premadekrill

Although in almost all previous cases where trans people were kidnapped and posted messages on domestic platforms calling for rescue, the victims' trans identity was concealed to avoid censorship, this incident still sparked outrage among many trans people — because even after her life had ended, her identity was still being denied, and by someone who should have been on her side. Yaming (亚明) and her cis boyfriend Muyuan (牧鸢), who have been the driving force behind rescuing victims from these institutions within the trans community over the past two years, accused the more vocal trans activists of being overly focused on pronouns and of being ungrateful.

Perhaps it would be useful to clarify what conversion therapy facilities typically refer to in the context of Chinese trans people, before explaining why such a divide emerged.

In the summer of 2024, Yaming was lured back to her hometown by her parents under the pretense of mourning her deceased grandmother, where she was forcibly taken by several people claiming to be police officers to a discipline school called Shengbo. There she was beaten, raped, had her head shaved, was repeatedly forced to admit she was male, and endured high-intensity physical activity and corporal punishment day after day. There she met Cookie, a trans girl who had been kidnapped and gone missing from Hangzhou during the same period, along with many cisgender people who were also being held there. Yaming secretly wrote down her experiences there by the light of the bathroom at night, had the others being held with her sign their names to it, entrusted someone who was "graduating" to smuggle it out, and handed it to Muyuan.

Yaming's friends, who had been searching for her outside for a month, had previously learned the name of the discipline school by examining the clothing Yaming wore in a forced video statement — provided by the police — in which she claimed to be "safe." Upon receiving these letters, they finally learned the exact location of the discipline school. After going there to negotiate, which caused some commotion, Yaming was taken away from the facility by the police and handed over to her parents, who had a prior history of abuse. She was intercepted by her friends while being taken back to her hometown, and was ultimately rescued successfully.

At this point, Yaming had already suffered a perforated eardrum in one ear from the beatings she had endured; The spinal nerves are also impacted. Her friends took her to another province and avoided revealing her whereabouts online as much as possible.

Since another trans woman, Luokeke, had been tracked down, harassed, and ultimately re-captured by her family accompanied by people from one of these institutions while working in another city after escaping her family in late 2023 (Luokeke has still not been heard from), many people urged Yaming to leave China and seek possible asylum.

Yaming refused. She chose to stay in the country to rescue Cookie and others who had been held alongside her, and after the Shengbo school was officially shut down on the surface, she chose to continue rescuing people held by other similar schools across China.

In December 2025, Yaming, Muyuan, and others contacted the BBC for an interview (their legal names were used in the video), producing a feature that depicted the discipline schools described here. Chinese trans people commonly refer to them as conversion therapy facilities, but they are clearly not institutions established specifically for holding homosexual or trans people. Chinese trans people do sometimes get committed to psychiatric hospitals by their families, but many doctors with professional ethics will explicitly refuse parents' requests; these discipline schools, on the other hand, will take anyone (as long as you pay enough), so in most cases Chinese trans people undergo conversion treatment at the hands of these so-called educational institutions. However, these institutions actually hold far more cisgender heterosexual people, sent there for a wide variety of reasons: internet addiction, depression, autism, poor exam results, or simply not listening to their parents. My own father once claimed, in the six months before my college entrance exam, that he was considering sending me there because I was "not focused on studying" — I was deeply closeted at the time. Chinese news has reported many scandals involving these schools: children who came out and killed their parents in revenge, autistic toddlers who died from being forced through physical training, student who was raped and then died by suicide, and of course the Yuzhang Academy incident, which seems to be the one prompted Wenrou to begin sustained attention to and opposition against these institutions.

I actually find the title the BBC used quite off-putting — it seems to imply that only "children" are taken into these institutions. Perhaps emphasizing children makes it easier to attract sympathy and attention, but Yaming herself was already 19 when she was taken; Cookie was also an adult at the time, kidnapped from below her university dormitory building; Luokeke was 21, on a leave of absence from university and working at a convenience store when she was taken; and Kecheng, the founder of mtf.wiki, was also 19 when she was taken in 2020. Recently, these schools have been advertising online that young people who have graduated but are unemployed and staying at home are also their target demographic. Yaming even encountered someone who was 40 years old and had been taken there while she was being held — though that is an extreme case.

Given the brutal methods these schools use, the wide variety of reasons people are taken there, and the lack of any obvious age limit, these discipline schools face widespread opposition on the Chinese internet, especially among young people. On the other hand, given the conservative cultural environment, many among them still believe it is acceptable for trans people to be held there. This is another reason why trans identity has to be concealed when posting calls for rescue on domestic platforms — when the victim is cisgender, the case draws widespread attention, but when the victim is trans, it often attracts far less attention, or even reports and harassment.

Wenrou's explanation for misgendering the already-deceased Yanzhenzhen was that it was to fulfill her final wish and to strike the greatest possible blow against discipline schools in public opinion. Yanzhenzhen’s suicide note contained the following line: “I hope there will be no more coercive agencies in this world, and that evil people will receive the punishment they deserve.”

Muyuan, who supports Wenrou, offered an additional explanation: any video that correctly refers to a trans person's gender would fail content review.

But this claim was still challenged. Even if you can't openly say the victim was a "trans woman," does she have to be incorrectly referred to as a "boy"? Wouldn't it be possible to simply not mention gender? Or to call her a "girl" without mentioning the trans identity?

Following Wenrou's suggestion, someone started a poll on Twitter over this, with 364 participants. Of these, 12.4% chose "getting traffic and exposure is the priority, using incorrect gender terms is acceptable"; 60.4% chose "respect the person as much as possible while also considering domestic censorship"; 22% chose "directly state her gender identity, maximizing respect, but this carries risks on domestic platforms"; and 5.2% chose "other (post your own opinion in the comments)."

Before this post was published, Wenrou had already revised the original video to a version with the gender obscured.

(Edit: Just as this post was about to go up, I watched Wenrou’s revised video. Unfortunately, what passes for “obscuring gender” is simply dropping the word “boy” — but every single pronoun used throughout the video is “he(他).” Perhaps some people are aware that the Chinese character “他” was originally a gender-neutral pronoun covering he/she/it, until Liu Bannong created the character “她” in 1920 to specifically represent “she.” On that basis, they argue that “他,” having been used to refer to males for over a hundred years, can now be used to refer to all genders as a way of obscuring gender — though to me this is nothing but self-deception.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​)

However, the controversy within the trans community had already escalated to the level of online harassment. The chain convenience store company where Yaming worked received reports claiming that Yaming had a "mental illness," "criminal tendencies," and "intent to subvert the state," which forced her out of the closet and led to claims that she had a "contagious sexually transmitted disease." No one knows whether the person who filed the report was motivated by hatred of Yaming's position in this matter, or was simply someone who wanted to stir up conflict and was a transphobic person trying to make trouble. Even though everyone who had previously opposed Yaming's views strongly condemned this act of reporting, some trans people have now expressed complete disillusionment with "progressive trans people" and said they would block anyone who has 🏳️‍⚧️ or 🍥 in their name. Muyuan also stated that he no longer wishes to receive rescue requests from trans victims.

Perhaps this is how things turned out partly because of the long-standing grievances between "progressive" and "pragmatist" factions within China's trans community — although in this incident, some conservative trans people who are neither progressive nor pragmatist, but simply have internalized transphobia, also joined in.

Mu Zhou, who appeared in the BBC video — we usually call him by his online name Xiaoer (小二) — was a volunteer brought in to help during the period when Yaming went missing, with prior experience in in-person rescues of discipline school victims. But at that time, he was exposed for having engaged in transphobic behavior, which sparked a fierce dispute among the rescue team about whether to work with him.

On June 4, 2024, a Chinese trans woman studying in Canada attended a commemoration event for the Tiananmen incident, where she was subjected to public anti-trans verbal abuse by a member of the organizing team. Afterward, the organizers and some associated organizations and individuals continued to defend the perpetrator and produced an investigative report that was clearly biased in favor of the anti-trans side — and Xiaoer was involved in writing that report.

I don't actually know very much about Wenrou, whom I mentioned above, so I wouldn't conclude from this incident alone that he is a Transphobe. But Xiaoer is different — after this incident, he falsely accused an influential trans aid worker of rape, doxxed trans people who argued with him, accusing transgender people of prioritizing transgender rights over human rights, and there are many other things I'm not aware of since deleting my Twitter account, but it is certain that this person is not well-regarded in most trans communities.

What makes this complicated, however, is that according to Muyuan and others involved in the rescues, he did play an important role in the rescues of Yaming and Cookie, and in subsequent rescues of other victims. For example, during the search for Yaming, he drew on his experience to cite specific legal provisions that forced the police to open a case; he then used his familiarity with the relevant procedures to draft numerous formal complaint documents, and repeated appeals to higher authorities forced the police to provide the above-mentioned video of Yaming "confirming she was safe," which became an important clue in locating the discipline school where Yaming was being held. After Yaming was rescued, he also referred Yaming to the lawyer who had won the Yuzhang Academy case. There was likely additional support that may not be appropriate to disclose for safety reasons.

Although many young people in China oppose discipline schools in their views, few follow through with sustained action. Wenrou is one of the few people with significant online influence on this topic, and Xiaoer is one of the few who has continued to participate in in-person rescues.

I first learned of Xiaoer in 2020 on Zhihu, where his bio read "currently paying attention to the Yuzhang Academy incident." He also pays attention to the widespread problem of psychological counselors in China violating counseling ethics, which was something I was personally troubled by at the time, and I had once submitted a piece to him. His online names on the domestic and international sides are different, so it was only when his disputes with the trans community expanded onto domestic social media that I realized he was Xiaoer.

I first heard Wenrou's name even earlier, back in the 2010s, also on Zhihu, though we had no real interaction.

I don't know what it's like in other countries, and I don't know if others ever face such a dilemma. The person helping you is really only working with you incidentally, in the course of rescuing cis people, and they don't particularly care if their words and actions hurt you. This is of course far better than those who believe trans people belong in conversion therapy facilities, or who even call your parents to forcibly out you and leave behind the contact information for a discipline school. But the divide will break open sooner or later.

Especially when, apart from these people, the help available to you is almost nonexistent.