90% of transgenders threatened and insulted, received ‘therapy’: survey

Transgender people in China are not well-received by their families, and 83 percent of respondents of a survey said they were abused by their parents.

The survey, published by Guangzhoubased NGO Trans Center and sent to the Global Times on Wednesday, includes 113 transgender respondents from 21 provinces, municipalities and cities in China.

Eighty-three of those surveyed said they were abused by their parents, some by other relatives such as grandparents, uncles and siblings, the survey shows.

Nearly half of the respondents were between 19 and 26 years old.

A transgender woman, who requested anonymity, told the center that her parents not only verbally abused her, but also threatened to kill her, or kicked her out when she had no income at all, and was forced to shave her hair and nails.

The survey shows almost 90 percent of transgender people were threatened or insulted by others and received “therapy” to “cure” them. About 1 percent were even forced to have sex with others.

The 2017 Chinese Transgender Population General Survey Report released by the Beijing LBGT Center also found that while most transgender people would like to receive hormone therapy or sex reassignment surgery (SRS), they cannot, and around 71 percent said that safe, reliable hormone therapy or drugs are difficult to get. Many of those who would like to get SRS, around 89 percent, said they could not because of economic conditions and parents’ attitude.

It is hard to officially ban LGBT conversion therapy as many people in China still believe sexual minorities are sick, Peng Xiaohui, a sexologist at Central China Normal University in Wuhan, Hubei Province, told the Global Times.

He suggested the group should continue to campaign and provide psychological and legal help to those people.

The organization said that an anti-domestic violence law is urgently needed for transgender groups, because most of them are being abused by their parents, while the current anti-domestic violence law focuses on couples.