多伦多时间10月22日中午，Léona、谢明觉和 Amber 将会在多伦多大学就中国跨女庇护所问题，尤其是针对庇护所内救助者和受助对象的权力不平等问题，发表重要学术讨论（英文）。欢迎各位对此事关心和了解的朋友点击下方链接注册，并线上参与该内容的讨论！
Difficult Shelters: Reflections on Trans Shelters and Transfem Mutual Aid in Contemporary China
Thursday 22 October, 11:20–12:50 (Eastern Time) East Asian Studies Lounge, Robarts Library
https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/bad-matters-trans-materiality-across-global-asia-day-1-online-tickets-2002174578060?aff=oddtdtcreator
Leona ad Astra Ritsumeikan University · Míngjué Xiè Independent researcher · Zehao Amber Pan University of Toronto
This study is a reflective effort on the material realities of transfem shelters (“庇护所”) in China, based multiple field experiences at a cluster of shelters in central China in 2024-2026, together with long-term observations from within the community and many discussions between the authors and those involved in shelter operations. Trans shelters run by private individuals are a relatively visible presence within Chinese trans femme communities, providing access to survival resources including emergency accommodation, personal protection, and mental crisis intervention on a non-profit basis for trans femmes facing financial difficulties and domestic/societal violence, and constitute a key node of local trans community and interpersonal networks. At the same time, resource allocation and organisational decisions within such shelters are mediated mainly through interpersonal relations with individual administrators, leading to consolidation and legitimisation of unequal power dynamics between shelter occupants. These dynamics reproduced a series of exclusion, harm, and exploitation against marginalised transfems within the space of such shelters in a manner that has proven difficult to identify, trace, and intervene against, to the detriment of their promised role as sanctuary spaces providing vital public infrastructures of survival. Issues surrounding the institution of private shelter spaces are not isolated to it, but deeply intertwined with broader mutual aid practices within Chinese transfem communities, where both material help and long-term mental health support often ties into intimate interpersonal relationships, making unequal and dependent relationships a wider communal norm. We seek to reflect on these realities, discuss material limitations, and also to envision possibilities of mutual aid practices within Chinese transfem communities which might allow us to escape present reproductions of harm and marginalisation.
