Tag: Social movement

What About Trans Rights? Taiwan’s Ongoing Struggle for Self-ID

Written by Ricarda Rodenas. This article describes Taiwan’s ongoing struggle over legal gender recognition, focusing on the continued requirement of sex-reassignment surgery to change one’s legal gender. It traces how pro-trans advocacy groups pursue litigation, public mobilisation, and international engagement, while facing an increasingly organised gender-critical countermovement and shifting populist currents. Despite Taiwan’s global reputation for marriage equality, the 2024 election reveals that trans rights remain politically marginal, with symbolic support outweighing substantive reform.

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A Third Front: The Pivot of Businesses Towards Activism

Written by Aleksandrs Gross. This article explores a unique phenomenon that occurred during the recalls – small businesses explicitly voiced their stance on the recalls. This mirrors similar patterns of Hong Kong during the pro-democracy movement in 2019. The author interviewed three pro-recall businesses to understand their stance and how they encourage constructive discussion without alienating opponents.

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Co-Listening as Defiance: The Facebook Soundscape of Taiwan’s Sino-Myanmar Gen Z and the 2021 Myanmar Spring Revolution

Written by Tasaw Hsin-Chun Lu. After Myanmar’s 2021 coup, Taiwan’s Sino-Myanmar Gen Z created a nightly revolutionary soundscape through Facebook Live. By co-listening to the clang of pots and pans, revived protest anthems, and newly sharpened hip-hop, they transformed distant violence into shared urgency. These circulating sounds stitched together a fragile yet insistent counterpublic, allowing young listeners in Taipei to grieve, rage, and imagine with those in Myanmar. Through this quiet, collective listening, they claimed a sense of belonging that crossed borders and defied the junta’s enforced silence.

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The Great Recall Movement: An Attempt to Restage 2016 That Instead Turned Out to be 2018?

Written by Brian Hioe. This article argues that the great recall movement is more reminiscent of the 2018 than the 2016 elections. The recall movement is sometimes interpreted as the successor of the Bluebird movement last year, but the spectre of the Sunflower Movement still haunts it. Ultimately, however, the dynamics of it are fundamentally different from those of an election.

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