Written by Yo-Ling Chen
Image credit: Screenshot provided by Yo-Ling Chen. The graphic was taken from the August 13 press release from the Taiwan Alliance to Promote Civil Partnership Rights (TAPCPR), which expressed their support for transgender rights and called for the abolishment of compulsory surgery.
Despite an increase in civil society groups and public figures expressing their support for transgender rights in 2025, Taiwan’s government has shown a remarkable level of ineptitude when it comes to making tangible policy changes for the betterment of transgender people. In 2025, transgender rights have continued to take a back seat when it comes to abolishing the surgery requirement for legal gender change and expanding access to assisted reproduction and have even been actively harmed in pending changes to Taiwan’s conscription criteria. Meanwhile, anti-gender movement activity in Taiwan continues to rise.
Since the second inauguration of Donald Trump in January of 2025, various anti-gender movement organisations in Taiwan have continued to express support for Trump and his anti-transgender policies, arguing that Taiwan should follow suit. In the days following Trump’s inauguration, Taiwan Solidarity Party (TSP) Chairwoman Chou Ni-an (周倪安) called on Taiwanese society to learn from Trump’s “revolution of common sense” and similarly adopt the position that there are only two genders, male and female, as official government policy. In late March, Taiwan’s largest and most active anti-gender movement organisation, No Self ID Taiwan (NDISTW), joined the anti-trans Trumpist camp by publishing a translation of Trump’s “Keeping Men Out of Sports” Executive Order 14201 and featuring it at the top of their website homepage. A month later, NSIDTW translated Trump’s “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government” Executive Order 14168 and then similarly featured it at the top of their homepage, where it remained for approximately 6 months until October of 2025.
Screenshot of No Self ID Taiwan’s homepage, April 30, 2025
While Taiwanese anti-gender groups were reproducing Trumpist transphobia, Taiwan’s transgender movement organisations have continued to advocate for the abolition of the surgery requirement for legal gender change. In early March, the Taiwan Alliance to Promote Civil Partnership Rights (TAPCPR) hosted a press conference outside of the Control Yuan, calling on the Control Yuan to exercise its constitutional powers to investigate the Ministry of the Interior (MOI) and require it to revoke its 2008 compulsory surgery executive order (內政部97年11月3日內授中戶字第0970066240號令). This press conference and subsequent closed-door meeting with Control Yuan member Chi Hui-Jung (紀惠容) prompted Chi to open an investigation into the MOI for neglect of duty in failing to revise their 2008 regulation.
2025 as a whole saw a notable increase in civil society organisations and public figures expressing their support for transgender rights. In August, TAPCPR hosted a press conference in collaboration with 44 other civil society groups and 31 experts from various sectors to launch a new petition to abolish compulsory surgery. The petition was publicly endorsed by figures and organisations such as renowned feminist writer and distinguished professor Hsiao-Hung Chang (張小虹), Professor and Chair of the Department of Sociology at National Taiwan University, Chia-Ling Wu (吳嘉苓), Venerable Shih Chao-hwei (釋昭慧), the Indigenous Youth Front (原住民族青年陣線), and the Taiwan Disabled Women’s Alliance for Equal Rights (台灣障礙女性平權連線).
In October, Taiwan Pride erupted in controversy when the Taiwan Rainbow Civil Action Association (TWRCAA, 臺灣彩虹公民行動協會)’s Taiwan Pride organising team Administrative and Public Relations Director, Belle Chiu, posted transphobic comments on her personal social media, which included the proclamation that she is “against legal gender change without surgery” and “against psychological gender identity.” Multiple LGBTQIA+ community members and organisations publicly expressed their support for transgender rights and criticised the TWRCAA for indulging hostility towards the transgender community. It was later revealed that TAPCPR had invited the TWRCAA to join their new petition to abolish compulsory surgery, but that the TWRCAA declined. Furthermore, a TWRCAA board member accused transgender activist and then-TWRCAA Chairperson Lisbeth Wu of “emotionally blackmailing” the organisation to publicly endorse trans rights and even put forward a motion to remove Wu as Chairperson. In light of this transphobic treatment, Wu resigned from her position as Chairperson in early September before the Taiwan Pride scandal became public.
In November, Control Yuan member Chi Hui-Jung completed her 81-page investigation report on the MOI; however, the Control Yuan ultimately decided to refrain from exercising its constitutional powers to issue a formal corrective measure compelling the MOI to revise its compulsory surgery regulation and instead recommended that Chi’s report be reviewed and considered. Despite Chi’s unwavering support for transgender rights, her report was unable to gain the support of other Control Yuan members to advance into a formal correction demand. In protest of the Control Yuan’s decision to simply recommend Chi’s report for review, a symbolic act to which the MOI has no legal obligation to consider or even respond to, veteran gay rights activist Chi Chia-wei (祁家威) filed a misconduct complaint against the MOI for maintaining its compulsory surgery policy.
Screenshot of Chi Chia-wei being interviewed outside the MOI from Central News Agency
Despite an increasingly large range of civil society and human rights organisations, LGBTQIA+ community members, public figures, and even government officials such as Chi expressing their support for transgender rights and the abolition of compulsory surgery, such support has failed to translate into tangible policy changes by the Taiwanese government. To the contrary, two developments in December of 2025 further show how government agencies under the Executive Yuan continue to overlook the needs of Taiwan’s transgender community.
First, on December 11, the Executive Yuan approved the Ministry of Health and Welfare’s (MOHW) draft amendments to the Assisted Reproduction Act (ARA), which would expand access to assisted reproduction to unmarried women and lesbian spouses. By using the terminology of “husband and wife,” “lesbian spouses,” and “unmarried woman” in the ARA amendments, unmarried transgender men who successfully change their legal gender to male without undergoing sexual organ removal surgery are effectively excluded from assisted reproduction access. Despite calls to include transgender reproductive rights in ARA amendments that were submitted to the MOHW, the final text of the ARA amendments fails to mention transgender people altogether, underscoring the Executive Yuan’s continued lack of understanding and support for transgender fertility, reproduction, and reproductive rights.
Second, on December 12, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) and the MOI announced draft amendments to tighten conscription exemption criteria that end blanket exemptions for transgender and intersex people. Various LGBTQ+ groups vehemently criticised the draft amendments, which would require transgender people with a gender dysphoria diagnosis and who have not changed their legal gender from male to female to serve an alternative substitute service that still requires 26 days of basic training and exposes them to gender-based harassment and abuse. This alternative service also involves shaving one’s head, communal living and showering with men, as well as potential disruption of gender-affirming healthcare—all of which are deeply damaging to transfeminine people who may now be forced to undergo alternative service conscription. In addition to clear risks to dignity, health, and safety that gender-diverse people face within Taiwan’s conscription system, statements made by Taiwan Non-binary Queer Sluts, TAPCPR, and Taiwan Tongzhi Hotline Association all emphasised the fact that less than a tenth of a percent of draft exemptions each year are given for trans and intersex conditions; thus, forcing transgender and intersex people into conscription fails to address the stated goals of these amendments, which are to decrease Taiwan’s current draft exemption rate of 16%.
As the global anti-gender movement continues to make gains in places such as the US, the UK, and even Argentina, Taiwan’s human rights and civil society organisations remain strongly in support of transgender rights. However, the Taiwanese government is failing to make tangible changes to existing policy for the betterment of the transgender community. It remains to be seen to what extent the government will continue floundering on the legal gender change without surgery issue, as well as when the government will develop policies around assisted reproduction and conscription that are more in line with the needs of transgender people. It also remains to be seen whether the robust range of activity that anti-gender groups in Taiwan continue to engage in will tangibly influence policy decision-making on transgender rights moving forward. What is clear, though, is that the civil society base of support for transgender people is expanding, leaving some room for hope that 2026 may be a better year for transgender rights in Taiwan.
Yo-Ling Chen (they/them/他) is a trans nonbinary Taiwanese American writer, translator, activist, and independent scholar based in Taipei. They are a contributing editor at New Bloom Magazine, as well as a founding editor and translator at 酷兒翻越 Queer Margins. Yo-Ling’s academic research and teaching focuses on the intersections of transgender studies, asexuality studies, and Taiwan studies. They are the lead-PI for the Transpacific Taiwan Transgender Studies Research Collective (3TS), which analyses and develops strategic responses to anti-gender mobilisations in Taiwan. This article was made possible by grant funding for 3TS from the Transgender Educational Network: Theory in Action for Creativity, Liberation, Empowerment, and Service (TEN:TACLES) Initiative.
This article was published as part of a special issue on ‘Review Taiwan 2025: Challenges, Continuities, and Change‘.
Taiwan Insight 