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.
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.
ive just watched the whole thing, it was beautiful
thanks for posting :)
Thanks for sharing, I was looking for this doc but kept running into dead links.