Yo-Ling Chenby Yo-Ling Chen
語言:
English
Photo Credit: Screenshot
IN RECENT MONTHS, Taiwan’s anti-gender movement has engaged in a research misconduct and misinformation campaign to push specious claims about “general population attitudes” towards transgender rights through the facade of academic objectivity. In the wake of the Taipei High Administrative Court’s second ruling against compulsory surgery for changing one’s legal gender on May 30th, anti-gender movement actors such as No-Self ID Taiwan, Twitter account @memetranspolicy, and US expat co-founder of Taiwan Women’s Association Jaclynn Joyce all published or shared articles referencing “an online questionnaire survey” conducted by “scholars working at various universities across Taiwan” that “sought to understand the general public’s views on self-identification, meaning surgery-free change of legal sex,” which was “published in the academic journal Archives of Sexual Behavior.” Citations to this research article were made to argue that “more than 90% of Taiwanese people strongly oppose changing someone’s legal sex without so-called sex reassignment surgery.” Further investigation into this research article revealed a plethora of research misconduct, mistranslation, and misinformation issues, which begs into question how such an article was published in a peer-reviewed academic journal in the first place.
Chao et al.’s Research Survey, as Published in ASB
Screenshot of Chao et al.’s ASB article, 2024/08/28.
ON MARCH 18, 2024, Archives of Sexual Behavior (ASB) published an open-access research article titled “Gender Self-Identification: Opinions About Transgender Women from a National Online Survey in Taiwan” by Kuo-Yu Chao (趙國玉), Chih-Chiang Chou (周植強), Ching-I Chen, and Wei Cheng (鄭威). [1] Chao et al.’s article shares findings from “An online opinion survey” that was “developed by an association of parents, women, and adolescents” aimed at gaining “a better understanding of the general population’s attitudes towards gender self-identification.” The survey was administered online from April 16 to April 30, 2022 through SurveyCake. The survey itself opens with the following statement and definitions:
“The purpose of this survey is to gain an understanding [of] how residents of Taiwan view issues surrounding gender identity (gender self-identification) with regard to women’s safety, women’s rights, and the law and society. Please refer to the following definitions when responding to the survey statements: ‘Trans women’ are those whose sex assigned at birth (biological status) was male, but who identify and live as women without female sex-reassignment surgery; ‘Trans men’ are those whose sex assigned at birth (biological status) was female, but who identify and live as men without sex-reassignment surgery; and ‘Transsexual women’ are those assigned male sex at birth and received female sex-reassignment surgery.”
Survey respondents were asked whether they agreed or disagreed with 14 statements regarding gender self-identification and “women’s safety (5 items), women’s rights (5 items), and law and society (4 items).” 10,158 valid survey responses were obtained in the span of two weeks. Survey findings are summarized in Table 2 of Chao et al.’s article. Most notable, survey results indicate that 93.8% of respondents disagreed with the statement “Trans women can use women’s public toilets,” 95.8% of respondents disagreed with the statement “It is fair for the Olympics to allow trans women to compete in women’s sporting events,” and 89.3% disagreed with the statement “The court ruled that trans women without sex-reassignment surgeries could change their gender to ‘female’ on the ID card in Taiwan. I agree with this decision.” Chao et al. conclude that “Public acceptance of gender self-identification requires support from its residents. Our findings suggest that gender self-identification has not begun to approach even a moderate level of public support among survey respondents.”
Chao et al.’s Research Survey, as Actually Conducted by the Taiwan Parents Protect Women and Children Association
Screenshot of TPPWCA’s survey banner, accessed via Internet Archive.
ON APRIL 16, 2022, the Taiwan Parents Protect Women and Children Association (TPPWCA；台灣家長守護婦幼權益協會) announced on Facebook that they were conducting an online survey. While this initial Facebook post opens with the rhetorical question “Have you heard of gender self-identification?” (您聽過「性別自我認同」嗎？), nowhere in the original survey do the words “gender self-identification” (性別自我認同) or “gender self-declaration” (性別自我宣稱) ever appear. The original survey clearly lists TPPWCA as the survey administrator and opens with the following explanation of survey goals:
“[O]ur association wants to understand the public’s knowledge of ‘transgender’ people, the public’s understanding of ‘gender identity’ as included in the Gender Equity Education Act, and the public’s views on the ‘Legal Regulations for Gender Change Requirements’ legislative proposal that the Executive Yuan is currently researching and discussing by conducting a scientific investigation and statistical research. Research results will be provided to civil society groups concerned about gender equity, individuals, and even government agencies as consideration materials for establishing related laws and educational policies.”
Nowhere in the original survey are any of the co-authors of Chao et al. named, despite the authors disclosing in the “Contributions” section of their ASB article that first author Kuo-Yu Chao “designed the survey” and “collected the data.” Furthermore, the original survey does not mention IRB approval or explicitly inform survey respondents that their responses are part of a scholarly research project that will be published in an academic journal.
TPPWCA’s survey consisted of 30 questions: 7 demographic questions, 11 questions regarding transgender women, 1 question regarding use of puberty blockers, 3 questions regarding gender diversity education in Taiwan, 4 questions regarding Taiwan’s legal gender registration system, 1 question regarding transgender men’s fertility, 1 question regarding attitudes towards respecting difference, 1 question regarding support for same-sex marriage legalization, and 1 open-ended response question. Five survey questions, such as whether respondents thought that there was a correlation between increases in childhood gender dysphoria diagnoses and social influence, were omitted from Chao et al.’s ASB article (see Appendix B).
The majority of original survey items that are analyzed in Chao et al.’s ASB article (see Table 2) were mistranslated, hiding biases built into how questions were originally worded. Chao et al. omit translating the parenthetical of “(who are biologically still male)” (生理仍為男性) that accompanies every instance of “transgender women who have not undergone surgery” (未術跨女) in the original survey. For example, the original survey question “It is fair to biologically female athletes for the Olympics to allow transgender women who have not undergone surgery (who are biologically still male) to compete in women’s sporting events” (國際奧林匹克允許未術跨女 (生理仍為男性) 參加女子組賽事對生理女性選手是公平的) is misrepresented by Chao et al. (2024) in item 7 of Table 2 as “It is fair for the Olympics to allow trans women to compete in women’s sporting events.” All 14 items that Chao et al. share in Table 2 of their ASB article have been mistranslated to hide the parenthetical of “biologically still” being one’s gender assigned at birth (see Appendix B).
In their “Measures and Procedures” section, Chao et al. write that “Several non-government organizations comprised of parent groups, LGBT groups, teachers, and students throughout Taiwan were notified” of their survey. However, in the course of investigations for this article, three of the largest LGBT organizations in Taiwan–Taiwan Tongzhi (LGBTQ+) Hotline Association, the Taiwan Alliance to Promote Civil Partnership Rights, and Taiwan LGBT Family Rights Advocacy–reported that they were not notified of TPPWCA’s survey. Indeed, social media tracking of the original survey link show that it’s social media circulation was primarily amongst organizations and accounts associated with Taiwan’s anti-gender movement such as Taiwan Protection (守護台灣) on Facebook, No Self-ID Taiwan (性別不是你說了算) on Facebook, @memetranspolicy on Twitter, and @dove_packet on Plurk. Far from approximating “general population attitudes,” TPPWCA’s survey made use of convenience sampling primarily amongst anti-gender movement actors.
Who is TPPWCA?
TPPWCA ITSELF IS a major organization in Taiwan’s anti-gender movement. Founded on March 14, 2021, TPPWCA’s first public statement on transgender issues was a Facebook post on October 8, 2021 condemning the use of puberty blockers, which included links to a simplified Chinese language article from The Christian Post promoting Abigail Schrier’s 2020 book, Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters, and a DailyMail article featuring Dr. Marci Bowers and Dr. Erica Anderson. [2] On November 19, 2021, TPPWCA formally joined Taiwan’s anti-gender movement by signing onto a No Self-ID Taiwan petition to the government defending the surgery requirement for changing one’s legal gender; TPPWCA simultaneously issued a statement saying “We reject changing one’s legal gender on the basis of psychological identity without undergoing sexual reassignment surgery” and “Changing one’s legal gender without undergoing surgery is not ‘progressive,’ but is a constriction on women’s safe spaces and rights.”
A few weeks before launching their survey in April of 2022, TPPWCA posted a traditional Chinese translation of Advocates Protecting Children’s Manifesto for Reality & Compassion, which states that “Men cannot become women and women cannot become men,” “Children should not be given treatments that encourage or affirm their gender dysphoria,” and “Children’s healthy bodies should not be medically damaged.”
On May 29th of this year during a public listening session by the Executive Yuan’s Department of Human Rights and Transitional Justice on their comprehensive anti-discrimination draft legislation, TPPWCA chairwoman Shu-Pei Wei (魏書珮) stated: “Article three of this draft legislation mentions gender, gender temperament, sexual orientation, and gender identity. This inclusion distorts the definition of gender, changing gender from a strictly biological reality to something that contains psychological factors, which are fluid. Muddling the definition of gender leaves people, business employers, and schools at a loss for what to do” (1:49:23).
The Case for Retraction
ARCHIVES OF SEXUAL BEHAVIOR is a member publication of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), which lists falsification as grounds for article retraction under their retraction guidelines (COPE Council, 2019). The United States Office of Research Integrity and National Science Foundation both define falsification as “manipulating research materials, equipment, or processes, or changing or omitting data or results such that the research is not accurately represented in the research record.” Under this definition, the aforementioned mistranslations and misrepresentations of the original survey could be construed as constituting research falsification, and therefore a compelling case can be made that ASB should retract Chao et al.’s article in order to “minimise the number of researchers who cite [this] erroneous work, act on its findings, or draw incorrect conclusions,” as stated in COPE’s retraction guidelines.
ASB itself also has its own internal editorial policies around informed consent, which Chao et al.’s article fails to meet. In their “Ethics declaration,” Chao et al. state that informed consent was “Not applicable” and vaguely claim that “all procedures were performed in accordance with the Ethics Committee.” However, the authors do not indicate which institution’s IRB this “Ethics Committee” is from, nor do they provide an IRB case number or clarify anywhere in their article how this study was deemed exempt from informed consent. Nowhere in the original survey mentions scholarly research or academic publication. As in the case of a previous ASB retracted article, TPPWCA’s survey participants did not “consent to participate in scholarly research or to have their responses published in a peer reviewed article.”
I, along with a group of other concerned scholars and health professionals, contacted ASB and requested an article retraction on the basis of the aforementioned research falsification and informed consent issues. ASB responded saying that they are requesting additional information from Chao et al. and will publish a correction update to their article.
Misinformation Issues with Chao et al.’s ASB Article
IN ADDITION TO the aforementioned research misconduct issues, Chao et al.’s article also commits a series of basic misinformation mistakes regarding the current status of transgender rights in Taiwan. First and foremost, Chao et al. rightly point out that the only regulation on legal gender registration is a single administrative order from the Ministry of Interior (#0970066240) issued in 2008, but they mistakenly refer to this order as Taiwan’s “Gender Recognition Act.” Contrary to what the English term “Act” implies, this order does not have the legal status of law in Taiwan’s civil code system; rather, it is an administrative order that the Ministry of Interior may at any time, and without any interaction with the Legislative Yuan, change if it sees fit.
Regarding transgender plaintiff Xiao E’s historic court victory in 2021, Chao et al. write that Taiwan’s “gender-change requirements were partially overturned,” and that this case’s “court ruling allows individuals aged 18 years or above, to file for legal recognition of their preferred gender if accompanied by medical certificates from two psychiatrists.” While it is true that Xiao E’s court ruling was an historic decision, transgender people in Taiwan have always been able to go through the administrative appeal process to challenge the Ministry of Interior’s administrative order.
Chao et al. go on to claim in reference to Xiao E’s case that “When a decision by a Taiwanese court found in favor of a plaintiff who sought legal recognition of being transgender without proof of SRS in 2021, the Taiwan legislature began to consider ratification of a law that would allow gender self-identification without a surgical procedure.” Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan has never considered such a law, as a Gender Recognition Act has never been proposed in Taiwan’s legislative history. In October of 2020 almost a year before Xiao E’s ruling, the Executive Yuan commissioned policy research by gender studies professor and comparative legal scholar Yi-Chien Chen on recommendations for legal gender change requirements in Taiwan. To say that this policy research constitutes legislative consideration of ratification is a blatant misrepresentation, and would be the equivalent of saying that a White House working group report constitutes legislative consideration in the United States.
Title page of Professor Yi-Chien Chen’s report with the disclaimer “The contents and recommendations of this report are solely those of the research group and do not represent the Executive Yuan’s position” written in parentheses at the bottom
In Table 2 of their article, Chao et al. cite Professor Chen’s aforementioned Executive Yuan report as evidence that “The Executive Yuan plans to legislate gender-self-identification without sex-reassignment surgeries.” In reality, Professor Chen’s 2022 report explicitly calls for a “soft medical model” of gender recognition for transgender men and women that would require some form of evidence from a doctor, psychiatrist, or psychologist of gender identity stability, whereas self-declaration is only proposed for people changing their legal genders to a “non-binary” third legal gender category. The deliberate rhetorical imposition of “gender self-identification” and “gender self-declaration” that is present throughout Chao et al.’s article is more of a reflection of anti-gender movement anxieties than what is actually happening in Taiwan and what was actually asked in the survey.
Conclusion
CHAO ET AL.’S ASB ARTICLE is being cited by anti-gender movement actors in Taiwan to claim that approximately 90% of the Taiwanese public are against abolishing compulsory surgery for legal gender change. Even international media outlets such as PsyPost have erroneously cited Chao et al.’s article to claim that the “Taiwanese public largely rejects gender self-identification.” This claim is being made on the basis of an anti-gender movement NGO survey that made use of non-statistical convenience sampling and thus cannot be generalized to the “Taiwanese people.” The most recent phone survey data from the Executive Yuan’s 2024 public opinion survey on gender equality, which made use of randomized sampling, shows that approximately 61.7% of respondents are in favor of “allowing transgender people to change their legal gender without undergoing sexual reassignment surgery” given the provision that “psychological evaluations (such as a psychiatrist’s diagnosis) or other forms of medical evidence (such as use of hormones) are required.” These survey findings indicate that the majority of Taiwanese people support abolishing compulsory surgery and moving towards a soft medical model of gender recognition for transgender men and women akin to what Professor Chen proposed in her aforementioned 2022 Executive Yuan report.
Chao et al. write that “we cannot exclude the possibility that our sample was biased toward respondents who disapproved of gender self-identification and wished to share their opinions.” Given the plethora of research misconduct, mistranslation, and misinformation issues with their article, this statement of “possibility” can only be construed as a bad-faith mischaracterization of TPPWCA’s actual survey. This survey was, from its design to implementation by an anti-gender movement organization, intentionally biased toward respondents who disapprove of any changes to Taiwan’s existing system of compulsory surgery for legal gender change.
It is unclear whether ASB editors were aware of the ways in which they were being recruited into this transpacific anti-gender movement circuit of research misconduct, mistranslation, and misinformation when reviewing Chao et al.’s submission, or the extent to which ASB as a publication will redress the issues raised here through their pending correction update. What is clear is that Taiwan’s anti-gender movement tactics, rhetorics, and networks can only be fully understood within the larger context of global anti-gender movement mobilizations. Chao et al.’s ASB article is just one of the most recent and egregious transnational incidents.
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.
Appendix A: Actual vs. Reported Survey Opening Discrepancies
1) Actual Survey Opening
源起:
最高行政法院於民國110年判決:E生理男未經手術摘除生殖器官（陰莖及睪丸），申請變更戶籍身份性別為女性勝訴。台灣產生第一人「具有原男性生殖器官的女性」。依法理原則，其應被視為女性，適用各項女性權益及義務。https://udn.com/news/story/7321/5766469
目的：
因此本協會想要了解社會大眾對「跨性別」族群之認識、性別平等教育之「性別認同」的理解度，及行政院正在研議之「性別變更法制化」法案的看法，作一科學性的調查統計研究。研究結果將提供民間關心性平單位、個人，甚至政府部門參考制定相關法律及教育政策。
為使此調查結果具參考價值，懇請大家協助散播及完成此問卷，不甚感激。
註：對於個人性別身份的變更，我國現行實務上是依據內政部97年11月3日內授中戶字第0970066240號函釋：
變更性別要提出2張精神科醫師診斷證明，而且男性變更登記為女性要切除陰莖與睪丸，女性變更為男性則要切除乳房、卵巢與子宮。（簡稱手術摘除生殖器官）。
問卷調查單位:
台灣家長守護婦幼權益協會 (台內團字第1100031079號)
問卷名詞定義：
生理女性：基因性別和解剖構造為女性。
生理男性：基因性別和解剖構造為男性
未術跨女：生理男性「沒有」經變性手術摘除陰莖及睪丸之手術，心理上認為自己是女性
未術跨男：生理女性「沒有」經變性手術摘除乳房、子宮、卵巢之手術，心理上認為自己是男性
變性女：男性經手術摘除陰莖及睪丸，變更為女性
2) Reported Survey Opening
The purpose of this survey is to gain an understanding of how residents of Taiwan view issues surrounding gender identity (gender self-identification) with regard to women’s safety, women’s rights, and the law and society. Please refer to the following definitions when responding to the survey statements: “Trans women” are those whose sex assigned at birth (biological status) was male, but who identify and live as women without female sex-reassignment surgery; “Trans men” are those whose sex assigned at birth (biological status) was female, but who identify and live as men without sex-reassignment surgery; and “Transsexual women” are those assigned male sex at birth and received female sex-reassignment surgery.
3) English Translation of Actual Survey Opening
[Translation of banner image text]
Survey of Opinions on Legal Regulations for Gender Change Requirements
Transgender, gender identity! Do you understand?
Administrator: Taiwan Parents Protect Women and Children Association (Taiwan Ministry of Interior Group Registration #1100031079)
Impetus:
In 2021, the Taipei High Administrative Court ruled in favor of biological male E, who did not undergo surgery to remove sexual reproductive organs (penis and testicles) and applied to update her household registration / national identification gender to female. Taiwan now has the first ever “woman who has her original male sexual reproductive organs.” According to the law, E should be considered a woman and should be allowed to make use of multiple rights and obligations for women.
[link to a United Daily News article titled “Plaintiff Xiao E Wins Case for Transgender Person Updating Legal Gender While Canceling Compulsory Surgery Requirement.”]
Goal:
Because of this, our association wants to understand the public’s knowledge of “transgender” people, the public’s understanding of “gender identity” as included in the Gender Equity Education Act, and the public’s views on the “Legal Regulations for Gender Change Requirements” legislative proposal that the Executive Yuan is currently researching and discussing by conducting a scientific investigation and statistical research. Research results will be provided to civil society groups concerned about gender equity, individuals, and even government agencies as consideration materials for establishing related laws and educational policies.
In order to increase the consideration value of these survey results, we would be grateful for your help in disseminating and completing this questionnaire.
Note: Taiwan’s current practice when it comes to individual legal gender change is to follow the Ministry of Interior’s administrative order No. 0970066240, dated November 3, 1997, which reads: Legal gender change requires submission of two diagnoses from two psychiatrists, as well as surgical removal of penis and testicles for males changing their gender registration to females and surgical removal of mammary glands, ovaries, and uterus for females changing their gender registration to male (abbreviated as surgical removal of sexual reproductive organs).
Survey Administrator:
Taiwan Parents Protect Women and Children Association (Taiwan Ministry of Interior Group Registration #1100031079)
Survey Terminology Definitions：
Biological Female：Genetic sex and anatomy are female
Biological Male：Genetic sex and anatomy are male
Transgender Women Who Have Not Undergone Surgery：Biological males who “have not” undergone sexual reassignment surgery to remove their penis and testicles, and who psychologically think that they are women
Transgender Men Who Have Not Undergone Surgery：Biological females who “have not” undergone sexual reassignment surgery to remove their mammary glands, uterus, and ovaries, and who psychologically think that they are men
Transsexual Women：Men who have surgically removed their penis and testicles and have become women. Appendix B: Actual vs. Reported Survey Question Discrepancies
Appendix B: Actual vs. Reported Survey Question Discrepancies
Endnotes
[1] After contacting Keelung Hospital’s Department of Psychiatry, I was unable to identify this co-author’s Chinese name or job title. Keelung Hospital’s Department of Psychiatry currently has four full-time psychiatrists (武維馨, 張迺榮, 陳文廣, and 劉良湧) and one part-time psychiatrist who only sees patients on Fridays (張慶英). Department of Psychiatry staff said that they were unsure who “Ching-I Chen” is during a phone call.
[2] Dr. Bowers has since come out in support of puberty blockers, telling Fox Digital News in May of 2023 that “My view of puberty blockers has never wavered— they are safe and reversible. Medicine to delay puberty can be a helpful tool to give adolescents, their families and their health care providers time to understand a transgender young person’s specific needs and develop a plan for health care.”