Trans people in china, laws, advocacy groups and general acceptance

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.

27 comments

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.
  
  you are welcome, comrade. fight for lgbtq rights and not it let get highjacked by liberal ideology should the duty of every communist.

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'.
- ethically Chinese
  I know what you meant, I just found this very funny.
  
  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.

- Thanks for sharing, I was looking for this doc but kept running into dead links.

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.

- YES!!!! this is exactly the type of data I was looking for ty!!

First I wanted to thank everyone for contributing to this discussion, rather then reply to several comments individually I figure it might be a better idea to address the most common ones in one post.
1.) Referencing gay or bi people in China as an example when talking about trans acceptance.
Gender identity vs sexual orientation are very different groups with there own needs, using the latter or the former to discuss needs of the former or latter is a grave misunderstanding of those needs and the people involved.
2.) The use of the initialism LGBTQ by Chinese media and in some of the responses to this thread
The initialism is very much historically a western invention, activists started using the initialism "LGBT" in 1988 [1] followed by general acceptance in 1990 [2]. Despite china having vastly different culture as pointed out by some of you in this thread they have also chosen to use western initialism [3].
3.) America and the west is no shining beacon of trans rights or acceptance, in most cases china's transgender population face no legal discrimination in comparison.
With over 80 anti trans bills passed into law and over 500 bills currently in session leading to the criminalizing of trans people in the US [4]. In conjunction with the messaging from the far right reactionary republican party in America calling for the eradication of trans people [5]. In contrast to the west China has very little anti trans laws, however adding common M2F HRT to the restricted drugs list is just another road block for trans people in china.
4.) Trans people in China the cultural differences and the struggle for global trans liberation.
A majority of trans people in China do not have the support of family, friends and society often leading to violence towards them from their own family (even though these attitudes are slowly changing) [3]. As well as alienation from uprooting there entire lives to move to bigger and more accepting cities. I really would like to stress the importance of the acceptance of your friends, family and society when your trans as its been tied to high rates of attempted suicide time and time again [6]. Easy/legal access to HRT in China is extremely difficult and as of 2022 online access to MTF HRT in particular is illegal [3] [7] [8].
I urge everyone of you to thoroughly examine the dangers of ignoring the material conditions that shape trans people’s lives regardless of the customs/cultural differences.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20190619085339/https://books.google.com/books?id=PiglAQAAIAAJ
[2] https://books.google.com/books?id=2SOe4igsrbgC
[3] https://news.cgtn.com/news/3d67544e3230575a306c5562684a335a764a4855/share_p.html
https://youtu.be/NFarMuDa6GQ
https://youtu.be/doAh4ZhGhsY
[4] https://translegislation.com/
[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pU9y9dcM5NQ
[6] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30699856/
https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/142/4/e20174218/76767/Transgender-Adolescent-Suicide-Behavior
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32345113/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32250142/
[7] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30902476/
[8] https://www.nmpa.gov.cn/xxgk/zhqyj/zhqyjyp/20221103155815144.html (edit: formatting)

Ooooh hell yea... China is still very culturally conservative. It reminds me of the youtuber CaptainCool07, even though he lives in San Fransisco. While he makes videos that give pretty decent insight into Chinese politics and history, his other content are however straight up lgbtphobic... talking about "wokism," "family values," etc. Bear in mind, this guy has also stated that he is not a communist/socialist, even though some of his content may appeal to MLs.
- Diaspora really isn't reflective of the culture in China. In CaptainCool07's case he got drawn into the conservative side of US culture wars simply because many "progressive" polices and politicians (especially in San Francisco) openly discriminate against Asians.
  The traditional Chinese position on LGBTQ+ was generally more progressive than the standard liberal position up until the 2000s. For example negativity towards homosexual relations didn't really exist until westernization in the 19th century on[1]. In regards to trans issues it seems that like in many cultures there just wasn't a conception of trans people, but at the minimum crossdressing had no stigma[2]. Personally I don't think hostility towards western values is unfounded when it was western values that introduced homophobia in the first place. As a someone who is Bi I personally think arguments that appeals to traditional values or marxism are going to be much more effective than reusing western liberal idpol rhetoric.
  [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_China
  [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgender_people_in_China#Cross_dressing_in_Peking_Opera

- We're talking about China, not the USA.
- Read this
  And also understand that China is in a different sphere of cultural and ideological development with relation to the productive forces, having emerged only less than a century ago from semi-feudalism and colonial subjugation (and remember that the West perpetuates underdevelopment and backwardness in many countries). Many views will be incorrect because they represent the interests of a backward level of development, but this is not an indictment against the "totalitarian" CPC, which as a vanguard party is tasked with "telling the hard truth" and comprising itself of the politically advanced. See the few progressive documentaries on LGBT (especially trans) issues in China produced by CGTN (state media), which also address the issue of intolerance:
  A Day of Trans
  CGTN documentary show "LGBT in China" [1] [2] [3]
  
  I'm not sure why but the first link wont open, I did watch "a day of trans" and the CGTN doc you linked and gained additional insight, thank you for sharing.
- Do you feel as if this comment adds anything meaningful to the discussion? All I can gather is you view china as totalitarian.
  (edit: i guess there comment was deleted lol)

27 comments