Trans care definitely isn’t banned, as another poster linked there are state-backed clinics that provide it. Lgbt media has been censored, but not all of it, so I don’t think lgbt media is blanket banned.
The thing about China’s censors is that they’re not super consistent and they never give clear reasons for why they do what they do, so there’s a lot of reading tea leaves when they censor something to figure out why they did it (also a lot of the censorship is done preemptively by companies who are afraid of crossing the line they can’t see).
Trans care is not banned. There’s lots of private clinics and a small number of state backed clinics (but growing in number unlike the west where they’re getting shut down or defunded). There’s laws against discriminating against employees for being trans, there’s trans celebrities and TV hosts.
All sorts of media are explicitly censored in China and rather arbitrarily along some outdated laws, private media vendors often self-censor in more reactionary and stranger ways (like changing the color of blood) than the state mandates to avoid any trouble at all. One of the most popular TV dramas of the last few years was The Untamed, about the love between two men, in what was such a gay story, that was also very chaste to avoid any trouble.
China has a different approach to sexuality and gender born out of it’s history and material conditions. For most of Chinese history marriage was a thing people did to continue the family and have kids, it was considered pretty normal to have a same sex lover, as long as you were still doing that other stuff first. They didn’t have sodomy laws or the same modern era reaction to homosexuality that Europe had. Likewise they had various concepts, roles and terms for gender diverse people (not perfect but broader than Europe).
There’s a study I read once, I had it on hand, but I lost when I deleted my Twitter account, but basically it highlighted the contradictory and nuanced positions of the average Chinese person. When asked whether they thought positively or negatively of being homosexual, it swung towards negative. When asked how much they cared about people they didn’t know being homosexual it swung towards absolutely not caring at all. When asked if they would be happy or sad if their child was homosexual, it swung towards sad. But if asked for the choice between having a single heterosexual child and a partnered gay child with children, they overwhelmingly chose the latter.
iirc a lot of “lgbt censorship” stories stem from a broader restriction on monetizing porn, combined with the sort of preemptive editing Carl mentioned from companies who think it’s banned
idk i don’t live there, so i’ve basically settled on “i live in the west and i’m going to mostly hear filtered shit that makes china sound evil, it’s at worst less bad than that”
one aspect that determines whether LGBT media gets banned or not depends on whether it has western funding or not. Not saying they are fully supportive of LGBT, but they seem set against allowing it as a point of ingress for western NGOs.
Correct me here, I thought trans care is banned in China? And that gay media is explicitly censored?
Trans care definitely isn’t banned, as another poster linked there are state-backed clinics that provide it. Lgbt media has been censored, but not all of it, so I don’t think lgbt media is blanket banned.
The thing about China’s censors is that they’re not super consistent and they never give clear reasons for why they do what they do, so there’s a lot of reading tea leaves when they censor something to figure out why they did it (also a lot of the censorship is done preemptively by companies who are afraid of crossing the line they can’t see).
Trans care is not banned. There’s lots of private clinics and a small number of state backed clinics (but growing in number unlike the west where they’re getting shut down or defunded). There’s laws against discriminating against employees for being trans, there’s trans celebrities and TV hosts.
All sorts of media are explicitly censored in China and rather arbitrarily along some outdated laws, private media vendors often self-censor in more reactionary and stranger ways (like changing the color of blood) than the state mandates to avoid any trouble at all. One of the most popular TV dramas of the last few years was The Untamed, about the love between two men, in what was such a gay story, that was also very chaste to avoid any trouble.
China has a different approach to sexuality and gender born out of it’s history and material conditions. For most of Chinese history marriage was a thing people did to continue the family and have kids, it was considered pretty normal to have a same sex lover, as long as you were still doing that other stuff first. They didn’t have sodomy laws or the same modern era reaction to homosexuality that Europe had. Likewise they had various concepts, roles and terms for gender diverse people (not perfect but broader than Europe).
There’s a study I read once, I had it on hand, but I lost when I deleted my Twitter account, but basically it highlighted the contradictory and nuanced positions of the average Chinese person. When asked whether they thought positively or negatively of being homosexual, it swung towards negative. When asked how much they cared about people they didn’t know being homosexual it swung towards absolutely not caring at all. When asked if they would be happy or sad if their child was homosexual, it swung towards sad. But if asked for the choice between having a single heterosexual child and a partnered gay child with children, they overwhelmingly chose the latter.
iirc a lot of “lgbt censorship” stories stem from a broader restriction on monetizing porn, combined with the sort of preemptive editing Carl mentioned from companies who think it’s banned
idk i don’t live there, so i’ve basically settled on “i live in the west and i’m going to mostly hear filtered shit that makes china sound evil, it’s at worst less bad than that”
one aspect that determines whether LGBT media gets banned or not depends on whether it has western funding or not. Not saying they are fully supportive of LGBT, but they seem set against allowing it as a point of ingress for western NGOs.