Anime, Apps, and Hormones: Transgender Adolescents Navigating Identity in Contemporary China

This study examines Chinese transgender adolescents known as yaoniang (“medicine girls”), typically aged 14 to 20, who self-administer hormones without medical supervision. In contexts of absent sex education, parental silence, and pervasive censorship, they rely on digital spaces, especially Xiaohongshu (rednote) and erciyuan (two-dimensional) fandom cultures, as improvised infrastructures of knowledge, affect, and belonging. Drawing on 11 anonymized interviews, the analysis shows that these practices enable youth to rehearse gendered selves while exposing them to risk, misinformation, and erasure. Engaging theories of gender performativity, biopolitics, and mediated intimacy, the study demonstrates that precarity is not opposed to agency but its very condition. The findings extend global discussions on transgender youth and digital media while illuminating how restrictive sociopolitical environments in China shape possibilities of becoming.