Hey all, I got a question recently about trans rights in China. I wanna make sure I answer the question correctly so I came here. I would just look it up myself but it’s impossible given how filled to the brim the internet is with Sinophobic lies.
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That’s an ask on Tumblr. If OP responds. It’ll be up on their blog, with the question askers blog attached.
This is just anecdotal, but I visited southern China in 2019. I don’t have broad knowledge of Chinese society, but I went to a bunch of DIY style punk shows around Shenzhen and there were tons of cool queer folk there. I ended up talking with a trans man for a while with my broken Mandarin and his broken English. Told him I’m an American who greatly admires China and he thought that was cool.
Yeah, there are a bunch of very open trans and gay folk in China, but maybe that depends on where you go and what strata the people belong to, I guess? It’s not at all like what westerners claim, where they say it’s completely illegal to be trans and all trans media is censored. I didn’t see that at all. I met a bunch of trans people who seemed to have very ordinary, normal lives.
There’s probably room for improvement, but that’s everywhere in the world. I don’t live in China though so I don’t fully know what struggles there are
I guess I’m going to summarize what I’ve read in this thread than add an opinion on the general rhetoric.
China does have some shit laws on the subject, but (perhaps mostly both the government and the average person) lacks a fascist-driven ideological framework that is very common in the US. You will assume everything is worse than Southern US States or Nazi Germany for no other reason than that reactionaries love making it sound that way, because there is almost no one on the English speaking internet loud enough to debunk them over their digital megaphones. Well meaning parrots will parrot the only thing they hear on the subject. Other comments on this thread go over how it is not as bad as the Southern US States.
I think that future historians will note that some technology or element of an (post?-)industrial society, made faster by a socialized internet, leads most not-yet-LGBT-friendly societies into adoption of LGBT rights. The current rhetoric around the subject forgets that the US has had decades of modernization progress ahead of China on various subjects. China is caught up on manufacturing in general, China will most likely catch up on several specific technologies (CPUs) soon enough. There is no reason to believe that China will not catch up on LGBT rights in the same manor, in very short order.
The 2022 Cuban Family Code referendum sets a favorable precedent that LGBT rights under AES is likely next on the natural cultural progressions of civilizations.
China does pay attention to US politics and will notice things, such as anti-LGBT rhetoric being primarily rooted as a religious/fascist construct in modern US politics. I think they are much more likely to perceive it this way going forward than what others may have historically presumed, which was something like “LGBT rights is Capitalist decadence/influence”.
I think it depends heavily on where you are, since there is at least one dedicated transitioning institution and other institutions that support transitioning, but then there are other places with virtually no support. It’s definitely something Cuba is better about.
