An award-winning transgender Taiwanese author has filed multiple lawsuits against lesbians and women’s rights advocates after they refused to validate his identity as a “woman” and “lesbian.” Li Kotomi (りことみ) has repeatedly targeted individuals who refer to him as a man with legal harassment and has been demanding substantial financial compensation from the defendants.
Prior to relocating to Japan, Li has used several aliases, including Li Qinfeng (李琴峰) and Xu Feng (絮風). Li’s birth name is Huang Chen-Yang (黃晨揚), a male name which means morning and raising. In Taiwan, Li’s current name is Huang Chin-Wei (黃琴薇), a female name which means string instrument and a scented herb.
A well-known author within the Japanese and Taiwanese literary scene, Li presents himself as a female author and a lesbian, despite having been born male. Additionally, he frequently incorporates themes of relationships, both platonic and romantic, between women within his work. In 2021, he received a prestigious literary award known as the Akutagawa Prize for his novel “Island Where the Red Spider Lilies Bloom” (彼岸花が咲く島). The prize for rising talent, established in 1935, is highly sought-after and carries with it a cash reward of ¥1,000,000 ($6,400 USD).
The award-winning novel focuses heavily on interactions between young female protagonists, and follows 17 year-old Umi, who finds herself stranded on an island with a small, matriarchal society run by a group of female priests known as the Noro. The Noro speak and teach Umi a “woman’s language” (女語), and Umi uses it to communicate with another girl of the same age named Yona. The two then develop a deep relationship.
Li’s critics have called attention to the lesbian and feminist themes within his work in order to highlight the fact that he has deceived the public about his biological sex. The observation that he is a man posing as a lesbian, which has been repeated by multiple individuals over the past three years, is the basis on which Li has vexatiously filed defamation lawsuits, in collaboration with Taiwan’s most influential trans lobby group, the Taiwan Alliance to Promote Civil Partnership Rights, or TAPCPR (伴侶盟).
The TAPCPR is campaigning for sex self-identification policies in the nation. Current laws stipulate that an individual must fulfill certain medical requirements in order to change the legal sex on one’s identification documents. If successful, the law would be altered to remove the necessity of obtaining reports from two psychiatrists showing a diagnosis of gender dysphoria, and a letter from a doctor to confirm that “sex reassignment” surgery has been completed.
At present, the concept of sex self-identification measures is immensely unpopular in Taiwan, and especially with women. In a recent survey of over 10,000 respondents where the majority were female, participants “strongly disagreed with support for transgender females.” The study’s authors commented in the abstract: “Given the majority of respondents were females, survey findings should be regarded with caution.”
In August of 2023, Li began accepting financial donations to contribute to his campaign of “slander lawsuits.” On social media he stated that funds raised would be used to file “civil lawsuits and criminal charges” in order to combat “misinformation.”
“It all started when I won the Akutagawa Prize in July 2021,” Li said in the 2023 blog post. “Since winning the award, I have been subjected to a great deal of slander. Personal attacks against me, discriminatory remarks, low-level insults and name-calling, as well as rumors and misinformation were spread mainly on social media.”
He continued that he had “already taken legal action against several detractors,” and that there were pending “criminal charges and civil lawsuits.” Li goes on to reveal that his targets have been both. male and female individuals from Japan and Taiwan, and then “most cases have not yet been decided, but some cases have already been decided.”
In February, Li explained that as a result of the legal action he pursued, one unnamed man, a Taiwanese national in his 40’s, had recently been sentenced to four months in prison for “spreading false rumors” and “insulting” him, and added that he had also been ordered to pay ¥700,000 ($4,700 USD) in compensation to Li.
He continued to claim that the criticisms made about him caused him to suffer from “physical and mental problems such as insomnia and dizziness.”
“I also suffered from the anxiety and fear that would come over me when I was alone. As I was being bombarded with abuse online, every time I heard the sounds of life upstairs or the creaking of the floor, I was terrified that someone was coming to kill me. That’s how much I felt the world’s hostility,” Li stated.
“There were times when I thought it would be easier to just kill myself and be released. After seeing a psychosomatic doctor and taking anti-anxiety medication, I was finally able to live and work normally again after a long period of time, but even now I still feel anxious when I have to give lectures, give talks, or perform work in public,” Li said, adding that he lives in “fear that attackers and detractors may be lurking in the audience.”
Yet despite his self-professed anxiety surrounding “attackers,” the majority of critics who Li has filed litigation against have been lesbians and women’s rights advocates who contest his claim to lesbianism.
Li has filed defamation claims against at least nine individuals within the past two years for making comments and social media posts referring to him as a male. The majority of those targeted for litigation have been women, while three have been men who are critical of gender ideology. Reduxx has seen evidence of both settled and ongoing legal disputes, but in order to safeguard the privacy of those affected, has chosen to withhold their identities.
The total amount of financial compensation thus far ordered to be awarded to Li on the basis of defamation is known to be at least 865,000 Japanese yen ($5,800 USD), in addition to an undisclosed amount that he has received from supporters online by means of crowdfunding.
The most recent litigation has been ongoing since July 1 against a woman and Taiwanese national, identified to Reduxx by the pseudonym Shawl, from whom Li is seeking up to $70,300 USD in damages.
In September 2022, Shawl received a demand letter from Li’s lawyer by way of her personal email account informing her of criminal charges against her. For the crime of revealing Li’s biological sex without allegedly verifying the source of the information, she was charged for violation of personal information and defamation. However, the court ruled against the criminal charges, after which Li persisted in filing a civil accusation for damages and sexual harassment.
Taiwan’s defamation laws are more severe than in many Western countries, and according to the criminal code, a person who “disseminates a fact which will injure the reputation of another… commits the offense of slander”. The punishment for those found guilty of slander can involve “imprisonment for not more than one year, short-term imprisonment, or a fine of not more than fifteen thousand dollars.”
Among the social media posts cited by Li’s legal representative as “slander” include several which refer to him as a “man”. Litigation is ongoing and a ruling in her case is expected to be handed down by the Taiwan New Taipei District Court on October 31.
In March 2022, Shawl wrote on X, formerly Twitter: “Li Qinfeng writes lesbian literature as a woman. I noticed a few days ago that he was originally a man. He has been criticized by many people. He is clearly a man. Why can he dictate women’s affairs? Since he is a man, entering a girls’ high school would have been impossible, so how did he create a semi auto-biographical novel [with this theme]?”
Shawl’s comment refers to Li’s book Solo Dance ( 独り舞) which was promoted by its publisher as a semi-autobiographical novel that centers around a teenager who realizes she is a lesbian while attending a girls’ high school. However, Li did not attend a girls’ school, but rather a public high school in Taiwan, which he had previously identified as the Taichung Municipal High School (臺中市立臺中第一高級中等學校), and wrote under the pen name Xu Feng (絮風) – a fact that has been exposed not only by his critics, but also by his own background in writing.
In 2005, while in grade nine of high school, Li wrote his first novel, Are You Still Online (你還在線上嗎 – ISBN 9867280040). The story revolves around “a Capricorn boy who longs for love” and “lives in Changhua,” both of which are details that are identical to Li’s own personal life.
In the book’s introduction Li included his email address and online screen name, very1ghost, which internet sleuths were able to use to track his history of posting in the Taiwanese online forum PTT. Posts made by very1ghost match up exactly with Li’s educational background, and corroborate his former pen name of Xu Feng.
The following year, 2006, while still in high school, Li won the 22nd Taiwan Literature Workshop Prize (第22屆全國巡迴文藝營創作獎), and in grade ten, he was referring to himself in Chinese on PTT using characters which are specific to boys (小弟). According to other posts, Li resided in a dormitory for men while attending the National Taiwan University (NTU).
In 2009, while he was attending NTU, a classmate of Li’s complained in the PTT forum about Li’s behavior towards others, remarking that he was “rude” and had begun “wear[ing] skirts recently.” That same year, Li, using his screenname very1ghost, posted in the PTT community about his fear of participating in Taiwan’s mandatory military conscription, which had just been reduced from two years of service to one year.
“Can anyone tell me how on earth gender equality is possible when all (biological) males are required to do one year of military service (or alternative service or four months of military training) but females are not?” reads the post.
“The military conscription system of the Republic of China has always been a lingering nightmare for me. I know I’m afraid of that kind of life,” Li continued. “By visiting feminist boards (and other gender issue boards) over the past year, I have a basic understanding of feminism… However, what I don’t understand is why the current Taiwanese society is so politically correct about gender equality, but completely ignores the conscription system, a system that is fundamentally gender-unequal?”
In addition to his online posting history while a high school and university student, Li has made public statements supportive of trans activism and in favor of “depathologizing gender identity disorder.”
“Transgender people who wish to transition have been thought to suffer from a mental illness called gender identity disorder. The idea was that it was an illness that required treatment (social gender transition, hormone therapy, surgery, etc),” Li wrote in February of this year.
“However, in recent years, the term ‘gender identity disorder’ has been abolished internationally, and instead it has been replaced by a ‘gender-related condition’ known as ‘gender incongruity/gender dysphoria’,” he added, referring to a shift in language first adopted by the US-based World Professional Association (WPATH). In depathologizing “gender identity disorder,” WPATH academics had consulted with anonymous members of a pedophilic castration fetish community.
Li also appears to hold the belief that males can identify as lesbians. In 2019, Li condemned Tokyo’s longest-running lesbian bar, Goldfinger, for their women-only night, which was being held only once per month.
In April of 2019, an American trans-identified male and university professor, Eric ‘Elin’ McCready, attempted to enter the venue on a women-only night and was denied access. In response, McCready took to social media to garner sympathy and portray himself as a victim of discrimination. His posts set off a flurry of criticism from online trans activists, with some calling for bar Goldfinger to be excluded from future Tokyo Pride events. Stonewall Japan Vice President Jessica Gordon even asked supporters to boycott the bar completely and authored a blog post slandering the venue’s owner and employees as “transphobic pieces of human trash.”
Joining in on the controversy, Li sent a message to the lesbian bar’s official account on X: “I heard that you have publicly announced the ‘exclusion of trans people,'” he wrote. “Even though Ochanomizu University has announced that it will accept trans women, why would Japan’s largest lesbian event declare that it will exclude trans women? This is an extremely malicious act that goes against the times and violates human dignity.”
But Li has advocated against women’s right to single-sex spaces on multiple occasions. As the criticism of the women-only event at Goldfinger began to escalate, Li, using his Taiwanese pen name Li Qinfeng, wrote an article for Tai Sounds which strongly denounced “transphobic hate speech in Japanese society”.
“Because of the existence of transgender people, we can no longer take the existence of ‘women’ as natural and biological, but must think about definitions: What is a woman? And all definitions essentially mean exclusion,” Li wrote. “The prejudice and exclusion of trans women by native women certainly falls into the category of cannibalism and does not contribute to the substantive improvement of women’s rights or gender equality.”
In addition to his relentless harassment of critics through defamation litigation, Li has made a disturbing comment sympathetic towards pedophilia. In August 2020, Li compared pedophilia to homosexuality, and stated that he didn’t “necessarily agree” that a sexual attraction to children did not constitute a sexuality.
“‘Pedophilia’ is trending for some reason… Some say that pedophilia is not a sexual orientation like LGB, but a pathology, and I don’t necessarily agree with that. I can’t agree. It’s always those in power who decide what’s sick and what is not, so we have no choice but to be cautious. Don’t forget that homosexuality was considered a disease 50 years ago.”
Taiwan’s government is now in the process of drafting an “Anti-Discrimination Act” (反歧視法). According to the current version of the legislation, based on reports of the hearings, “gender identity” is set to be included as a protected category. To date, Taiwan has permitted 7 known cases of sex self-identification, of the alteration of one’s legal sex without a surgical requirement.
In 2020, a man in Taipei was discovered to have secretly filmed more than 160 women and girls in “all gender” restrooms located across Taipei and New Taipei City. He had placed spycams in various universities and schools, and among his victims were girls as young as 13 and 14 years old.
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