Yesterday I started looking into trans acceptance and understanding in china. I came across articles about Jin Xing, china first trans clinic for minors (opened in 2021), China’s laws regarding obtaining HRT or GRS (mostly western sources), searched Bilibili and Baidu (videos) using the terms 同志, 變性 and 跨性别 combing through the comments. Finally looking through the stories of trans people who visited or worked in china.
I was surprised to find lots of roadblocks for trans people attempting to get HRT, GRS, change there paperwork etc. For example if you want to obtain HRT in china as a trans women you must notify your family, get written acceptance, prove you have no criminal record and undergo psychological treatment. This leads to a lot of trans people getting HRT online. However as of 2022 estradiol and cyproterone where added to a list making it illegal to obtain online.
The comment sections of videos on the topic are pretty bad id say similar to transphobic comments left in videos in America. The stories of non passing trans people who traveled to china getting mocked, belittled or in some cases having the police called on them. All of this shocked me and due to the language barrier I attempted to look past some of the comments or dismiss some of the horror stories.
It appears to me that china is severely behind on Trans acceptance and that’s why I’d like to open this up as a discussion on the matter as I am only one person who understands little mandarin or other Chinese dialects and would greatly appreciate any information on the matter.
sadly, that is one of the weakpoints of china, the misogyny and lgbtfobia left by colonization is still very present, personally i don’t think there is a excuse to not advanced in that point, so it is fair to criticize heavily, especially when they had a starting point of acceptance, i.e the gay god in taiosm religion.
cuba being in a very tough spot and starting as a deeply misogynist and homophobic country, today have one the most advanced legislation in the world
Hopefully in the future they will take some inspo from cuba regarding LGBTQ rights, thanks for the info!
It will happen only very slowly, because China is huge with a vast rural population and the government will not force faster cultural change in a way that leaves people thinking they’re being pushed into accepting ideals they don’t want, no matter how wrong those people may be.
It’s going to happen generationally, via schools and media teaching each successive generation to be more accepting.
But on the bright side what that means is we won’t see massive reactionary surges repealing progressive laws like we’re currently seeing recently over trans rights in Florida or Roe v Wade across the U.S.
When China steps forward on progressive issues they might only be small infrequent steps, but it’s the whole country stepping forward and there will be no stepping back.
It’s frustrating when you compare it to Western standards, but when you consider that most of China are culturally conservative, the progressive movement is doing quite well for itself.
As an ethically chinese person and someone who wholeheartedly supports the CPC,
many Chinese are extremely socially conservative. It’s a miracle the CPC has done anything at all with the sheer amount of straight-out conservatism that’s prevalent. Just look at all the people who are worried about ‘Western Wokeness’.
Yeah lol, just wanted to clarify I’m living in burgerland. I’ve been to China once or twice and it’s a super nice place.
You can’t really attribute this to conservatism when traditional Chinese values are generally much more accepting of trans[2] and gay people[1] than their western counterparts. It’s similar to the situation in India where westerners spread their homophobic ideals through their colonies and in the modern day through their media power, and we get the blame for it. Bilibili and Baidu comments are generally made up of xenophile liberals (they have polandball videos on bilibili for pete’s sake). Although I will admit casual transphobia was pretty common at least circa 2010s.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor_Ai_of_Han#The_rise_of_Dong_Xian
MLM relationships generally didn't carry a stigma in ancient times. I can't really cite anything on attitudes towards other LGBTQ+ people
though.
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jin_Xing
This is more recent but she's a trans celebrity widely loved by boomers.
If you have not seen it already, you may be interested in this short 2021 documentary, “A Day of Trans 跨越性别的一天”, made by a Chinese director who is transgender, which interviews four trans people in China. There is a woman in her 60s who tells some of her life story, a man in his 30s who talks about a gender identity discrimination lawsuit that he won in 2016 and about general issues trans people face in society, and two younger people (one identifies as genderqueer/nonbinary and the other is agender) who talk about their trans rights advocacy work. Each interviewee also talks about the attitudes in society about trans people over time, their own journey, etc.
The sentiment seems to vary quite a bit based on which platform you’re on. While scrolling Douyin (tik tok) I saw lots of pro-LGBT content and openly homosexual couples, lots of pride flags and so on (this compilation includes some of that). I also looked up the Baidu Baike articles on 跨性别 and 同性恋, and I thought they were really good. When it comes to state media, they also made some documentaries showing the LGBT community in a positive light. I also found this SCMP article quite insightful. Of course, we also shouldn’t forget that China has the world’s biggest gay dating app: Blued.
You might also be interested in this 2017 study, “Survey Report on the Survival of the Transgender Community in China” published by the Beijing LGBT Center and the Department of Sociology at Peking University: Brief, PDF. It surveys trans people about several things, including their methods of accessing hormones, how they feel out in public, rating different types of workplaces for how trans-friendly or unfriendly they feel, etc.
As well as this one from 2018, “Legal Gender Recognition in China: A Legal and Policy Review” by UNDP and China Women’s University: Info and links to PDFs. This one is mainly a review that goes into detail about several laws that affect trans people and recommending specific improvements legislators, government ministries, businesses, NGOs, etc. can make. It also includes information from key informant interviews. (Article about the review)
