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.
I don’t see any reason to expect better from a totalitarian country. Totalitarianism thrives on suppressing minorities
We’re talking about China, not the USA.
Whatever the USA has done doesn’t make China’s record any better
The only totalitarian country in here is the USA, it’s not China.
Nazi Germany wasn’t totalitarian?
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)
That’s true, it’s more of a comment discussing the point of the discussion as such. Trans people are a minority who’s rights democratic governments are being pushed to respect. If a government like the Chinese doesn’t even respect rights of the majority (such as the right to free speech), I don’t think there’s any point holding our breath waiting for them to respect the rights of the trans community, unfortunately.
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.
The first link is to a paper by Domenico Losurdo titled, “Towards a Critique of the Category of Totalitarianism” (since I was responding to a comment which used this term as a category of government including China destined to oppress minorities). I included a temporary PDF link, but you can find it online pretty easily.