Ask Lemmygrad

considering some of the comments in this thread, I want to point out that

1. it's perfectly fine to provide legitimate criticism of LGBTQ+ rights in any country
2. you should be skeptical of articles like these in bourgeois media, particularly from the imperial core (that doesn't mean they should be dismissed, just viewed with a critical eye)
3. while violations (or alleged violations) of LGBTQ+ rights are used as war propaganda by imperialists (e.g. the absence of pride parades in a non-Western country doesn't imply that they're outlawed), LGBTQ+ people were around long before capitalism and something like "LGBT is a Western invention" is not acceptable

Never trust mainstream media articles on identity politics.

Living in Shenzhen openly trans + lesbian and I haven't had problems yet

Do we have to purge the bigots again?

last i heard is a odd combination of confucianism with british colonial law, so being cis homosexual is not okay, being trans straight is kinda ok.

anyhow, that doesn't exempt china from criticism, it is a socialist country with a culture that somepoint in the past had normalized homosexual relationship to the point that taoist religion have a god protector of gay men, and comparing to its peers like cuba that has the most advanced legislation in regards to lgbtqia+ and definition of family

I haven't seen anything to convince me that China is pushing "increasingly conservative" values. The situation for LGBT people is improving in China. It's not great, but from what I've seen it's definitely trending towards improvement. Compare to the USA (or UK) where LGBT rights on paper and access to care are better for the moment (if you can afford it), but being queer is becoming increasingly dangerous and what rights we do have are on the chopping block. I also haven't heard of anyone in China getting murdered in the street just for being trans, a regular occurrence in the USA.

At least one of the LGBT centers that closed, which they cite as a sign of oppression, I remember looking into it and the leaders of it and the center itself all had ties to the usual suspects in USA color revolution attempts. So it's worth noting that in some cases LGBT rights activism in China is a front for groups like the NED and CIA to sneak their imperialist tendrils into the country.

Some insight here: one of the key factors in Chinese cultural identity is the family unit. Whereas the American family unit is limited to yourself, your spouse, and your potential children, the Chinese family unit stretches further back to your parents/grandparents. There's a much stronger pressure to have and raise children, which impacts the cultural perception of LGBT rights.

How hypocritical.

If you want to know more, I found this article here. Sex ed in China is mostly focused on disease prevention rather than sexual identity.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/2331186X.2023.2270289

I can’t comment much, but I do know that there’s a lot of reactionary elements in China regarding not only lgbt issues but also gender equality as well.

I can't speak to lgb part but as far as trans and queer rights not that great, they have a long way to go. Now is it to the point where "Trans and queer people and their supporters suffer ‘systemic persecution’" for the most part no. However its not easy to get access to estradiol as you need the permission of your closest relatives to start HRT and as of recent they have made it illegal to order online.

There was a discussion about this here

I'd also like to address some of the comments here, as a trans person fighting for trans liberation watching ppl try and disregard the material conditions of trans people for whatever reason, get fucked and stop claiming being trans, gay, bisexual etc is some American concept. We have existed throughout history in every culture and we will continue to regardless of politics, borders, etc.

I took a break from this site because I was getting tired of the fucking mental gymnastics some of ya'll do to defend china when it comes to lack of trans rights or issues. No country is perfect when it comes to trans rights does not mean we shouldn't critique any country in a quest to defend our humanity and access to healthcare. Stop abandoning your comrades because liberals have cooped parts of our movement, ask a LGBTQ person how we can fight imperialism and support our LGBTQ comrades at the same time (they are not mutually exclusive)

Ying’s family – who are not supportive of her trans identity – had been keeping Ying, an adult over 18, under house arrest and cut off from the outside world. In August, they finally allowed her to leave to pursue her studies. She was now at school, but wanted to run away to be with her girlfriend in another city.

Together, they hatched a plan. Mei would take Ying’s phone to prevent her family from tracking her location and try to persuade them not to call the police. But after a month of failed mediation, the family notified the authorities, who traced the phone to Mei’s apartment. The police came and arrested her for kidnapping.

“It was my first time being arrested. They took me to the station and questioned me for 10 hours. They tried to make me confess, but I refused to say anything,” Mei tells the Guardian over an encrypted app. “Eventually, they let me go because there was no evidence.”

In the end, the police found Ying and took her back to her family. The failed rescue attempt is one of more than 10 similar cases Mei knows of where advocates have been arrested and questioned by police since she joined an informal network providing support to the LGBTQ+ community some years ago.

So this is the main anecdote in the article. The police and the family are rather understandable. The police has to respond to potential kidnappings, and the family couldn't contact their daughter for a month. The only objectionable thing I find is that the daughter was returned to the family without her consent, but the idea of child becoming an absolute adult at the age of 18 is an American idea so it's also understandable in cultural context to return a 19 year old.

Yes, the family involved in the situation is terrible and abusive. Is it state repression by the Chinese government? No. Are the LGBT+ folks having difficulty surviving as the title says? Also no.

Yes, China should improve on LGBT rights by legalizing gay marriage and allowing gay couples to adopt children. But it's kind of hard to claim that there is a crackdown on expressing queerness when there's gay weddings publicly happening across China right now.

There's a little checkbox labelled 'trans' in the Chinese developed and published video game I was playing yesterday.

That doesn't disprove it all the same way Zelensky being Jewish doesn't disprove anything, but so much of what I see about China flies in the face of what white people (and Chinese people who speak with American accents and speak less Chinese than I do) say about China. And considering where I live, I'm seeing a lot.

Western activists, many educated by, paid for, sympathetic and useful to CIA/NED are being harassed, rightfully for being dangerous western puppets. These are people who fell for the siren song of the west, who fully believe only liberalism can bring about LGBTQ+ rights and are willing to work with the west and undermine the CPC, China, the Chinese people, etc for that. Some of them are naive, some are self-hating Chinese convinced by the west that Chinese socialism and culture is evil and backwards and must be destroyed in order for progress to take place. I cannot speak to this particular instance.

Though the west is happy to groom and use fascists, far more useful in public propaganda are their efforts to groom liberals, faux-progressives. Much as the Solidarity-Union movement in Poland which was used by the CIA to bring down communism in Poland presented itself as being more for workers than the party but turned out to unleash the most horrible anti-worker consequences, so too are these types of people mostly of the same risk.

Are there perhaps issues with overly conservative types within the party pushing back on gay rights? Almost certainly. However these movements and movement leaders being crushed are I would bet to a one liberal in nature, allied with, influenced by the west and therefore dangerous.

Queer liberation as with other forms of liberation in China cannot and should not be based off western conceptions in the imperial core under liberal capitalism. It should be home-grown, developed with the party, and have a strong Marxist nature.

There is room for improvement in China but it is a developing country only a couple generations removed from feudalism so that is to be expected. There has been steady progress. There was a recent court ruling, I cannot remember the details but the court upheld I believe a trans persons rights in the fact of the private company they worked for.

Every country has issues with LGBT and I don't want to hear it from western imperialist lapdogs.

No idea, but ProleWiki has something: https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_and_issues_in_AES_countries#People's_Republic_of_China

(Moved from c/genzedong after I realized this would be the better place to post this.)