2024/07/15 New Bloom Newsletter
Bluebird Movement continues, as does the struggle for transgender rights in Taiwan and Hong Kong
Hi everyone, it is just Yo-Ling here today as El is currently traveling with limited internet access. I’ll be taking over the Newsletter for the next few runs until she is back in Taipei.
New Bloom News
Continuing from late June, Bluebird Movement protests have also been organized throughout July, though turnout has been less when compared to May and June. These demonstrations have expanded in scope to a variety of KMT-led moves, such as raising the benchmark for recall votes to prevent “revenge recalls,” raising benchmarks for referendums, restarting nuclear power plants, launching investigative committees into pan-Green media, and aiming to freeze the Constitutional Court and the DPP’s egg import program to relieve shortages last year.
In other news, former Taoyuan mayor Cheng Wen-tsan has also been detained due to accusatiosn of involvement in a corruption case; A new bill proposed by the KMT would also allow for Chinese investment in infrastructure projects in Taiwan’s outlying islands; and the use of Chinese technology at a museum exhibit in Kaohsiung and at military installations has provoked alarm.
Lastly, on July 11th, the Taipei High Administrative Court heard oral arguments for Vivi’s case, one of the Taiwan Alliance to Promote Civil Partnership Rights (TAPCPR) strategic litigation cases for transgender rights. The court will issue its ruling on August 15th — stay tuned for an upcoming article on this important development.
DAYBREAK Events
(Please see our Facebook page for all upcoming and past events)
2024/07/12+13：Hong Kong Trans Activist Henry Tse
Trif Trans Bar organized two public talks, one in English and one in Chinese, with reknowned Hong Kong transgender activist and founder of Transgender Equality Hong Kong Henry Tse. In both talks, Henry shared about his experiences growing up as a transgender man in Hong Kong, studying abroad in UK, and returning to Hong Kong to launch a 7 year long lawsuit to change his legal gender without providing proof of sexual reassignment surgery. Henry’s case prompted Hong Kong to change it’s legal gender change requirements, but many in Hong Kong viewed the changes as not enough, as the new policy still requires top surgery for trans men and orchiectomy and penectomy for trans women. For the English talk, Yo-Ling served as a discussant and shared about the current state of legal progress in Taiwan towards abolishing our compulsory surgery requiremen. TAPCPR lawyer and co-founder Victoria Hsu served as discussant or the Chinese talk, where she shared more broadly about Taiwan’s transgender rights struggle, such as the Wu-Wu transgender marriage validity case and workplace discrimination lawsuits that TAPCPR has won for transgender plaintiffs.
The Q&A sessions at both events were very interesting, covering topics such as comparing the primarily transmasc optics of Hong Kong’s transgender rights movement with the primarily transfemme optics of Taiwan’s transgender rights movement in terms of public lawsuits. Below is a group photo from the English session.
Lastly, to follow-up on our last newsletter, the “Olive It!: A Drag Cabaret in Support of Gazans” we hosted on June 21st now has a short video on our YouTube. Evon Chiu’s “The Silence of Taiwanese American Fathers and Son's Struggles” talk recording has also been uploaded to our YouTube.
That’s all for the first half of July! We’re still in the process of doing a bit of planning for the second half of July and the month of August, but here are some important dates/events to keep in mind!
Coming up
(Please see our Facebook page or Instagram for all upcoming and past events)
2024/07/17: The Kaohsiung High Administrative Court is set to rule on another strategic litigation case regarding transgender rights — be on the look out for an article by Yo-Ling later this week!
2024/07/27: T&N Party Summer Edition - As usual, transgender and non-binary people and allies welcomed! Please sign-up here if you plan to come.
2024/08/09: A Deal With the Universe screening - Yo-Ling recently completed an English-Chinese subtitling for Jason Barker’s autodocumentary about him and his partner’s assisted reproduction experiences; New Bloom will be hosting one of many screening that will be happening across Taiwan!
2024/08/15: The Taipei High Adminsitrative Court will rule on the aforementioned Vivi case — analysis and reporting forthcoming.