The Plight of Chinese Trans People: A Wake Up Call
Doriane Lau, a Chinese Researcher at Amnesty International said “China is failing transgender people. Discriminatory laws and policies have left many people feeling they have no choice.”
Lau is referring to the growing population of transgender citizens who are self-medicating instead of finding help in China’s health system. Due to the country’s discrimination, many have decided to navigate China’s black market in order to obtain these medicines.
In China, those who want to undergo gender-affirming surgery must be 20 years or older and must have gone through at least one year of psychiatric therapy. The therapy may diagnose them with ‘transsexualism,’ a term used to describe their perceived ‘mental illness.’ This label creates a stigma that being who you are, when it goes against the “norm,” is something that can be fixed with mistreatment and ignorance. Not only is this label incredibly degrading, but it enforces a binary ideal that is not the reality in this day and age.
The transgender community in China is not only largely invisible—they also face discrimination and stigma from all fronts. They must hide who they are because of the fear that they will be shunned from their family, friends and even from adequate medical care.
Aside from the discrimination and stigma transgender people face, there are impossible barriers and restrictions that impose on their human rights. Some requirements for medical care include having the consent of their families, being married and having a clean criminal record.
Due to these restrictions, most transgender people take matters into their own hands. Getting hormonal kits and pills off the black market and even performing surgery on themselves are just some off the dangerous ways that transgender Chinese individuals cope with unfair treatment. Taking medication from the black market can be life-threatening, considering the medications’ lack of information and risk of counterfeit products.
Huiming, a transgender person from China, felt she had no option but to perform surgery on herself. “I was scared because I was bleeding so badly, I could die right there. I feared I would still die a man since I only did part of my surgery,” Huiming said.
Furthermore, China has inadequate information available for those seeking treatments. The citizens receive little advice or guidance on gender-affirming treatments from their physicians when they first start using hormones. Instead, the citizens learn about treatment options from friends and by searching for information on the internet, which is not always reliable.
To make matters worse, China has only a small number of healthcare facilities specializing in gender-affirming treatments. According to Amnesty International, “There is only one multi-disciplinary clinic in the whole of China that specializes in a range of gender-affirming treatments. The multi-disciplinary medical team for gender-affirming care opened in September 2018 at Peking University Third Hospital and is the first of its kind in China.”
In recent years, Chinese society has grown more accepting of the LGBT community. Jin Xing, a trans woman who underwent gender reassignment surgery in 1995, hosts one of the country’s most popular variety shows and was the first person in China to openly share her story about gender reassignment surgery.
Despite the representation, many citizens continue to maintain a narrow view of who a transgender person is. “Because Jin Xing is so famous in China, many people think all trans women will be exactly like her,” said Su Jingquan, a lesbian Chinese trans woman.
There is much to be done in terms of public awareness-raising. 43% of the population surveyed by Amnesty believe that being transgender is a mental illness, while 42% are against bathroom access. Additionally, many citizens hold negative views of the trans community.
Changing this perception is the first step to improving transgender’s rights in China.