trans rights in Taiwan

2025 Taiwan Pride Controversy Deepens, Further Doubts Raised Over TWRCAA’s Stance on Transgender and Sexual Rights

Yo-Ling Chen
With the 23rd Taiwan LGBT+ Pride parade set to take place in Taipei this Saturday, new developments have cast further doubts as to whether the Taiwan Rainbow Civil Action Association (TWRCAA, 臺灣彩虹公民行動協會), Taiwan Pride’s main organizer, truly supports transgender and sexual rights...
EnglishGender/SexualityOctober 2025Social Movements15 min read

2025 Taiwan Pride Controversy Explained: 
LGBTQ+ Community Speaks Out Against Transphobia and Contempt for Sexual Rights

Yo-Ling Chen
This past week, controversy erupted throughout Taiwan’s LGBTQ+ community after it was discovered that the Administrative and Public Relations Director of this year’s Taiwan Pride march posted on her personal Threads account content that was deemed as transphobic, against sexual rights, and even contemptuous towards the work of previous Taiwan Pride organizers. This discovery sparked widespread outrage amongst Taiwan’s LGBTQ+ community, with multiple individuals and organizations criticizing Pride organizers and speaking up in support of transgender people and sexual rights...
EnglishGender/SexualityOctober 2025Social Movements32 min read

Civil Society Groups Ask Control Yuan to Investigate Ministry of the Interior for Maintaining Compulsory Surgery

Yo-Ling Chen
This morning at 10 AM, civil society groups held a press conference outside of the Control Yuan to condemn the Ministry of the Interior’s (MOI) inaction in changing its 2008 executive order (內政部97年11月3日內授中戶字第0970066240號令) requiring sexual organ removal surgery to change one’s legal gender, despite a total of six administrative court rulings in the past three years that clearly condemn the surgery requirement. After the press conference, a group of civil society group representatives and transgender community members met privately with a Control Yuan official to cordially request that the Control Yuan open an investigation on the MOI for delaying the abolition of compulsory surgery...
EnglishGender/SexualityMarch 2025Social Movements10 min read

Li Kotomi Comes Out as Transgender After Being Outed by Taiwan’s Anti-Gender Movement

Yo-Ling Chen
Yesterday evening on Transgender Day of Remembrance, critically acclaimed Taiwanese fiction writer Li Kotomi reluctantly issued a public statement disclosing her transgender status after years of being outed, harassed, and doxxed online by anti-gender accounts in Taiwan. Shortly after, Taiwan Tongzhi Hotline Association issued a statement in support of Li. In addition to her personal TDOR statement, Li also co-organized a “Statement by Authors in Japan Opposing LGBTQ+ Discrimination,” which was signed by 51 novelists in Japan and was released earlier in the day. Li’s public response to her outing comes in the wake of yet another surge in anti-gender discourse online and draws attention to the increasingly transnational character of anti-gender mobilizations in Taiwan...
Arts and CultureEnglishGender/SexualityLiterature and PoetryNovember 2024Social Movements12 min read

Taiwan Sees Rise in Anti-Gender Discourse Online

Yo-Ling Chen
October was especially difficult for Taiwan’s transgender community, as a wave of anti-gender discourse flooded social media as a result of Taiwan Alliance to Promote Civil Partnership Rights’ strategic litigation plaintiff Lisbeth Wu finally changing her legal gender without providing proof of sexual organ removal surgery on October 8th. Wu’s case challenging compulsory surgery for legal gender change was initiated on Transgender Day of Remembrance, 2020 and finally received a favorable ruling by the Taipei High Administrative Court ruling on August 26th earlier this year. Before this court case, TAPCPR began representing Wu in 2018 for her then lawsuit against Chang Gung University for refusing to house her in women’s dormitories, which she won on June 25, 2021...
EnglishGender/SexualityNovember 2024Social Movements12 min read

Lisbeth Wu Wins Court Case Against Compulsory Surgery for Changing Legal Gender

Yo-Ling Chen
Yesterday, the Taipei Administrative Court ruled in favor of transgender plaintiff Lisbeth Wu’s case to change her legal gender without providing proof of sexual organ removal surgery. Despite being the first strategic litigation case that the Taiwan Alliance for Civil Partnership Rights took on that was aimed at challenging the current Ministry of Interior executive order (內政部97年11月3日內授中戶字第0970066240號令) requiring proof of surgery for changing one’s legal gender, Wu had to wait almost four long years before receiving the THAC’s ruling yesterday...
August 2024EnglishGender/SexualitySocial Movements4 min read

Taipei High Administrative Court Rules in Defense of Soft Medical Model for Legal Gender Change

Yo-Ling Chen
Yesterday, the Taipei High Administrative Court issued their ruling on Taiwan Alliance to Promote Civil Partnership Rights strategic litigation plaintiff Vivi’s court appeal to change her legal gender without providing proof of sexual organ removal surgery. While the THAC’s ruling condemned the surgery requirement for changing one’s legal gender as unconstitutional, it ordered the Daan District Household Registration Office reprocess Vivi’s legal gender change application in accordance to the recommendations set out in the Supreme Administrative Court’s September 2023 ruling, which requires medical evidence of the stability of one’s gender identity...
August 2024EnglishGender/SexualitySocial Movements5 min read

Taipei High Administrative Court’s Third Ruling Against Compulsory Surgery

Yo-Ling Chen
On July 11th, the Taipei High Administrative Court made its third ruling in favor of a transgender plaintiff seeking to change their legal gender without undergoing sexual organ removal surgery. The plaintiff, a transgender women who was pseudonymized as L by the Central News Agency this past weekend in the first Chinese language news report on this court ruling, was represented by Prisma Attorneys-at-Law founding lawyer Titan Deng. While L’s court victory does not appear to be a part of coordinated strategic litigation attempts to abolish the surgery requirement for changing one’s legal gender by groups such as the Taiwan Alliance to Promote Civil Partnership Rights (TAPCPR), it is nevertheless another milestone ruling that further consolidates legal consensus against compulsory surgery...
August 2024EnglishGender/SexualitySocial Movements4 min read