【by Yo-Ling Chen and Panchen Lo, Dec. 2024】
Since fall of 2021, Taiwan has seen the rise of a robust anti-gender movement that has grafted itself onto global anti-gender movement infrastructures primarily operating from the UK and North America. In this short article, we provide a critical account of the defining features of the anti-gender movement in Taiwan, as well as the historical development of its antagonistic relationship with Taiwan’s transgender rights movement in the post-same-sex marriage legalization era. In what follows, we draw specific attention to the proleptic aspects of anti-gender rhetoric in Taiwan, as well as the broader transnational (dis)information circuits and movement infrastructures that this rhetoric draws on.
Taiwan’s current anti-gender movement emerged as a counter-movement to the increasing visibility of transgender issues within Taiwan’s LGBTQ+ movement more broadly since 2018. In July of that year, the Taiwan Alliance to Promote Civil Partnership Rights (TAPCPR) publicized their representation of transgender plaintiff Lisbeth Wu (then pseudonymized as Xiao Wen) in an anti-discrimination lawsuit against Chang Gung University for forcing her to live in men’s dormitories. After same-sex marriage legalization in May of 2019, Taiwan Tongzhi Hotline Association hosted the first annual Taiwan Trans March in October of 2019. By that time, TAPCPR had taken on two other transgender plaintiffs in anti-discrimination lawsuits as part of their strategic litigation for transgender rights. On Transgender Day of Remembrance in 2020, TAPCPR held a press conference announcing their representation of Lisbeth Wu again, but this time in strategic litigation aimed at abolishing Taiwan’s compulsory surgery requirement for legal gender change. Currently, the Ministry of Interior stipulates that in order to change one’s legal gender, applicants must provide two gender dysphoria diagnosis certificates from two different licensed psychiatrists and proof of sexual organ removal surgery. While the increased visibility of transgender issues post-same-sex-marriage legalization certainly drew criticism, it wasn’t until the fall of 2021 that these critics organized into a readily identifiable anti-gender movement.
This turning point came on September 23, 2021, when the Taipei High Administrative Court made an historic ruling in favor of another TAPCPR plaintiff, pseudonymized as Xiao E, which allowed her to become the first transgender woman in Taiwan to change her legal gender from male to female without providing proof of surgery. In the months following Xiao E’s historic ruling, over 5,000 concerned citizens signed two petitions on Taiwan’s Public Policy Online Participation Platform demanding the maintenance of both gender segregated spaces on the basis of biological sex and the surgery requirement for changing one’s legal gender. The petition initiated on October 13, 2021 by an anonymous group from the newly established blog “拒絕免術換證合法化 Say no to Taiwan self-ID” particularly emphasized “countless cases abroad that have caused substantial harm to women’s rights and safety” due to removing the surgery requirement for legal gender change,[1] such as the Wi Spa incident in Los Angeles and the case of transgender inmate Karen White in the UK. The anonymous group behind this petition shared infographics of these incidents on social media and distributed pamphlets in mailboxes across Taipei and New Taipei City. These anonymous individuals soon organized into Taiwan’s first and most active anti-gender movement organization, No Self ID Taiwan, launching a revamped official website in February of 2022.
A particular point of grievance during this initial wave of mobilization in the fall of 2021 was that No Self ID members found an online survey that was part of a policy research project on legal gender change requirements conducted by Shih Hsin University Professor Yi-Chien Chen and commissioned by the Gender Equality Committee of the Executive Yuan. In conjunction with Xiao E’s court ruling, anti-gender activists interpreted this policy research to be a sign that the government was conspiring behind closed doors to pass a gender self-identification law that would allow legal gender change without any requirements. In an October 14th, 2021 Feminist Current article entitled “Gender identity legislation is being pushed through in Taiwan – will the public get a say?”, anti-gender activist and No Self ID writer Jaclynn Joseph commented: “It is disappointing to see a thriving democracy like Taiwan circumvent discussion on this topic [gender recognition requirements] and use sleight of hand to pass a law that will negatively impact its citizens.” Joseph’s article was translated into Chinese and featured on No Self ID’s homepage, where it remains pinned even to this day.
Joseph’s Feminist Current article, as well as the naming of No Self ID as an organization, is indicative of a broader dynamic in Taiwan’s anti-gender movement where mobilizations are organized on the basis of anticipated actions that have yet to happen as if they have already happened. We term this dynamic “proleptic politics” and argue that it is a defining feature of Taiwan’s anti-gender movement that draws heavily on transnational news circulation of transgender and anti-gender movement events abroad. Professor Chen’s Executive Yuan report, which was made publicly available on March 22, 2022, did indeed included a “Gender Recognition Law” draft, but to say that this policy report constitutes ‘gender identity legislation being pushed through in Taiwan’ fundamentally misconstrues policy recommendations with an actual legislative proposal being sent to the Legislative Yuan. Furthermore, while a TAPCPR Facebook post from March of 2020 called on the government “to swiftly abolish the compulsory surgery rule, with unconditional legal gender change as the ultimate goal,”[2] TAPCPR’s public messaging since Lisbeth Wu’s strategic litigation press conference on TDOR 2020 has only emphasized abolishing the surgery requirement for legal gender change without calling for “gender self-identification” that does not require any evidentiary documentation. Nevertheless, No Self ID and other anti-gender groups have consistently attempted to portray TAPCPR as advocating for gender self-declaration without any requirements.
Indeed, the question of what specific gender recognition model Taiwan should implement—be it a “soft medical model” requiring medical evidence of one’s gender identity but not surgery (UK), a “non-medical model” that accepts a variety of evidence that does not privilege medical expertise (France), or a “gender self-identification model” that does not require any supporting documentation (California)—was precisely the question that Professor Chen’s Executive Yuan report sought to explore. Ultimately, Professor Chen’s report advocated for a soft medical model of legal gender change for the “male” and “female” gender option, and recommended gender self-identification only for the “nonbinary” option. Nevertheless, No Self ID, as its organization name suggests, frames any attempt to abolish compulsory surgery as advocating for a gender self-identification model; “gender self-identification,” then, is used as a catch-all term for all forms of gender recognition that are not based exclusively on an essentialist notion of biological sex and hence require surgery, regardless of whether strategic litigation and trans movement efforts are actually pushing for gender self-identification. In the past four years, there have been no efforts to ‘push gender self-identification legislation’ into Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan; instead, there have been a series of government considerations and strategic litigation that realistically fall within the soft and non-medical models of gender recognition.
We understand the proleptic politics of Taiwan’s anti-gender movement as arising from its transnational character. From its establishment in February of 2022 until October of 2024, the homepage of No Self ID’s website has listed several alleged negative impacts that “gender self-identification” is supposedly having in countries around the world that offer gender recognition to transgender people who have not undergone genital surgery under the section heading of “Incidents that have Already Happened Abroad.” These alleged negative impacts include but are not limited to: destroying fairness in gender-segregated sports, undermining gender equality quotas in public office, infringing on freedoms of speech and thought, destroying the existence of women-only spaces (prisons, shelters, dormitories, changing rooms, restrooms, etc.), pressuring so-called biological lesbians to have sex with trans women, and “pushing” gender-affirming care onto minors. Each “negative impact” cites news stories from abroad as a forewarning of what is to happen in Taiwan should the surgery requirement for changing one’s legal gender be abolished, which is made explicit in the next section heading: “And Taiwan Is Quietly Moving Towards the Same Future.” Indeed, the overwhelming majority of content on No Self ID’s website—over 80% at the time of writing—consists of Chinese language summaries of anti-gender news reports, blog posts, and other media translated from primarily English. Frequent outlets and sources for this foreign content include, but are not limited to: Reduxx, 4W, Feminist Current, Daily Mail, the Cass report, Women’s Declaration International (WDI), and LGB Alliance.
Since its emergence in the fall of 2021, Taiwan’s anti-gender movement has also made organizational connections to anti-gender movement infrastructures abroad. In early December of 2021, Joseph presented on Taiwan’s situation during a WDI Feminist Question Time webinar. No Self ID later signed onto WDI’s “Declaration on Women’s Sex-Based Rights” in March of 2022; Joseph then joined WDI as the Taiwan contact in January of 2023 and authored the Taiwan country report in WDI’s October 2023 book, Women’s Rights, Gender Wrongs. In the second half of 2022, anti-gender activists connected with the UK-based LGB Alliance, eventually founding a Taiwan LGB Alliance chapter in June of 2024. Overall, Taiwan’s anti-gender movement is highly integrated into transnational anti-gender information circuits. As a node in this broader global structure, Taiwan’s anti-gender movement frequently flattens the gaps between the actual situation of transgender rights and activism in various countries into an anticipatory horizon of gender self-identification’s supposed international tyranny. In this domino theory of, in the words of one No Self ID member, “how Western trans ideology has invaded the countries in Asia,” any invocation of the concept of gender identity as legally salient is tantamount to unleashing the supposed mayhem of unconditional gender self-identification, as allegedly seen in countries abroad that permit legal gender change without surgery.
By metabolizing and disseminating a drastically higher proportion of news reports and translated summaries from abroad on their website, No Self ID is able to amass an archive of content to support its agenda even when domestic developments in transgender rights are comparably sparse. For instance, from late November 2021 until early February 2023, Lisbeth Wu’s court case remained in limbo as it was being considered by the Constitutional Court for a constitutional interpretation. During this time period of lower public visibility of transgender movement activity, while No Self ID continued to document various domestic news such as the Ministry of Labor declaring that “Transgender women are not eligible for menstrual leave” in February of 2022 and a transgender woman winning a workplace discrimination lawsuit in April of 2022, the majority of No Self ID’s website and newsletter content remained summaries and translations of foreign news. As Taiwan’s administrative court system made no additional rulings on strategic litigation cases from fall of 2021 until fall of 2023, opportunities for Taiwan’s anti-gender movement to break into public discourse with the same fervor and uptake as its initial debut were scarce. Nevertheless, when said opportunities arose in the fall of 2023 and the latter half of 2024, anti-gender groups in Taiwan were ready to go with ample rhetorical ammunition from ‘incidents abroad’ to arm their arguments.
In addition to strategic litigation aimed at abolishing the surgery requirement for legal gender change, anti-gender groups in Taiwan have mobilized against efforts to draft comprehensive anti-discrimination legislation that would include protections for gender identity. As part of a National Human Rights Action Plan initiated in the summer of 2022, the Department of Human Rights and Transitional Justice (DHRTJ) of the Executive Yuan began drafting such legislation, which No Self ID began mobilizing against in early March of 2023. In late April of that year, multiple No Self ID members attended a public listening session hosted by the DHRTJ as part of their anti-discrimination legislation drafting process. In response to the completion of this draft legislation in the summer of 2024, multiple anti-gender groups converged on DHRTJ-hosted listening sessions to oppose anti-discrimination protections for transgender people. Again, incidents abroad were referenced as a harbinger of what was to come should Taiwan expand anti-discrimination protections for transgender people. For instance, citing the “over 600 men who have been dominating women’s sports in the United States these past two years,” TWA stated in their public comments that “If gender identity is included in anti-discrimination law, women will be unable to make factual judgments about the irrationality of biological males identifying themselves as women and competing in sporting events.”[3] It should be noted that it is unclear what source TWA is drawing from for their ‘over 600’ statistic. Similarly, alluding to Reduxx reports of the Parry Sound women’s shelter assault case from Canada and the possibility of predatory men declaring themselves to be women to access women’s shelters in Spain, No Self ID urged the DHRTJ to consider how “if women’s shelter workers denied accommodations to these MTF transgenders with a history of domestic violence,”[4] they could face legal action under comprehensive anti-discrimination laws.
Anti-gender movement groups in Taiwan argue that comprehensive anti-discrimination legislation will result in serious harms to free speech. In a No Self ID podcast episode from July of 2024, a direct comparison was made between anti-discrimination protections for transgender people and Taiwan’s martial law period. The podcast warned that the threat of lawsuits and fines brought about by anti-discrimination legislation would result in “the ‘self-censorship’ that was used by people during the White Terror to avoid persecution.”[5] Accompanying an anti-gender infographic explaining the allegedly harmful effects of anti-discrimination legislation on free speech, TWA cited transgender woman Roxanne Tickle’s lawsuit against Sall Grover’s ‘female-only’ dating app, Giggle, as an example of how smaller platforms could be taken down by a discrimination lawsuit. Anti-gender activists brandish these hypothetical and actual examples from abroad to drum up support against anti-discrimination legislation based on anticipated harms. This temporality of anticipation, coupled with ostensible verification from the plethora of examples circulating within transnational anti-gender information networks, is a defining feature of the proleptic politics of anti-gender mobilization in Taiwan.
Anti-gender activists in Taiwan deliberately muddle the distinctions between what is actually happening in Taiwan, what has (allegedly) happened elsewhere in the world, and what might happen in a future more hospitable to transgender existence as a way to mobilize support. The translingual character of the transnational anti-gender information circuits buttressing these rhetorical strategies makes it especially difficult for Taiwanese audiences to fact-check cases and claims, which opens a space for horrendous disinformation to take hold. For instance, No Self ID did a translated summary of Canadian far-right media website Rebel News’ supposed exposé of Lia Thomas’ “autogynephilia and fetishistic lifestyle” in an attempt to vilify Thomas to Taiwanese audiences. On the homepage of their website under the topic subsection of “Medicine,” No Self ID also misrepresents the details of fetal death in a transgender man’s medical triage mismanagement to argue that these kinds of tragedies await should biological sex be changed in medical records, leading to healthcare providers being unable to know vital medical information.[6] Further analysis and strategizing is required on how Taiwan’s transgender rights movement has and might best respond to these transnational structures of anticipation and (dis)information in the proleptic politics of Taiwan’s anti-gender movement.
Financial Disclosure
*This article was made possible by grant funding from the Transgender Educational Network: Theory in Action for Creativity, Liberation, Empowerment, and Service (TEN:TACLES) Initiative for the Transpacific Taiwan Transgender Studies (3TS) Research Collective.
AUTHORS
Yo-Ling Chen (they/them/他) is a trans nonbinary Taiwanese American writer, translator, activist, and independent scholar based in Taipei. They are a contributing editor at New Bloom Magazine, as well as a founding editor and translator at 酷兒翻越 Queer Margins, which specializes in English-to-Chinese translation of gender and intimacy diversity content. Yo-Ling’s academic research and teaching focuses on the intersections of transgender studies, asexuality studies, and Taiwan studies. Their independent scholarship has been published by Routledge, where they are currently working on a co-edited volume tentatively titled Global Asexualities and Aromanticism. Yo-Ling is the lead-PI for the Transpacific Taiwan Transgender Studies Research Collective, which analyzes and develops strategic responses to anti-gender mobilizations in Taiwan.
Panchen Lo (羅盤針) (she/her) is a PhD student in the Department of Anthropology and a scholar in the Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Global Change at the University of Minnesota, USA. Lo’s work explores fields across feminist, queer, and trans studies, sociocultural anthropology, transnational social movements, and political theory. Lo has published articles based on an ethnographic study of temporality in Taiwanese crossdressing subculture. Her doctoral research project focuses on the transitioning of trans Taiwanese and the changing gender and political categories in trans lives and their practice. Lo currently participates in a collaborative study on transnational anti-trans movement and discourse in Taiwan with Yo-Ling Chen. Lo is also a trans activist engaging in public education and community service in Taiwan, organizing Taiwan Trans March and editing a book The Multiverse of Gender: A Collection of Transgender Lives Stories (2024).
NOTES
[1] “參考國外對於不須摘除生殖器官，也就是俗稱的「免手術換證」所造成之無數女性權益和安全的實質傷害和案件”
[2] “伴侶盟呼籲政府應盡速取消強制手術規定，並且以 #自由換證 為最終目標。”
[3] “一旦反歧視法納入了性別認同，女性就不可以基於事實評斷生理男性自認女性、參與體育賽事的不合理性，也不可以主張女性仍應享有單一性別空間，而必須一再忍受空間混用。即使過去兩年間，美國體育賽事有高達六百名男性屠榜女性賽事也不能說這有問題。”
[4] “婦女庇護所的工作人員若是阻止這些有家暴前科的男跨女入住，算不算觸犯反歧視法？”
[5] “那麼，巨怕巨額賠償金跟曠日耗時，纏訟過程的公司和網路平台會怎麼做呢？沒錯，就是過去臺灣人極其熟悉的白色恐怖時期用來避免自己成為被檢舉對象的「自我審查」。” (06:00)
[6] In reality, this patient had immediately informed the triage nurse that he was transgender and had a positive at-home pregnancy test upon entering the hospital, but his self-disclosure was not taken seriously. Contrary to No Self ID’s disinformation tactics, the authors of the original medical case report argue for establishing more sensitive classifications for transgender patients to prevent future incidents; they even go so far as to explicitly state that “the issues raised in this case cannot be resolved by preventing transgender people from changing their sex on legal documentation or in their medical chart” (1887).