Chinese trans woman awarded thousands over forced electroshock “conversion therapy” hopes for change

A transgender woman in China who recently won 60,000 yuan (roughly $8,300) in compensation from a hospital that forced her to undergo several rounds of electroshock “conversion therapy” has told CBS News that she hopes her experience will herald change for the LGBTQ+ community in her country. 

“I hope that the transgender community will soon have safeguard measures and basic human rights, and will no longer be victimized by medical treatment,” said the 28-year-old performance artist who goes by the pseudonym Ling’er.

Ling’er was admitted to a hospital about a year after coming out to her parents as transgender, she previously told the U.K.’s Guardian newspaper. She said in that interview that her parents were “very opposed” to her gender identity and “felt that I wasn’t mentally stable. So they sent me to a mental hospital.”

In the hospital, Ling’er was diagnosed with an “anxiety disorder and discordant sexual orientation,” she told the Guardian. She said she was held for 97 days and subjected to seven sessions of electroshock treatment.

“It caused serious damage to my body,” Ling’er said. “Every time I underwent the treatment, I would faint… I didn’t agree to it, but I had no choice.”

Ling’er said  the electric shocks caused her to develop heart problems, which she now requires medication to treat.

The hospital “tried to ‘correct me’, to make me conform to society’s expectations,” Ling’er told the Guardian.

The hospital declined to comment when approached by the Guardian.

There is a legal ambiguity surrounding so-called conversion therapy for LGBTQ people in China. The government removed homosexuality from an official list of psychiatric disorders in 2001, but a diagnosis for distress about sexual orientation remained on the books until recently.

A 2017 Human Rights Watch report urged the Chinese government to prevent hospitals and other medical facilities from subjecting LGBTQ people to conversion therapies. HRW said many victims of these therapies in China were forcibly brought to hospitals by their families.

“I feel good, I won my case,” Ling’er told CBS News. “I hope that my case will be useful for transgender cases in China.”