[Reprint] "Why Are Men Reluctant to Be Men?" - Class and Trauma in the Wave of Male Feminization

Today we talked about a very interesting topic—“male daughters.”

The origin, of course, is my little group: since last year, there has been more and more content related to “male daughters,” and there are indeed a few male daughters in the group, calling out “male daughter, male daughter” all day long, making me feel quite “difficult.”

Of course, even though I am from Chongqing, only four hundred and eighty kilometers away from Chengdu, the reason for making this video is definitely not because I like male daughters, nor have I flirted with any little male daughters. I am just approaching this with a research mindset, critically engaging with it—don’t misunderstand, this is all very much in the spirit of academic research, you understand what I mean, right?

I should clarify that this article has certain postmodern elements because “male daughters” themselves are a product of postmodernism. Alright, without further ado, let’s get started.

1. What is a “male daughter”?#

The “counterintuitive” stereotype#

Generally speaking, when you’re bored and scrolling through Bilibili or some Douyin, you might see a little sister who is incredibly beautiful, fair-skinned and lovely, with thousands of people in the comments shouting “wife.” But just when you’re about to treat this as yet another internet celebrity beauty, someone in the comments suddenly pops up with, “Actually, he’s a guy.”

In an instant, the whole feeling changes. That image that you found pleasing to the eye suddenly becomes complex, mysterious, and even challenges your common sense. This is what we call a “male daughter.”

What’s amusing about this is that a guy quietly dresses himself up to be prettier than many girls, and then just stands there, becoming a mystery—what is he after? Does he purely think it looks good? Or does he feel deep down that he should be a girl? Or is this a form of performance art? These are all questions.

Most people might stop at the “curiosity” stage upon seeing this. The first instinct is definitely to run away: either they think it looks pretty good, or they feel “neither male nor female, the world is going downhill, the West is too bad, pushing ideological output, they want us to masculinize.”

But we still have a certain spirit of exploration, so we need to follow this thread and see if we can discover something bigger. In other words, this is not a simple matter of personal preference, nor can it be dismissed with the phrase “niche culture.”

So what this video aims to do is to treat the phenomenon of “male daughters” as a sociological and political specimen, to dissect and analyze it, digging into its roots to see what kind of soil has produced such a peculiar fruit.

2. Commonly confused concepts#

To talk about male daughters, we first need to clarify the definitions. Because it has become so popular that it’s somewhat overused, people tend to lump everything into it. Many people hear “male daughter” and immediately think of a bunch of terms: ladyboys, perverts, homosexuals, those wanting to undergo gender reassignment surgery… it’s a big hodgepodge, all thrown together.

But if you really want to understand this, we first need to extract a few groups that are easily confused.

The first and most crucial one: male daughter ≠ transgender women. These are two completely different paths.

What we often hear online as “medication daughters” usually refers to a part of transgender women, but it’s not absolute. Their starting point is generally gender identity—they deeply believe, “I am a woman, just born in the wrong body.” They wear women’s clothing, take hormones, and even undergo surgery, primarily to correct what they perceive as a mistaken reality.

Most of what we discuss in our context as “male daughters,” in the original sense, is driven by aesthetic and hobby. Their inner monologue is more likely to be: “I’m a guy, but I just think girls’ clothes look good, and makeup is fun; I like to dress up in a cute way.” Their gender identity firmly stands on the foundation of “male,” and they enjoy the fun of playing a girl as a boy, finding it amusing.

So, mixing this up with transgender tendencies is relatively incomplete. Of course, reality is always complex. Is it possible for a male daughter, during the process of dressing up, to eventually transition? It’s not impossible, but that’s a matter of identity fluidity and transformation. When discussing concepts, we must first clarify the starting points.

The second one to clarify is: male daughter ≠ homosexual.

Sexual orientation and gender expression are two different things. Sexual orientation answers the question of “who do you like,” while gender expression answers “how do you want to present yourself.” A boy who likes to wear skirts can very well be a staunch heterosexual, thinking about finding a beautiful girlfriend.

In fact, according to observations from many subcultural communities, heterosexuals make up a significant proportion of the male daughter group, possibly even the majority. Some of them might enjoy the dissonance and sense of conquest that comes from attracting girls with an appearance even cuter than girls. Or it could be the reverse situation.

The vast majority of gay men dress and present themselves similarly to ordinary straight men; you can’t tell from their appearance. I can only say that some stereotypes should have been thrown into the dustbin of history long ago.

3. A broader cultural definition#

Alright, after eliminating these misconceptions, the image of “male daughter” becomes clearer: it refers to individuals who identify as male both physiologically and psychologically but choose to wear female clothing and adopt a feminine appearance due to personal aesthetic interests.

Of course, this is just the narrowest definition. Broadly speaking, in today’s online culture, any boy who is good-looking and has a gentle demeanor, whether a male daughter, medication daughter, or a boy in women’s clothing, might be referred to as a “male daughter.” This reflects a shift in aesthetics, which we will discuss in detail later.

So the “male daughters” we are discussing include those who practice women’s clothing as a profound hobby, as well as serving as a broad cultural symbol to observe groups with similar tendencies and identity dilemmas.

1. The core of postmodernism: deconstructing gender binary#

After clarifying what a “male daughter” is, we need to touch on the philosophical or ideological foundations—postmodernism.

Simply put, it is: not believing in the sacred, just loving to mess around. It doesn’t believe that anything is inherently right or eternally unchanging. Its favorite thing to do is to dismantle what we take for granted and then reassemble it in a joking manner.

So, you see, isn’t what male daughters do just that? They deconstruct one of the most deeply rooted myths in our society, which is gender.

From the moment we are born, we are shoved into a binary box: if you’re a boy, you must play with guns, be strong, and wear blue; if you’re a girl, you must play with dolls, be gentle, and wear pink. This is the narrative, based on physiological differences that have evolved over thousands of years.

When male daughters appear, they completely disrupt this narrative: why can’t a man’s body wear a skirt and have long hair? Why is cuteness and beauty solely a woman’s privilege?

Thus, some people mix seemingly unrelated elements—such as male physiological traits, female clothing and makeup, and the “cute” expressions and poses learned from Japanese anime—into a big hodgepodge and apply it to themselves.

The result is quite interesting: they are neither the traditional men (because they are too feminine) nor true women (because you know their background), becoming a brand new, “neither fish nor fowl,” mixed entity.

They are not trying to imitate anyone; rather, they dissolve the sacredness through the act of imitation itself. When a boy can be “girlier” than a girl, doesn’t that make the question of “what should a woman be like?” less certain?

This is the postmodern core of the male daughter phenomenon: it is not about creating a new unified identity; on the contrary, it believes that identity itself can be fluid, performative, deconstructed, and reassembled.

2. Cultural soil: the tradition of “male softness” in Chinese history#

At this point, some might say, “Isn’t this just a foreign thing learned from Japan? What does it have to do with us in China?”

Indeed, the term “male daughter” and this trend directly originate from Japan’s ACGN culture. However, any foreign species wishing to take root in a new land must consider whether the soil is suitable. And our Chinese cultural soil is precisely inclusive.

This does not mean that we had male daughters in ancient times; rather, our imagination of masculinity does not necessarily have to be masculine.

Pulling the historical lens back to 1800 years ago during the Wei and Jin dynasties, the aesthetic at that time was “beautiful posture, fair face,” in short, a pretty face and a fair complexion. The scholars of that time pursued a transcendent demeanor; they drank and composed poetry, paying particular attention to personal image, emphasizing elegance and even a slightly sickly softness.

The appreciation of male softness reached a peak in our history. Our ancestors were much more avant-garde than we are now; some people were even more conservative than our ancestors, and I can only say that “the preservation of tradition is still too fierce.”

Including our opera arts, take the male dan in Peking opera, for example, who plays female roles on stage, embodying a beauty that is enchanting and extraordinary, refining the beauty of women into a peak artistic expression. This is particularly interesting: having a man play a woman and perform in accordance with feminine traits is not only not seen as perverse in our culture but rather has a certain legitimacy.

So when today’s Japanese male daughter culture blows in on the winds of the internet, its acceptance is still relatively high.

3. Spectacle society and identity performance: the need to be seen#

A Frenchman wrote a book called “The Society of the Spectacle,” in which he stated: the future world will become a huge stage. It doesn’t matter what kind of person you are; what matters is what you look like; your real life doesn’t matter; what you can showcase matters.

We understand the world through social media and platforms like Bilibili, and we also use them to present ourselves to the world. Life has become a performance, and in this theory, each of us is both an audience and an actor. This is the spectacle, extending to Marx’s commodity fetishism, serving capitalism.

Thus, in this spectacle society, the most important rule is to be seen. If something or someone cannot be seen or showcased, they are essentially nonexistent. Because only by being seen and admired can one have a certain voice. This is also the reason why those junior high school graduates or migrant workers feel voiceless.

Now, when we place the phenomenon of “male daughters” within the broader context of this spectacle society, you will find that it seems to be born for this stage.

A boy spends several hours in his room putting on makeup, wearing a beautiful dress, admiring himself in the mirror—before the spectacle society, this might have been a purely personal hobby, possibly locked away in a diary, unknown to others.

Further, he takes out his phone, opens a beauty filter, and takes nine edited photos or a short video, then posts it. Once the video gets good data and is sustainable, the isolated individual is seen and noticed through showcasing their image; their sense of existence, value, and happiness are almost entirely built on successful display.

At this point, he is no longer himself; he has become the “male daughter image” that is watched, desired, and consumed.

To put it bluntly, this society can always extract people from their real lives (you can say it’s a result of mutual choice or guidance) and turn their image into a commodity that can be bought and sold.

Look at those more commercialized male daughter influencers; they are the most typical examples. They craft themselves into a perfect product, with a specific persona and style, attracting a specific fanbase. When the traffic comes, advertisers come too, happily taking on ads, and after a complete commercial process, they successfully monetize this spectacle.

4. Consumerism and the desire for depersonalization#

At the same time, the role of “man” in this society is actually alienated.

In the past, or in classic capitalist societies, the requirements for men were quite simple and crude: you must be competitive, aggressive, rational, suppress your emotions, and not cry easily.

Why have these requirements? Because only then can you become a qualified production tool, fighting in factories and markets for capital appreciation.

So why do you bear or willingly accept exploitation by capital? It’s simply to earn money to support the family—this is the responsibility that the system imposes on men. You might think this is a natural thing, but why earn money to support the family? To pass on the family line. After that, the goal is to ensure that a new life becomes a well-adjusted, socialized individual, living for their descendants.

Of course, you can choose not to do this, but you will bear some pressure from public opinion. This seemingly “natural” thing is firmly tied to men.

If you are a student, the burden is even heavier. In the current education system, ultimately, it still comes down to “standing out,” which circles back to passing on the family line.

For a long time, although it was exhausting, being a man as a role still had prospects, because as long as you played it well, you could receive corresponding rewards, such as social status, family respect, and the authority of being the head of the household. Although this sounds very conservative and patriarchal, it is indeed the case, allowing one salary to support the whole family.

So men could still play within this narrative. This benefit is based on the debate over two paths of humanity; once capitalism wins, it immediately reverts to the pursuit of maximum profit. Without enemies, there is naturally no need to prove that it is a good system, nor is there a need for excessive welfare expenditure.

In the 21st century, today’s social competition is becoming increasingly fierce, which is what we often refer to as “involution.” Buying a house, buying a car, finding a good job—these things that used to be standard responsibilities for men have now become like mountains, suffocating people.

You work yourself to the bone playing the responsible man role, only to find that the returns are diminishing, while the pain increases. You muster the courage to pursue a girl, only to find that it might end without success due to a lack of money or social skills.

This traditional male script is not only exhausting to perform but also fraught with pitfalls; a misstep can lead to ruin. A man bears enormous economic pressure and traditional responsibilities, yet the discourse power and authority he once had are constantly being deconstructed and challenged.

He feels confused, lost, and even angry. He thinks the role of a man is too suffocating and not worth it. He has become alienated from this role and no longer wants to play it.

When a person feels extreme fatigue and pain from a role, what do they do? They might want to try a different role.

And the role of “male daughter” just happens to provide a possibility. Roughly speaking, you could understand it as: becoming a woman might be a choice. Although there are various hardships, on some level, it seems much easier.

This level is responsibility.

Men are active, creators, and the responsible party; while women are passive, cared for, and embodiments of beauty. He doesn’t need to charge into battle; his value is more reflected in his appearance and the desires he can evoke.

This is certainly a very stereotypical and unfair division, which feminism has always criticized. But the irony is that when men feel overwhelmed in their roles, this criticized passivity and objectification ironically become a safe haven.

Thus, a brand new “solution” is born, which is consumption.

In the logic of consumerism, everything can be bought, including identity. You want to become a certain kind of person? Just buy the corresponding gear.

Do you want to escape that heavy, responsibility-laden male identity? It’s simple: buy a little dress, buy a set of makeup, buy a wig. When you wear these items that symbolize femininity, you will feel closer to being a woman.

You are no longer the subject who needs to struggle in society and worry about the future; you have become an object that only needs to be responsible for your own beauty. You transform from a gazer into a gazed-upon; from a role that needs to actively pursue and give, you become one that can sit back and wait to be appreciated and praised.

This is the core point of this chapter: behind many male daughter phenomena is a profound desire for depersonalization, or simply an aesthetic pursuit.

They don’t really want to become women; they want to escape the heavy, suffocating responsibilities tightly bound to their male identity. Through consumption, by purchasing and wearing these feminine symbols, they create a game where they can temporarily escape reality, akin to “playing house.” It’s safe, beautiful, cared for, and pursued.

5. The fatigue and evasion of gender roles#

In the third chapter, we will discuss the current internet environment, especially regarding gender relations. It’s not an exaggeration to say it’s a battlefield.

Open any social platform, and you can smell the intense gunpowder. Today you throw punches, tomorrow I retaliate, with various labels flying around: “little fairy,” “average man,” “natural lover,” “naturally rational”…

The reasons for the formation of this battlefield are complex, involving economic and cultural factors, which we won’t delve into here. But one direct consequence is that it has made traditional male-female interaction patterns exceptionally difficult and dangerous.

What should a guy do if he wants to seriously pursue a girl, especially a cute one? The risk of making the first move is too great; if he spends money on gifts, he’s labeled a “lickspittle”; if he takes a step back, he still desires women. He finds that the risks and costs of being a pursuer are absurdly high, often because he hasn’t met the right person.

In this environment, a pervasive emotion among many men (especially young men) is “I’m tired; let it all be destroyed.” They feel deeply weary and fearful of this complex, speculative male-female relationship.

At this point, some people might think: “You think I have original sin as a pursuer? Fine, I won’t pursue anymore; I’ll just like little male daughters.”

This is because little male daughters possess feminine symbolic traits—passive, objects of desire—allowing them to be seen as women, even if they are male, or even if they are gay. This is also one reason.

3. Family, trauma, and the dilemma of gender roles#

1. The influence of family environment#

However, our analysis must focus on specific individuals; relying solely on the phrase “social pressure” is insufficient. An individual’s growth environment does indeed influence their personality, and family is an unavoidable point.

Of course, we must emphasize that this does not mean all male daughters come from problematic families—this is a crude stigmatization. But through numerous cases and observations, we can indeed identify some recurring patterns worth exploring.

One probable situation is called “father absence.” This absence doesn’t necessarily mean physical departure; it could also mean that the father is present at home but is emotionally invisible. He might be busy with work or have a personality that rarely communicates with the child, exhibiting a male image that is cold, silent, or even irritable.

During a child’s growth, especially for boys, they need a male role model to imitate and identify with. If this role model is vague or even negative, they will naturally tilt their identification towards the female role (usually the mother) who provides warmth and care.

Unconsciously, they may mimic their mother’s way of speaking, aesthetic preferences, and emotional patterns. They may find that behaving well, being obedient, and being quiet earn them more love and affirmation from their mother, while behaviors deemed undesirable, like being mischievous, are punished.

Over time, a more feminine disposition slowly settles within them.

Another possibility may relate to childhood trauma. Imagine a boy who is relatively good-looking and is given unkind nicknames at school, suffering from bullying. At the age when he most needs to build male confidence, his male traits bring him pain and humiliation.

To protect himself, he might subconsciously make a choice to neutralize. He may find that appearing weaker and less aggressive earns him more care from some kind-hearted female peers, leading him to identify more with the gender that does not bully him and helps him. You could say it’s a tendency.

There’s also simply a poor family environment: parents frequently argue, some are overly utilitarian, indifferent to their children’s feelings, and do not treat them as independent individuals. Such a person’s psychological or mental state is hard to describe as normal.

Many male daughters or individuals preparing to become medication daughters often accompany depression or anxiety, or other pathological states, which is common.

Confucius once said, “Rulers should be rulers, ministers should be ministers, fathers should be fathers, and sons should be sons,” perhaps the most direct reflection: regardless of status, rulers and subjects, fathers and sons should adhere to principles and fulfill their roles.

To me, this is pure nonsense. This is a regression from modernity to pre-modernity, meaning a regression from modern China back to 5000 years of ancient China. The first priority of modern China is to smash the ancient traditions of 5000 years. People must be individuals, not something else.

You could say some people are not fit to be parents, but more often, they are unworthy of being parents. It is precisely because of this that the social foundation for the emergence of transgender individuals is born.

Long-term depression and low self-worth, stemming from trauma, create a desire to be loved. As a male, the thought in their mind is “this is unreasonable,” while the gender that is gazed upon by male desire becomes something they envy—“being loved” becomes a reasonable and legitimate desire. Thus, the thought of “wanting to become them” takes root.

2. Trauma and capitalism#

A child, a medication daughter, once told me: “A lie repeated a thousand times becomes the truth,” “No one is obligated to be responsible for my emotions,” “Extreme altruism, huddling together with peers”... This is their characteristic, and also the misfortune under high pressure. From this perspective, it’s hard to blame them, as they cannot find a way out.

Although the Chinese people have the basic right to decide their way of life, the act of taking medication often means a much shorter lifespan than ordinary people. Ultimately, it still comes down to being irresponsible towards their identity.

In ethics and law, a valid consent or voluntary action must meet three basic conditions: that is, the information must be sufficient, the mental state sound, and there must be no coercion. Do the “voluntary” actions of medication daughters meet these conditions? I think not necessarily.

For them personally, perhaps a short lifespan is a “good thing,” but the problem is that their choices are built on trauma. And choices based on this foundation are not truly free; they are governed by trauma.

In a capitalist system, everything has been commodified, including human suffering, hope, and identity. This is because some men desire to feminize, thus creating this demand. If an individual does not have such a demand, they will be guided to develop this demand.

This logic is very simple because the core motivation of drug dealers is profit. They care about how to sell drugs, not the long-term health or life safety of the users, and they certainly won’t care about the social roots causing all this. Their guiding content will completely serve their inventory: whatever drugs they have, they will hype them up and lead individuals into a specific narrative.

Drug dealers themselves are not the root of the problem; the root lies in the trauma people experience. However, drug dealers turn this pain into business opportunities, and all actions can be simply summarized in one phrase: profit-driven.

This is the bloody nature of capitalism: even trauma can be exploited and turned into cold hard cash.

Having analyzed the origins, we will now discuss the aspect of “promiscuity tendencies.”

How should we understand this? If we simply categorize it as chaotic private lives or moral decay, that’s one perspective. But I prefer to observe, understand, and analyze the motivations behind behaviors.

One important reason is extreme confirmation of self-worth. When a person places all their value on their appearance and desirability, how can they repeatedly confirm that this value is real? The most direct and stimulating way might be through sex.

Every successful sexual encounter, every physical touch, seems to bring them closer to that “true object.”

Another deeper reason might be a form of self-punishment. This sounds contradictory: aren’t they trying hard to make themselves beautiful? How could they hate themselves?

Because even though they chose this path, deep down, they might not have truly escaped the societal norms instilled in them since childhood. They might enjoy the feeling of being desired while subconsciously agreeing with society’s criticism of them, feeling that they are abnormal or dirty.

When this internalized self-hatred reaches a certain level, they may engage in self-destructive behaviors to punish themselves, such as entering dangerous, disrespectful sexual relationships. This is a very sad vicious cycle, especially since depression itself easily leads to sexual addiction.

In the eyes of some more traditional and conservative old leftists, male daughters or the entire LGBT phenomenon are seen as Western, heretical, and to be rejected. Because before the 21st century, China’s material conditions were insufficient to support the soil for male daughters to emerge, and the current situation is a result of the continuous development of postmodern thought and significant improvement in material conditions, reflected in East Asia as a stress response brought about by gender wars.

The fundamental contradiction has always been class contradiction, the conflict between bosses and workers, the exploiters and the exploited. All struggles should revolve around this main contradiction.

However, we live in an era where secondary contradictions occupy the public eye: today you promote feminism, tomorrow you advocate for sexual minorities, and the day after you push for animal rights… If you cannot see class contradictions, that is tragic. It prevents us from caring about the commonality of “everyone being exploited” and instead entangles us in the differences of whether we are male or female, straight or gay.

These are indeed topics that can be discussed, but capitalism elevates some everyday issues that can still be tolerated under its problematic order into the sole direction of struggle, diverting people’s attention from class contradictions. Internal strife continues, and we forget that what we really need to solve are fundamental issues like food, housing, and basic human rights, along with evolving principles that are rigid and outdated, losing sight of principles.

So we need to think from a different angle: in a society, what kind of people sympathize most with revolution and identify with it? The answer is simple: those who are most oppressed by this society. Because they have nothing, they yearn for change the most.

Do male daughters or transgender individuals live well in our society? The answer is clearly no.

Take job hunting as an example; because they are different and their gender identity may deviate, they directly disrupt this production order (referring to the traditional gender order), so the system will inevitably reject and discriminate against them. This makes job hunting more difficult, and in the workplace, they face more prejudice, public misunderstanding, family rejection, and strange looks on the street…

These are certainly individual choices, but what leads individuals to make such choices? We have already made this clear. Ultimately, their misfortune is the misfortune of their families, and the misfortune of families is the misfortune of society, which ultimately leads to economic difficulties.

What kind of attitude does a group that encompasses so many factors have towards this existing social order that causes them immense pain? Will they wholeheartedly support and love it? That is clearly illogical. On the contrary, they will naturally develop skepticism towards this system.

When we aim to establish a new world without oppression, discrimination, and where everyone is equal, who do you think will be most eager for it? An elite who thrives in the current system, or someone who is in various predicaments? The answer is obvious.

Their hatred for the existing order is much deeper and more genuine than many ordinary people who merely complain verbally.

In my view, a truly mature socialism must be inclusive. This inclusivity encompasses everything, recognizing individuals who uphold socialism and maintain it as the future of humanity—not because it’s trendy, not to please anyone, not for profit, and not due to Western political correctness, but because its core logic dictates that it must be so.

What is the ultimate goal of socialism? Is it to make everyone wear the same clothes and live the same life? Is it a utopia? Of course not. Marx long ago stated that the ideal communist society is “a social form based on the free and comprehensive development of each individual.” Notice, it’s “free and comprehensive development,” which is a much more radical social system than the traditional bourgeois freedom and democracy.

Without bourgeois liberalism, there would be no Marxism. Marx inherited the spirit of bourgeois revolutionaries, leading to the emergence of scientific socialism and communism. This does not mean that the postmodern narrative of diversity is correct, but that everyone has the right and conditions to become who they want to be, without being specially exalted for their differences or discriminated against, criminalized, or deprived of their rights as citizens.

The socialism we pursue today must pave the way for this future; it must strive to eliminate all forms of oppression, not just class oppression, but also various forms of gender oppression, racial oppression, and so on, which are all chains that prevent us from being free in the old world.

Therefore, the tolerance of differences within the proletariat is a fundamental requirement and intrinsic value goal of socialism. Chairman Mao once said to unite all forces that can be united, to gather as many friends as possible, and to minimize enemies. Discriminating against or suppressing someone who is already suffering is cruel to them personally and foolish for the entire revolutionary cause, akin to artificially creating internal contradictions, pushing someone who could have been your comrade into opposition.

What kind of operation is this? It’s called creating enemies for no reason.

If they make unreasonable demands, waving flags and demanding that sexual minorities become mainstream, while ignoring or denying the universality and importance of traditional male-female relationships, I can only say they are simple-minded and have been used. The reproduction of life ultimately requires both genders to complete. No matter how diverse your self-definition is, it cannot prevent the preferences and orientations of the majority.

Of course, in reality, some countries that claim to be socialist, such as the Soviet Union, did indeed suppress the LGBT community historically. In 1933, the Soviet penal code officially criminalized male homosexual acts, with a maximum sentence of five years of hard labor. However, we must clarify that the initial sexual liberation in the Soviet Union did lead to a large-scale spread of sexually transmitted diseases. The cancellation of radical policies was a result of political struggles and turbulent times; Stalin’s repression of male homosexuality was actually a deviation from the core spirit of socialism, a wrong practice influenced by feudal remnants and cultural conservatism, rather than an inevitable result of socialist theory.

In contrast, East Germany abolished criminal penalties for homosexuality in 1968, and overall, the repression of sexual minorities was not as severe as in the Soviet Union, remaining relatively free. Even in terms of medical insurance, it was much more advanced than the Soviet Union: if someone needed gender reassignment surgery, that part of the expense was indeed covered by the government. In layman’s terms, you could “get it for free,” and given that Germany’s productivity was among the top tier at that time, the quality was also guaranteed.

China’s situation is somewhat special; during the first 30 years, to put it bluntly, it was an agricultural country, with industrialization just beginning. Everyone was focused on filling their stomachs and building the nation, and there were basically no conditions for sexual minorities to emerge.

Moreover, the old tradition of “gender distinction” and the agricultural society’s pursuit of lineage is because farmers engaged in agricultural production require a significant physical investment in sowing, irrigation, harvesting, and transportation, and the number of laborers directly determines food production, so it was taken very seriously.

As for lineage, even if there were homosexuals or other groups, they were basically seen as marginal figures, or treated as outliers. At that time, from a legal perspective, homosexuality was not considered a crime; there were no specific laws punishing homosexuality, which is a significant difference from the Soviet Union.

Now our society has undergone tremendous changes, and the improvement in material conditions has naturally created the conditions for the emergence of sexual minorities.

Why should we unite them? It’s to acknowledge their revolutionary potential as the oppressed, respect their right to pursue self-identity, and include them in the united front. We also need to guide them, reminding them: personal liberation, if detached from the transformation of the entire social and economic foundation, may ultimately lead to internal strife in identity politics. We need to guide them to realize that only by overthrowing the root system that creates all oppression might their situation change.

Conclusion#

Alright, after discussing so much, it seems we have turned the phenomenon of “male daughters” upside down, analyzing its causes, logic, helplessness, and rebellion.

But now I want to ask you to join me in temporarily setting aside all these grand theories—such as spectacle society, postmodernism, and alienation. It’s not that these aren’t important, but in daily life, we need to analyze specific problems specifically.

When we peel away the theoretical layers, what do we ultimately see? It’s specific, living individuals, one after another.

The reasons behind their choices are varied and complex, like a tangled mess: perhaps it’s to escape, to evade the heavy shackles imposed on men by society; perhaps it’s simply for aesthetic reasons, because they genuinely think it looks good; or perhaps it’s not a choice at all, but an inevitability they cannot control.

But we must admit one thing: we can never fully understand another person’s inner world, nor can we truly empathize with what they have experienced.

So as this article comes to a close, I don’t want to give a black-and-white conclusion, nor do I want to call for any cheap empathy or embrace. What we truly need to do is: individuals belong to individuals, labels belong to labels, and we should unite where we can, appreciating what they find beautiful.

The only thing we can do is: don’t treat them as outliers. That’s all.