A Chinese author has been sentenced to ten years in jail for writing and selling homoerotic novels, prompting backlash, and comparisons to lighter sentences for more serious crimes committed in the country, like sexual assault.

The author, surname Liu, but commonly known by her internet pseudonym Tianyi, was arrested last year after the success of her book Occupy, and was found guilty on October 31 of this year by a Wuhu county court in eastern Anhui province.

Police there criticized the self-published works for what it called the depiction of "obscene sexual behavior between males" set against the themes of "violence, abuse, and humiliation."

The news spread over Chinese social media, with many questioning the logic of the decision.

One individual shared an article about a case from 2010 where a man was jailed for just 18 months for imprisoning children, asking how it is possible that "there have been people who did things as inhuman as this and only get a year and a half," compared to Liu's lengthy sentence.

"Why can’t our vast and abundant China tolerate the word ‘sex?'" the person added, Reuters reports.

Chinese youth in an internet cafe.

The genre of male-male fiction, known as "BoysLove" or "bl," has been booming in recent years. Leading Chinese internet company Tencent acquired two popular titles for adaption online, and an adaption of another title for a web series, called Guardians, has found success in the country.

Most stories are sold as "bromances," with any true romantic or sexual interest or activities only hinted at in order to avoid the censors, who have stepped up efforts to ban sexually explicit content. While homosexuality was legalized in the late '90s, and declassified as a mental illness in 2001, pornography is still illegal, and discrimination against the LGBTQ community remains rampant.

Last year, China announced stricter regulation of online media to prohibit LGBTQ content.

In April of this year, Chinese microblogging site Weibo announced it would remove pornographic, violent, or gay content, singling out manga animation in particular, which often depict same-sex relationships and gay sex, but reversed its decision following a public outcry.

Liu reportedly made over 150,000 yuan ($21,600) by selling over 7,000 copies of her work, which played a factor in the severity of the sentence she received.

Deng Xueping, a lawyer at China's Capital Equity Legal Group, told CNN the sentence was based on an outdated judicial interpretation of the country's laws dating to 1998.

"When the number of copies exceeds 5,000, the case is deemed as a severe one," he explained. "So the 10-year imprisonment is based on that. But things have changed a lot in society...especially that the internet helps things spread faster than ever...That's why I think it's worth discussing if the sentence for the case is too heavy."