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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   22833 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 21, 2025

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So… you think Chinese parents would all be fine with trans books for 8 year olds?

Their pushback comes from Confucian values emphasizing traditional family roles, collectivism prioritizing social stability over individual expression, and skepticism of Western ideologies seen as culturally disruptive.

I was intrigued and looked up ‘transgender’ from within China. The Great Firewall is often quite heavy handed but didn’t seem to mind. From the first result, auto-translated from Chinese:

Transgender means that an individual's gender identity is different from the biological gender assigned at birth [1]. Transgender is a general term that includes gender identities such as transgender men, transgender women, and gender queer [2]. Transgender is a gender identity rather than a sexual orientation. [2][3]. According to internationally accepted medical standards, transgender is not a mental illness. [4][5]. Due to stereotyped gender perceptions in society and current legal and policy restrictions, transgender people are currently subject to widespread discrimination in society [6]. In addition, due to difficulties in self-identification, coming out, and medical treatment, transgender people also generally experience psychological problems such as anxiety [3]. As one of the concepts related to sex and gender, cross-gender will be expounded from the perspective of improving gender awareness in education. Among the relevant education documents issued by various ministries and commissions in my country, the "Guidelines for Public Safety Education in Primary and Secondary Schools" (2007) emphasizes the necessity of education from the perspective of strengthening safety and gender awareness [7]. The Law on the Protection of Minors in the People's Republic of China (revised in 2020) stipulates that schools and kindergartens should carry out sex education suitable for minors [8]. Gender equality, including cross-gender equality, is one of the important contents of comprehensive sex education and social equity.

I’d be interested in one of our Chinese posters’ opinions on how China has responded to transgenderism. @Pigeon, any thoughts?

Unfortunately I haven't actually visited mainland China for years now, so it's a bit difficult for me to suss out the temperature re: trans issues within the PRC.

The people I do know in the diaspora are some mix of trying to not touch it with a barge pole, confused, trying to live-and-let-live, and horrified at how the West is gleefully egging on their own mini cultural revolution. (Or they are "bananas" that range from disinterested to doctrinaire progressives)

When it comes to LGB sans T, it's a bit more complicated — China historically did not have strong taboos against homosexuality as long as people still performed their filial duty of having descendants — 不孝有三無後為大 after all — and IIRC the current sort of homosexual taboo is actually mostly a Western import.

I think "confucian values emphasizing traditional family roles, collectivism prioritizing social stability over individual expression, and skepticism of Western ideologies seen as culturally disruptive" is probably way too reductive, but I'm currently travelling and don't really have the time to dedicate thought to this

Interesting to know, and thanks for your thoughts. I thought you were in the mainland for some reason - oddly enough the Motte is available through the firewall, presumably because half the posters are CCP plants the site is too small to be blocked explicitly.

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