"The Bridegroom" by Ha Jin

The biggest thing that stuck out to me when I was reading this passage was the ignorance of the people in the society in which the story took place. Their ignorance is childlike even. Some of the things they say sound extremely childish to me:

"It's a social disease, like gambling, or prostitution, or syphilis."
"Homosexuality originated in Western capitalism and bourgeois lifestyle."
"Some believed [Baowen] was a hermaphrodite, otherwise his wife would've been pregnant long ago."

I would like to know the year during which this story takes place. It can't be too recent, can it? The ignorance of what I can only assume to be an accurate cross-section of China's population at the time says a lot about the government that prevented it from understanding the true nature of homosexuality. I find it hard to believe that the highest ranking members of China's government actually believed that homosexuality is a disease, curable by electroshock treatment. But maybe I'm wrong. I don't know.

From the perspective of a 21st century American, the ignorance of these people is astounding. We are made to feel so much more advanced in our understanding of sexuality, culture, acceptance, diversity, and the world in general. And perhaps we are. But who's to say that 100 years down the road, people won't look back on our society and marvel at its ignorance and barbarism? It is naive to believe that we, as a society of Americans in 2011, have "figured it all out."

Have we progressed relative to the society described in Ha Jin's "The Bridegroom"? I would argue that we have, and I'm sure ~99% of Americans would agree. But would that same majority of Americans agree that our society will one day appear to have been just as ignorant as the one in the story? I doubt it. And why is it that we are, well, ignorant of the ignorance that runs rampant through our minds as individuals and through our policies and attitudes as a society? It takes an idealogical revolution to change the mindset a society. One person must see the wrongs that exist in our world, then edify others, in order for us to advance. But this is a slow and grey process. People resist change. And it's hard to tell whether any particular change is for the better or for the worse while it's happening.