I've got a friend from China over on Discord. He confided to us that he ended a friendship with someone today because they hated his transgender OC, and then proceeded to explain that it's a larger problem in China. Here's what he wrote:
To put it bluntly, almost the entire Internet environment in China is anti transgender.(Although China has protection laws for transgender individuals).
CN ppl who saw the news that transgender people died of abuse by their parents and then went on cheering are countless i would say
There are many people who use a small number of negative news to negate this group
I was scolded for a long time just saying 'But that's not the reason why they were brutally killed', and even some people called me a disgrace to the country
This is thanks to the media. About four years ago, the media began to put a large amount of negative news about LGBTQ community on the Chinese Internet
The current issue is that rulers do not want to interfere too much with the LGBTQ issues and have not publicly expressed their stance (However, it is explicitly stated in the law that transgender individuals should enjoy the same rights as other citizens).
However the voices of opposition from the public are very strong.
such strong sense of fragmentation
I would like to learn more about this issue, and, if it's as he's saying, try to understand better why things are this way in China and what, if anything, is being done about this over there.
I've only visited China, and my chinese freinds haven't talked about this issue before, so all my experience is from the chinese internet. I would be interested in a more in depth analysis if it exists.
I've only seen one person on Rednote talking about trans issues openly, and they were careful to make their content primarily in English. They claimed that making the content in chinese would get them more online harrassment which they didn't want to deal with. It's not that everyone is a problem, but there are enough of them to make it very unpleasant. While transition can be legally done, requiring surgery as others have pointed out, it is still difficult socially.
This same creator had one video where they pointed out that younger people are generally more accepting, but not universally so, and older generations are rarely understanding or accepting. That being said, they do make it clear that the culture is shifting, it's just going to take time.
Regarding same sex couples, it's a mixed bag as well. The media has to skirt around explicit relationships much of the time, but will include very heavily coded characters. There was the legal case a year or so back regarding the rights of same sexual couples as it relates to their children. There was a post here on lemmygrad about this a while back. The relationship was not considered legally relevant in that case, but they did rule in favour of the children being of both parents because one acted as a surrogate. There's some hope there, but it's a long, long way to go.
I'm hopeful that we'll see things change in the next few decades as in Vietnam and Cuba, but that's just vibes. It could be better, but it's certainly not the worst in the world.