A transgender woman in China has won a record amount of compensation from a hospital that subjected her to several sessions of electroshock conversion practices without her consent.
Changli county people's court in Qinhuangdao, a city in Hebei, approved a 60,000 yuan (£6,552) award to Ling'er, a 28-year-old performance artist who was assigned male at birth but identifies as a woman. LGBTQ+ activists described the award, approved on 31 October, as a victory for trans rights in China.
Ling'er, who uses a pseudonym, said that she hoped her case, which is the first time that a trans person has successfully legally challenged the use of electroshock conversion practices in the country, could help others in the LGBTQ+ community navigate medical disputes and protect their rights. "In China, the situation for transgender people is not very optimistic," she said. "There's a lack of protection for this group."
Ling'er was admitted to Qinhuangdao City Fifth hospital in July 2022, after coming out to her parents as transgender the previous year. Her parents were "very opposed" to her gender identity, Ling'er said, and "felt that I wasn't mentally stable. So they sent me to a mental hospital."
In hospital, she was diagnosed with "anxiety disorder and discordant sexual orientation", despite the fact that her supposed "disorder" related to her gender identity, not her sexual orientation (she identifies as heterosexual). She was kept there for 97 days and subjected to seven sessions of electroshocks.
"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".
The hospital "tried to 'correct me', to make me conform to society's expectations."
She said that she has ongoing heart problems as a result of the electroshocks, which require medication.
Earlier this year, Ling'er filed a lawsuit against the hospital, which was heard by a court in August. She argued that her personal rights had been violated by the treatments.
China's mental health law says that people cannot be forcibly subjected to psychiatric treatment unless they are a threat to the safety of themselves or others.
Doctors who administer medicines or use electroshock conversion practices to "convert" gay or trans people "are using intrusive, harmful treatments in order to treat something that should not be diagnosed in the first place," said Darius Longarino, a research scholar at Yale Law School who focuses on Chinese law and civil society.
Ling'er's doctor claimed in August that she might pose a risk to the safety of her parents if they killed themselves because of her gender identity, according to a report in Chinese media.
There is little precedent for this kind of legal challenge. In 2017, a gay man in Henan province was awarded 5,000 yuan in compensation after he was forced to stay in a psychiatric hospital for 19 days and to take medicines to "treat" his homosexuality.
Another ruling in 2014 ordered a clinic to pay a gay man 3,500 yuan in compensation, after he sued the institution for giving him hypnosis and using electroshock conversion practices to "cure" his homosexuality. But the issue in that case was false advertising, because the judge ruled homosexuality was not an illness that could be "cured", rather than lack of consent for treatment.
Conversion practices operate within a legal grey area in China. In 2001, China removed homosexuality from an official list of psychiatric disorders, but it retained a diagnosis for distress about one's sexual orientation. This left the door open for psychiatrists to tout various physical and psychiatric remedies to "cure" a person's sexual orientation, or in Ling'er's case, gender identity.
Although the latest version of China's medical guidelines have removed the concept of distress about sexual orientation or gender identity being a mental illness, enforcement and education in Chinese hospitals is patchy.
One of the few doctors in China to work in transgender healthcare, who asked to remain anonymous because of the sensitivities of talking to foreign media, said that part of the problem was lack of awareness in the medical profession. When hospitals receive transgender patients, "they don't know how to treat them. They think that using these methods [such as electroshock conversion practices] could help, but in fact they are wrong. They make this choice because of their lack of knowledge".
A study published in 2019, based on a survey of 385 people, found that nearly one in five transgender youths in China reported being forced into conversion practices by their parents.
Qinhuangdao City Fifth hospital declined to comment.