First clinic for transgender youth established in China

The Children’s Hospital of Fudan University, located in Shanghai, has announced the establishment of a health clinic to safely manage and maintain the gender transition of transgender youth and adolescents. (globaltimes.cn, Nov. 4)

The clinic is a response to issues expressed by many transgender youth in China, including anxiety and depression. The clinic is multidisciplinary, combining the fields of psychology, endocrinology, urology and metabolism and offering a wide range of medical services to transgender youth. It will also have a social work department to assist trans youth with a safe and healthy transition. 

China’s health care system, which is centralized, socialized and universal, will guarantee that all treatment — whether therapy, hormone replacement treatment (HRT) referrals or surgery fees — will be either free or low-cost and affordable. This is similar to Cuba’s revolutionary health care system, in which all services for transgender people are free and guaranteed, paid for by the government.

Meanwhile, in the U.S. . . .

While the U.S. continues its Red-baiting smear attacks against China’s economic growth and prosperity, its transgender community continues to suffer. Thousands are unable to either afford to start HRT or to continue. 

Privatized health care boasted as “superior” guarantees that mental health care or physical health care of any kind is a constant uphill battle for transgender people. Over 45 trans people have been outright murdered in the U.S. in 2021 alone, with an unaccounted death toll from medical neglect or hostility. (Human Rights Campaign, Nov. 9) State lawmakers continue to try to pass — or have actually passed — legislation that ban trans youth from even seeking treatment.

Now more than ever, the working-class LGBTQ2S+ movement in the U.S. can look to the example China sets and push for similar, humane treatment here in the U.S. 

This brings the hope that trans liberation on every front can be fully recognized through an ongoing socialist revolution.

Devin Cole is president of Strive (Socialist Trans Initiative), a transgender advocacy organization in northwest Florida, and a member of the Workers World Party – Central Gulf Coast (Alabama, Florida and Mississippi) branch.