Opposing Gender Ideology in Taiwan

A conversation with Jaclynn Joseph and Neo Yao

Jaclynn Joseph and Neo Yao have founded Taiwan’s first gender critical, female-centric organization — Taiwan Women’s Association (TWA/Chinese 臺灣女性協會) — which has recently been officially recognized by the government.

Originally from Hawai'i and now based in Taiwan, Jaclynn Joseph is a university lecturer, Ph.D. candidate in the field of feminist philosophy, and the Taiwan country representative of the feminist organization Women’s Declaration International (WDI).

A guest writer for Feminist Current, she was the first to shed light on the infiltration of gender identity ideology in Taiwan through her articles. 

Neo Yao was born and raised in Taipei, Taiwan. He has been a human rights and LGB activist for more than fifteen years, and a women’s rights activist for more than six years.

Neo served as an Advisor of Women’s March Taiwan, coordinator of multiple Women’s Day Marches and events, and personally led the preparation for the 2019 Women’s Day Parade.

Neo began focusing on women’s sex-based rights in the past several years, and along with Jaclynn, formed the Taiwan Women’s Association in late 2022 as a founding member, where he currently serves as an executive council member.

According to Jaclynn, the Taiwan Women’s Association is composed of members who seek to promote, ensure, and defend the rights of women and girls using legal argument, policy advocacy, and public education:

“We are a local, community-based and women and LGB-led organization made up of members of varying ages, academic affiliations, and diverse professional backgrounds, working together to respond to the emerging infiltration of radical gender ideology and female erasure in Taiwan.”

Some founding members of TWA, including Jaclynn, also work with an organization called No Self-ID Taiwan (NSIDT). NSIDT is the only website in Taiwan dedicated to pushing back against gender ideology and tracking changes in related legislation. The site hosts dozens of translated articles and news about gender identity ideology from all over the world, providing resources to counteract the mainstream media’s omissions.

Last November, a middle-aged man was arrested and referred to prosecutors for cross-dressing as a student of Taipei Jingmei Girls High School and lingering near a women’s restroom on campus. The man wore the school’s uniform and a wig, and had snuck onto the campus during the rush hour. Such incidents, while uncommon, are on the rise even as Taiwan considers embracing the Western notion of gender identity.

Jaclynn recently published a piece in 4W.pub on how self-ID legislation would exacerbate the issue of spy cam porn, which has already been described as an epidemic in South Korea.

“In recent years, the issue of hidden cameras and voyeurism, particularly in public restrooms and changing rooms, has been a growing concern in Taiwan. These hidden cameras, some as small as your fingernail, have been used to record and distribute images and videos of individuals, mainly women and girls, without their consent,” Jaclynn writes.

She says that on her daily inter-city train commutes, she can now see warnings in stations in Taipei to be aware of the dangers of men taking upskirt photos on escalators, as well as reminders that staff regularly check restrooms for recording devices.

“In 2020, a 26 year-old man in Taipei made headlines after he was found to have secretly filmed more than 160 women and girls in Taipei and New Taipei City. Among his victims were girls as young as 13 and 14 years old. The majority of his spy cams had been placed in women’s restrooms in various schools and universities in the city, sex-segregated facilities he had snuck into.”

During the court hearing, one of victims testified that she suffered mental anguish and has been afraid of going to public toilets since the incident. One victim was quoted as saying: “When the video was shown to me, it felt like I was being raped.”

Another at the court hearing said: “I feel quite sick seeing Chang here in court. He must receive a heavy punishment for what he has done... Now I need a friend to accompany me when I use a public toilet.”

“The fact that he was able to sneak into so many women’s only restrooms is particularly alarming since Taiwan is considering passing a self-ID bill, which, if pushed through, will ensure that a man need only self-declare an inner sense of ‘gender identity’ in order to legally change sex and enter female spaces,” Jaclynn writes. “Men like this would have free and open access to women-only spaces, anywhere and at any time.”