A chairdre!

I know I haven’t been posting, I’ve been developing and immersing myself in a new curriculum of feminist and transgender studies (hit me up for book recommendations).

For those who don’t know me, I’m Seanchaí (shawn-a-key), a grassroots educator and trans feminist.

In my absence, I’ve noticed we’ve had some new comrades join, and we’ve even had some coming outs (<3). This is wonderful, and also makes this the perfect opportunity to help prevent any tensions from cropping up by bridging the gap through education.

A few months ago we did a little question thread, and it went swimmingly. I would like for us to do the same again.

In this thread, I want people to ask whatever questions they have regarding gender, sexuality, feminism, intersectionality and any issues connected thereto. This will be a judgement free thread. These conversations can be fraught even amongst ostensible comrades, however I believe that a genuine engagement and education is the best way to build solidarity.

For that end, I will be personally responding to every question. This may take me some time! Be patient with me, I am a very busy lady and I want to make sure I give each and every one of you a thorough, researched answer with recommended reading for deeper understanding.

Anyone else is encouraged to answer as well in the meantime, of course! But I must ask, questioners and answerers alike, to extend each other grace, and as comrades with a genuine interest in building coalition and solidarity to engage each other with the utmost respect and in the best of faith.

This is a thread for learning new things and getting answers to questions you may otherwise be afraid to ask, or may not know where to direct yourself to finding the answers. I don’t want anyone to feel out of place for the limits of their knowledge, and I don’t want discussions getting shut down because these are tender topics, and conversation around them is so often unproductive due to the hostile climate of reaction.

  • Denise@lemmygrad.ml
    2·
    2 years ago

    Do you have any Chinese sources or knowledge for whats going on in China regarding trans issues? I personally haven’t done any academic searches, only asked some friends. I was originally looking for Chinese language discussions. They sugested wechat tongyulala and biedenuhai (which also have web sites) as well as 汪欣蕾Lacey video logs. Both said that transgender people/discussion was not very common in mainland China.

    • Seanchaí (she/her)@lemmygrad.mlOPM
      1·
      2 years ago

      I have only done some bare-bones research on feminism in China, where I don’t know the language and it isn’t my focus. However, it’s been making huge strides lately in increasing access to medical care for trans individuals. There was a study published in BMC Public Health regarding discrimination and perceived discrimination of various LGBT individuals in China. It largely found that the biggest hurdle to LGBT acceptance is from family, where queer participants ranked discrimination from family to be the most prevalent, which coincided with heterosexual participants being least accepting of LGBT people in their own family, but largely accepting of LGBT people otherwise.

      This same study also found that gay men and trans people are the most likely to stay in the closet. However, medical interactions were found in this study to be the least discriminatory, which is incredibly heartening, as access to medical care is the first and most crucial stumbling block on the road to trans acceptance. China has been taking a very science-based stance on this, and has been pushing for medical care regardless of cultural acceptance.

      It was also found that an increase in a region’s economic prosperity led to a decrease in LGBT discrimination, meaning that as people’s lives improved they were less bothered by the gays down the street.

      In 2021 a documentary “A Day of Trans” directed by trans filmmaker Yennefer Fang released, which interviews four trans individuals of different generations. https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202111/1239389.shtml

      One of the people interviewed, a trans man, won a discrimination case against his employer back in 2016, when he became a public face in the fight for systemic protections.

      In 1995 Jin Xing was the first person to openly have gender confirmation surgery. She’s a famous dancer, choreographer, and tv presenter that is shown nation-wide, and has been since before most western countries would allow a trans person on tv as anything more than a punchline about degeneracy and prostitution.

      Here’s a link to Yennefer’s documentary (it’s missing a few lines in the translation, because Yennefer did the captioning personally)

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lY1L1p29vuc