Yo-Ling Chenby Yo-Ling Chen
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Photo Credit: Yu tptw/WikiCommons/CC BY-SA 4.0
OVER THE PAST two weeks, multiple LGBTQ+ groups have issued statements criticizing draft amendments to conscription criteria that would end blanket exemptions for transgender and intersex people, requiring them to instead complete an alternative substitute service. While alternative service involves conscripts being placed in institutions serving public welfare, such as government agencies, police and fire departments, schools, hospitals, and even research institutions, it still requires a 26-day basic training camp, which is typically held at the Chengkungling Recruit Training Center (成功嶺新訓中心) in Taichung. In their criticism of the draft amendments, LGBTQ+ groups emphasized the deleterious effects to physical and psychological well-being that transgender and intersex conscripts face, even in alternative service, especially given the mandatory basic training component.
In response to multiple scandals this year involving celebrities being charged for falsifying medical documents to gain draft exemptions, Taiwan’s current Minister of the Interior Liu Shyh-fang (劉世芳) stated in a Legislative Yuan session that the government would be drafting amendments to tighten exemption criteria by the end of the year. In her comments, Liu cited Taiwan’s current annual draft exemption rate of 16% as being unacceptable.
On December 12, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) and the Ministry of the Interior (MOI) announced draft amendments to the “Physique Classification Standards of Military Service” that regulate which conditions result in regular military service, alternative substitute service, or draft exemption. Of the 193 items listed in the Physique Classification Standards, 180 are to be revised, such as removing blanket exemptions for those with flat feet.
Draft amendments to Items 109 and 189 effectively remove blanket exemptions for intersex and transgender people. Amendments to Item 109, “Abnormalities of External Sex Characteristics,” move “people with sex chromosome abnormalities” (性染色體異常者) and “people with both male and female external sex characteristics” from exempted status to Grade B alternative service. Grade B alternative service refers to placements that are less physically demanding and made for those with more severe health impairments, such as having a Body Mass Index (BMI) lower than 15 or higher than 37.5; Grade A alternative service refers to placements that are made for health conditions that do not require special placement accommodations, such as having a BMI between 15 and 16.5 or 32 and 37.5. Amendments to Item 189, previously named “Psychosexual Abnormalities” and renamed to “Specific Psychosexual Situations,” moves people who have been diagnosed with a psychosexual condition from exempted status to Grade A alternative service. These amendments further spell out that “Specific Psychosexual Situations” include “gender dysphoria, paraphilia, and other sexual dysfunctions” (性別不安、性偏好症、其他性障礙症).
Screenshot of draft amendments to Items 109 and 189 of the “Physique Classification Standards of Military Service”
Notably, revising previous language stipulating “sex reassignment surgery” and “legal gender change” for draft exemption, draft amendments to Item 189 drop the mention of surgery and simply state that those who have changed their legal gender are draft exempt. This change in language suggests a growing acceptance by the MOI and MND that legal gender change need not entail surgery, a position that has seen growing support over the past few years by both the administrative court system and civil society groups. Nevertheless, the MOI still refuses to abolish its surgery requirement for legal gender change.
The Intersex, Transgender and Transsexual People Care Association (ISTSCare) was the first civil society group to issue a statement on December 14 criticizing draft amendments to Items 109 and 189. In their statement, ISTSCare acknowledged the necessity of the MND revising Physique Classification Standards in the face of “longstanding threats from other countries” (長久以來受到其他國家的威脅), but raised concerns about the extent to which conscription and alternative service environments can be accommodating of intersex and transgender individuals. ISTSCare ultimately advised against “rashly including transgender and intersex people in alternative service” (不建議貿然將跨性別者/間性人納入替代役體位中).
Taiwan Non-binary Queer Sluts’ (TWNBQS) December 15 statement criticizing the draft amendments made extensive use of gender studies research to substantiate the claim that Taiwan’s military and conscription environments are rife with gender-based discrimination and violence, bullying, and sexual harassment directed towards gender non-conforming people. In particular, TWNBQS’ statement extensively quoted Chin-Ai Huang’s (黃琴愛) master’s thesis, “A Self-Narrative Study of A Rural Transgender Ex-Serviceman’s Life Experiences,” to emphasize the challenges that transgender people face in the military, such as being continuously outed as transgender, being sexually harassed, and receiving sexually suggestive comments such as “You are really good at helping other people fire their hand gun (i.e. giving people handjobs), aren’t you?” (你應該很會幫人打手槍).
In direct criticism of the MND and MOI’s claim that tightening exemption criteria is necessary for decreasing Taiwan’s draft exemption rate, TWNBQS stated that, according to the MOI’s own data, a total of only 1,433 draft exemptions were given between 2002 and 2020 on the basis of gender dysphoria (approximately 75 to 80 per year). When calculated against the approximate 200,000 people who undergo mandatory draftee medical examinations each year, only ~0.04% of potential conscripts gain draft exemptions through a gender dysphoria diagnosis.
TWNBQS similarly acknowledged the need for the MND to “adjust Physique Classification Standards” and “ensure the operability of defense systems” (調整體位區分標準，以確保整體防衛體系的可運作性) given the “reality of enduring longstanding military and political threats from other countries” (長期承受來自其他國家的軍事與政治威脅的現實) while calling on the MND to withdraw its draft amendments. “We oppose the implementation of this policy in the absence of comprehensive supporting measures and safety mechanisms.”
Statements from the Taiwan Alliance to Promote Civil Partnership Rights (TAPCPR) and the Taiwan Tongzhi Hotline Association similarly emphasized how forcing transgender and intersex people into basic training camps and alternative service does not actually solve the stated issue of high draft exemption rates, given how small the proportion of trans and intersex exemptees is, at not even a tenth of a percent. Both TAPCPR and Hotline outlined the challenges that intersex and transgender people in particular face in the conscription system, such as mandatory buzzcuts, communal showering and health examinations where one is forced to expose one’s body to others, constant misgendering, and even loss of stable access to hormone replacement therapy, especially if alternative service placements are to a rural area where gender-affirming healthcare is limited. TAPCPR and Hotline also called on the MND and MOI to initiate a comprehensive gender impacts evaluation prior to making any revisions to the Physique Classification Standards that may affect transgender and intersex people, and further demanded that any such evaluation and revisions must include consultation with trans and intersex community members.
The Taiwan Association of Transgender Medicine (TATM) also released a statement urging that medical professionals also be included in discussions of revising draft exemptions for transgender people. Emphasizing the risks to transgender people’s physical and mental health should the draft amendments be passed, TATM advised the MND and MOI to keep the existing regulations for draft exempt status of transgender people, praising only the change in wording from “Psychosexual Abnormalities” to “Specific Psychosexual Situations” as a worthwhile revision worth pursuing.
The MND and MOI’s draft amendments to the Physique Classification Standards have sparked considerable public outcry from not just LGBTQ+ groups, with National Taiwan University Dalawasao Club (臺大濁水溪社) also releasing a statement criticizing the proposed amendments for the aforementioned risks posed to trans and intersex peoples. NTU Dalawasao also drew attention to a host of other medical conditions that are also affected by the proposed amendments, such as changing draft exemptions for Paroxysmal Supraventricular Tachycardia to alternative service status and requiring major organ transplant recipients to undergo alternative service if there are no sequela or complicating conditions after one year post-op. Some commentators have even suggested that Taiwan should push for defense participation for all citizens, regardless of gender, be it national defense or civil defense, but should not force citizens into national defense ranks.
LGBTQ+ groups have been engaged in talks with the MND and MOI about how to address the issue of trans and intersex draft exemption status, though the results and content of these talks have not been publicized. The MND currently has opened a file on the Public Policy Online Participation Platform for the public to offer comments on the proposed amendments to the Physique Classification Standards. Public comments for the proposed amendments are open until January 26th, meaning that any proposed changes will not take place until after the end of January. Meanwhile, concerned citizens may also write to the MOI about this matter at any time. It remains to be seen if, in the next month, public outcry towards changing trans and intersex draft exemption status will result in these changes being stopped.