, and earn their living by performing religious rituals and healing people from supernatural issues such as possession. According to one Stanford University researcher, "The concept and practice of exorcism crosses cultural and historical boundaries."

Muslim communities in the Middle East use faith healers, too: According to the Pew Research Center, approximately half of the population in Iraq (47 percent), Egypt (44 percent), the United Arab Emirates (45 percent) and Jordan (42 percent) use traditional Islamic healers. "Popular beliefs in Middle Eastern cultures," states a report in the International Journal of Social Psychiatry, "have traditionally viewed mental illness as a punishment from God, the result of possession by evil spirits (Jinn), the effects of the 'evil eye' or the effects of evil in objects that are transferred into the individual."

Abdul Majeed Ali Hasan, an imam in the Ministry of Islamic Affairs for the UAE government, stated in an interview that the majority of "possession" cases are in fact psychological illness "wrongly assumed to be possession." He also revealed that people's superstition often causes them to think they themselves are possessed.

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Broadly: China's 'Tongqi': The Millions of Straight Women Married to Closeted Gay Men

Though China decriminalized homosexuality in 1997, it remained classified as a mental illness until 2001. According to a 2013 Pew survey, only 21 percent of Chinese people approved of homosexuality; just this March, the government banned the depiction of homosexuality on film and TV as "pornographic or vulgar," putting it in the same category as portrayals of incest and sexual abuse.

It's little wonder that WorkForLGBT, a China-based NGO, found that only 18 percent of gay men have come out to their families. Their parents' generation was raised in the tail-end of the Mao era, when comprehensive general education was disrupted by the upheavals of the Cultural Revolution and sex ed was non-existent. Wish Lanterns author Alec Ash, who has written about the lives of young people in China, says that the cultural divide between parents and their children is enormous: "It would be the equivalent of if my parents were born in 1880." [...]

Zhang's conservative guess is that there are at least 10 million straight women in China married to gay men. Similar research by Chinese sexologist Li Yinhe puts the figure at around 16 million, and research quoted in Yale anthropologist Tiantian Zhang's 2015 study puts the figure at 19 million, which is about the population of Romania. [...]

Zhang says over 30 percent of tongqi will contract a sexually transmitted disease—for many, this is how they discover that their husbands sleep with men. Around 10 percent of tongqi will attempt suicide, he adds. In his office, he gestures towards the rows of filing cabinets that sit floor to ceiling. They contain thousands of letters and correspondence sent from women in these sham marriages. Zhang has recently begun digitizing this archive with the help of assistants; they have scanned 43,000 pages so far.

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