does tumblr know that the protagonist of one of the four great classical chinese novels is transgender. btw. if you even care.
now that i have your attention: basically, last year i was introduced to a novel and immediately became obsessed with it. from literally the first chapters i smelled something queer was afoot with its protagonist, and as i read on i began to realise that he was not only queercoded but perhaps the most trans character i have ever read who is not textually transgender. for over a year i have been, on and (very much mostly) off, putting together my manifesto for this theory, and finally my work is done (at over 10k words).
given that the amount of posting about this novel on tumblr is currently woeful, i have deliberately written all of this essay in such a way that you do not need to know anything at all about dream of the red chamber to read it. if this is the first you've heard of it but you're just intrigued by the premise, you'll be able to understand it perfectly well (at least, as long as my prose isn't too incomprehensible LMAO).
so without further ado, i present to you my thesis that jia baoyu from dream of the red chamber is trans. fair warning: this will be long as fuck. maybe grab a snack or something before you start.
your thesis that who from where is what
before i begin, if you don't know anything about dream of the red chamber you should really stop right here and go and read @thirrith's primer for the novel, which is an extremely good and concise rundown of everything an english speaker unfamiliar with it could want to know. but if, like some people of my acquaintance, you would rather die than click a link to another page to read, here is an even shorter summary:
紅樓夢 or dream of the red chamber (it has other possible names, but i'll go with what wikipedia uses for simplicity) was written in the mid-18th century in qing dynasty china by a guy called cao xueqin, who came from a powerful aristocratic family whose house fell into disgrace and poverty when he was a child. the novel is about a powerful aristocratic family, the jia, who are doomed ultimately to decline and fall into disgrace and poverty - and it's specifically focused on the women of the family, as cao xueqin grew up surrounded by women and wanted to pay homage to them in his life's work. it's essentially a family saga focused on personal relationships and revolving around 12 central female characters. there's also a bunch about reincarnating jade stones and immortal dimension-hopping gay monks, but i won't get into that right now x
the protagonist of dream of the red chamber is the only main male character; the heir of the jia house, jia baoyu. he has been raised with girls (both relatives and servants) in the female-dominated jia mansion, mirroring cao xueqin's own life. the novel broadly follows him from birth as he grows up, showing the events of his life and his relationships with the aforementioned 12 female characters - particularly his two main love interests, lin daiyu and xue baochai (who are totally in lesbians with each other btw). and also if he was any more egg he'd be a fucking omelette.
the following is a compilation of what i consider possible textual evidence for an interpretation of baoyu as trans-coded. not all of it is conclusive, but i hope gathering all of it together in one place will illustrate why i opened this book and practically instantly did this:
(a couple of notes before i start: firstly, dream of the red chamber has MANY original versions and MANY translations. in each translation, The Allegations naturally come across slightly differently, so i've decided only to use the 1978-80 translation by gladys yang and yang hsien-yi¹ when i quote directly from the novel. secondly, this translation uses the wade-giles system of chinese romanisation rather than pinyin, so the names are rendered differently - baoyu is spelled "pao-yu".)
to begin at the beginning: the very first time we're introduced to baoyu (in the human world... i promised not to get into it) is through another character's account of his zhuazhou ceremony. according to custom, on baoyu's first birthday, his father places many different objects in front of him, to see what his path in life might be based on what he picks up; baby baoyu ignores everything else and makes a beeline for the "rouge, powder-boxes, hair ornaments and bangles" (ch. 2). hmmm.
(as an introduction for the male protagonist, this passage is arresting in itself, but it makes it more insane that it wasn't even normal to put traditionally 'female' items in front of a male child at all - it should be more of a test of whether he would reach for more scholarly or politiciancore or farmercore items, etc. THIS DETAIL WAS PUT IN ENTIRELY TO ESTABLISH FROM THE BEGINNING THAT BAOYU IS SOME KIND OF FREAK.)
baoyu's father, jia zheng, is explicitly noted to disapprove of and resent baoyu from this very moment:
"His father was furious and swore he'd grow up to be a dissolute rake. Because of this he's not too fond of the boy, but the child's still his grandmother's darling." (Ch. 2)
and as soon as baoyu can speak, he evidently continues to display noted gay/stupid tendencies:
"... he says the strangest things for a child. 'Girls are made of water, men of mud,' he declares. 'I feel clean and refreshed when I'm with girls but find men dirty and stinking.' Isn't that absurd? ..." (Ch. 2)
soon after this, the character responding (who hasn't met baoyu) provides a description which is not actually about baoyu himself, but is clearly supposed to directly parallel him based on what we've just heard. we will much later realise that this refers to his 'mirror' character who shares his name - zhen baoyu. without getting too much into it here, zhen baoyu is supposed to look and, as a child, act pretty much identically to jia baoyu, so this description can be taken as very similar in essence to "our" baoyu's own behaviour as well - which the other character in this conversation, who does know jia baoyu, corroborates. (or, if you want to be a stickler about it, it means that baoyu's exact mirror image was an insane trans-coded little freak at the time when he was most similar to baoyu, which in my opinion still implies a failure to beat the allegations on baoyu's behalf.)
anyway, with that out of the way, here is said description:
"... But although my pupil was a beginner, he was harder to teach than a candidate for the Provincial Examination. Here's an example of the absurd things he'd say: 'I must have two girls as company while I study, or I can't learn characters — my brain gets muddled.' He told his pages, 'The word "girl" is so honourable and pure, not even the supreme Buddhist and Taoist titles can compare with it. You with your filthy mouths and stinking tongues must never violate it. Before you utter this word, mind you rinse your mouths with clear water or fragrant tea. If you don't, your teeth will grow crooked and rip through your cheeks.'
"He had a fearful temper and could be incredibly stubborn and obstreperous; but as soon as classes were over and he joined the girls he became a different person — amiable, sensible and gentle. More than once, because of this, his father thrashed him within an inch of his life, but still that didn't change him. When the pain became too much for him, he would start yelling, 'Sister! Little Sister!' Once the girls in the inner chambers teased him saying, 'Why do you call us when you're being beaten? Do you want us to beg you off? For shame!' You should have heard his answer. He said, 'The first time I called I didn't know it would ease the pain. But then I discovered that it worked like magic. So when the pain's worst, I keep on calling "Sister."' Have you ever heard anything so ludicrous? ..." (Ch. 2)
the character who brings this up, moreover, does so in order to illustrate that jia baoyu acts this way not because he's going to grow up a slut (thanks jia zheng) but because he is a type of person who is different to those around him from birth:
"... He's bound later on to run after women like the very devil." "That doesn't follow," put in Yu-tsun, grown suddenly grave. "You don't know how he's come into the world. I suspect his father is making a mistake as well if he thinks the boy depraved. To understand him you'd need to be widely read and experienced, able to recognize the nature of things, grasp the Way and comprehend the Mystery."" (Ch. 2)
he proceeds to elaborate and explain a philosophical view of the world whereby such people contain both the essences of good and evil, so this isn't explicitly about gender or queerness in itself. but obviously when you see someone saying "this child is a gender non-conforming little freak" and the response is "don't judge them, they're only #born this way", it's difficult for a modern reader not to make Certain Connections.
baoyu grows up with what one can only describe as an obsession with girls, women and femininity in general. (seriously, it's frankly neurotic in intensity - freud would have had a field day with him.) one way in which this is shown is that he has a fixation on cosmetics; in particular, on rouge, presumably because red is his favourite and signature colour.
"Regretting her tactlessness she hastily turned to subjects more to his taste: the spring breeze and autumn moon; powder and rouge; and, finally, the good qualities of girls." (Ch. 36)
(one paper i found² suggests that the colour red itself was associated with femininity in china at the time of the novel's writing, which they don't provide a source for and which i and my cultural consultant @thirrith have been unable to back up, but i'll put it here anyway because if that has any truth to it then OH BOY.)
baoyu zeroes in on women's cosmetics whenever he sees them, to a frankly unwell extent;
"Nodding in appreciation Pao-yu looked round him. He saw jasper lutes, rare bronze tripods, ancient paintings, new volumes of verse — nothing was lacking. But what delighted him most was the rouge by the window and the spilt powder left from a lady's toilet." (Ch. 3)
insists on mixing his girlbesties' rouge for them;
""Don't have supper till I'm back, dear cousin," he begged. "And wait for me to mix your rouge."" (Ch. 9)
constantly tries to taste or eat rouge (😭) - literally absorbing what he considers the essence of femininity into his body;
"Instead of answering, Pao-yu started playing with the toilet articles on the dressing-table by the mirror, absent-mindedly picking up some rouge. He was wondering if he could taste it without Hsiang-yun noticing when she reached out from behind him and, holding his queue with one hand, with the other knocked the rouge out of his grasp. "Are you never going to change your silly ways?" she demanded." (Ch. 21)
and is shown to have such intimate knowledge of make-up that it honestly becomes doubtful that he has never tried it on personally.
""The rouge sold in the market isn't clean, and the colour's faint," explained Pao-yu. "This is made from the essence of the very best safflower, which is steamed after all impurities have been extracted and attar added. You need only take a little on a pin, rub it on the palm of your hand, then dilute it with a drop of water and apply it to your lips. What's left on your palm will be enough for your cheeks."" (Ch. 44)
in fact, an iconic detail about baoyu is that he kisses the rouge on girls' lips, for which he is chided multiple times:
""You must stop abusing Buddhist monks and Taoist priests and playing about with girls' cosmetics and powder. Most important of all, you must stop kissing the rouge on girls' lips and running after everything in red."" (Ch. 19)
this is possibly my favourite character detail about him, because you really cannot get any more transbian. he kisses SPECIFICALLY THE ROUGE! ON THEIR LIPS! HE KISSES THE ROUGE ON GIRLS' LIPS TO GET IT ON HIS OWN MOUTH! CAN ANYONE HEAR ME!
(according to the 20th century red chamber translator franz kuhn³, this may be evidence for baoyu's character being partly based on accounts of the qianlong emperor, who in his youth was apparently said to lick the rouge off girls' lips. again, i can't find another source for this, but like. could oestrogen have saved her, scholars remain divided, etc.)
baoyu is also powerfully fascinated by any and all images of women, fleeting glimpses of women, and descriptions of women he has never met or who do not in fact exist.
"When Pao-yu found himself alone he thought, "There's a marvellously lifelike painting of a beauty in the small study here. In all this excitement today she must be lonely. I'd better go and cheer her up." He made his way towards the study." (Ch. 19)
he actually almost scams HIMSELF by fixating on a passing mention of a girl and being persuaded that a nonexistent shrine in her honour is in ruins, to which he immediately decides that he will send money to restore it. there is something literally so wrong with him.
of course, this trait could just be taken as showing that he's a "rake" who loves women too much for his own good, but i think i've demonstrated that it's clear that baoyu's affinity for women and femininity goes far beyond that. in point of fact, when he fixates on the idea of a girl or woman it isn't even really in the sense of a possible romantic conquest, but genuine interest and investment in her as a person; see above where he worries that the beauty in the painting will be "lonely". when he almost scams himself, his first question is why the girl was stealing firewood in the snow and whether she caught cold, and insists on being told more and more about her story to the point of forcing the other character to make everything up. especially compared with other male characters in the novel, who frequently treat women as sexual objects, trophies or commodities, baoyu's deep and obsessive personal investment in the faintest IDEA of a woman certainly stands out.
in addition to being a lover of women - a gynephile, if you will (gunshot) - baoyu is a committed and enthusiastic misandrist. from the earliest age he considers boys and men the dregs and scum of humanity, hates entertaining them, and does not spend time in groups with them if he can avoid it - even though he's canonically attracted to some of them himself! he literally acts like a bi girl who sings the praises of women but moans about how it's sooo embarrassing to be attracted to (gags) men.
for instance, to repeat what he famously proclaims as a child:
"... 'Girls are made of water, men of mud,' he declares. 'I feel clean and refreshed when I'm with girls but find men dirty and stinking.'..." (Ch. 2)
it simply doesn't occur to him that he ought to act as a male role model in relation to other boys, because he thinks men are fucking cringe:
"... he had come to the conclusion that while human beings were the highest form of creation, the finest essences of Nature were embodied in girls, men being nothing but the dregs and scum. To him, therefore, all men were filthy clods who might just as well not have existed. Only deference to Confucius, the greatest sage of all time who taught that fathers, uncles and brothers should be respected, made him keep on a fairly good footing with his brothers and boy cousins. It never entered his head that he as a man should set the younger boys a good example." (Ch. 20)
(this quote also shows how little baoyu identifies with men, like, as a class. it is interesting to note that although he occasionally makes comments which can be taken as elevating women above himself because of their gender, he doesn't particularly go on tortured tirades about how disgusting he feels HIMSELF to be personally, as a man. he also doesn't seem to display discomfort with his own body. in a trans interpretation, it's almost like he's such an egg that he hasn't even fully had the realisation that he ought to be consciously unhappy with being a man, because he already identifies with women to the point of subconsciously thinking of himself as such!)
it really cannot be overstated how much it's drilled into the reader that baoyu loves women and femininity and hates men and masculinity:
"Pao-yu had an inveterate dislike of entertaining literati or men in general." (Ch. 36)
""This is all the fault of the ancients who had nothing better to do than coin maxims and codes to control stupid, uncouth men. It's too bad that in our time even those in refined ladies' chambers have been contaminated. This is an offence against Heaven and Earth which endowed them with the finest qualities."" (Ch. 36)
""Now that the old lady has this good grand-daughter she'll forget you, her grandson." "I don't mind. It's only right to love girls more. ..." (Ch. 49)
in fact, the male lover he's shown to have had the closest relationship with, his childhood best friend qin zhong, is repeatedly compared to a girl. furthermore, one of his later boyfriends is actually a female-role actor! evidently, baoyu can only stand men when they're a little girlypop with it, which tbh i have to respect.
finally, in one of his most outrageous egg moments (and with him that's really saying something), baoyu literally responds to being told about a (canonical) lesbian couple by sighing about how wonderful lesbianism is because it removes the need for disgusting men. I'M NOT KIDDING.
"He exclaimed in wonder, torn between sadness and joy. "Since Heaven creates such wonderful girls, what use are we filthy males except to contaminate the world?" he cried." (Ch. 58)
IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.
he proceeds to enthusiastically support the lesbian agenda by encouraging the said "wonderful girl" to openly mourn her dead girlfriend as a bereaved spouse would. (don't worry, she got a new gf, but she says she's still true to the dead one... you know lesbian relationship drama.) given that at one point he also makes an explicitly romantic joke about the relationship between his two female love interests, i strongly believe jia baoyu should be the patron saint of trans girls who got really into yuri before their eggs cracked.
(lesbians, by the way, are very rare in chinese fiction of the period in comparison with portrayals of male homosexuality - cheers cao xueqin, a real one as usual!)
furthermore, it's repeatedly demonstrated that other characters in the novel are also conscious of baoyu's gender trouble (lol). when baoyu's aunt xifeng - who also transgresses gender roles and whom i could write an entire second essay about, though it would largely consist of the 😍 emoji - sees baoyu riding his horse too recklessly, she calms him down as follows:
""Dear cousin, you have your dignity and are as delicate as any girl. Don't copy those apes on horseback. Wouldn't it be better to come and share my carriage?" Pao-yu hurriedly dismounted to join her." (Ch. 15)
in the original text, xifeng actually says "wouldn't it be better for we two sisters to share the carriage?"² (!). the contemporary commentator on the novel zhiyanzhai notes that "otherwise, baoyu would definitely not obey,"² (!!!) and presents this affirmation of baoyu's femininity as an example of xifeng's cleverness and expert ability to manipulate others.
baoyu is also consistently misidentified as a girl through various means. an elderly peasant woman and a doctor both mistake his room for that of a young lady;
""Which of the young ladies' room[s] was that? So elegant and beautiful! I thought I was in heaven." "That?" Hsi-jen smiled. "That's Master Pao's bedroom."" (Ch. 41)
""Our young master is most particular," one of them explained. "He may want to ask you some questions." "Young master!" exclaimed the doctor. "Wasn't that a young lady I examined just now? Surely it was a young lady's boudoir. ..." (Ch. 51)
his voice is mistaken for baochai's;
""Who's that at the gate?" asked Hsi-jen. "Who'll go and see?" "It's I!" cried Pao-yu. "Sounds like Miss Pao-chai," said Sheh-yueh." (Ch. 30)
and he is physically mistaken for or confused with a girl multiple times.
"The girl raised her head with a start at hearing this shout from the other side of the trellis. As Pao-yu was finely-featured and as the thick foliage screened all but the top of his face, she took him for a maid. "Thanks, sister," she said with a smile. "You don't seem to have much shelter out there yourself either."" (Ch. 30)
""If you only knew, aunt, she loves dressing up in other people's clothes," said Pao-chai with a smile. "During her visit here in the third or fourth month last year, she put on Cousin Pao's gown and boots, as well as his chaplet, and stood behind that chair. At a casual glance she looked so like him — except for two extra earrings — that the old lady was quite taken in. "" 'Pao-yu, come here,' she cried. 'Don't let the dust from the lantern tassels over your head get in your eyes.' "The little wretch just smiled and didn't stir. Then we all burst out laughing and the old lady had to laugh too. "" 'Well, you look even better dressed up as a boy,' she said."" (Ch. 31)
"Even as she spoke, someone in a red felt cape stepped out from behind Pao-chin. "Which of the girls is that?" asked the old lady. "All of the girls are here," they told her. "That's Pao-yu." "My eyes are failing," she sighed." (Ch. 50)
these last few are particularly interesting, as i think it's important to note that baoyu is not actually ever described as looking particularly physically feminine. in his few physical descriptions, he comes across as very good-looking by the standards of his time and environment, and even "finely-featured" and pretty, but is not specifically identified as looking out of the ordinary in a gendered way.
furthermore, more than one of the characters who misidentify him serve as 'truth-tellers' within the narrative, intended to see through other characters' artificiality or preoccupations. therefore, and considering how consistently baoyu is associated with femininity in the text as i've shown - i don't think it's too much of a stretch to suggest that when baoyu is misidentified as female, it is not intended to signal that he outwardly appears notably feminine, but that these characters are in fact recognising his inward femininity. that is, i believe that in these instances he is really being correctly identified.
not all characters who recognise baoyu's nonconformity are so accepting of it. as previously mentioned, baoyu also has an extremely strained relationship with his father, who is very uneasy about his son's failure to conform to aristocratic masculinity. within the novel, jia zheng represents traditional confucianism (coded as masculine and repressive): he fundamentally disapproves of baoyu's tendency for spending all his time with girls and engaging in soft/idle/feminine/corrupting activities such as writing poetry, instead of studying for examinations as an ideal male heir should.
at one point, jia zheng beats baoyu nearly to death - partly for embarrassing the family by spending too much time with his female-role actor boyfriend, who is attached to the court of a higher-ranking prince. (bisexuality was pretty normalised in chinese literature and high society of the period; jia zheng's problem is not actually with baoyu's having a boyfriend in itself, he just hates him innit.)
baoyu hates and fears his father, who really looms over him in the text; he goes pale and shuts down at the prospect of talking to him, avoids him at all costs, and uncharacteristically falls silent when he's forced to spend time with him. with good reason, since jia zheng is a piece of shit who spends most of his time on-page incessantly slagging off his son - that is, when he's not trying to commit filicide. (can you tell i'm not this man's biggest fan.) it's very difficult not to read this as queercoded, especially when its canonical catalyst was literally baoyu's early tendency for gender non-conformity.
and now for what i consider the real smoking guns of this section!
as a tween, baoyu has a dream or vision which deals with the 12 female characters and his relationships with them (the novel's title can be interpreted as a reference to it, in fact). as part of this dream, the fairy or goddess (long story) guiding him tells him that the reason he's #not like the other girls is because he is "the most lustful man ever to have lived in this world". she explains that while some people "delight only in physical beauty" and just want to "possess all the beauties in the world to gratify their momentary desires", baoyu's lustfulness is something different:
""In your case, you were born with a passionate nature which we call 'lust of the mind.' This can be grasped by the mind but not expressed, apprehended intuitively but not described in words. Whereas this makes you a welcome companion to women, in the eyes of the world it is bound to make you appear strange and unnatural, an object of mockery and scorn. ..." (Ch. 3) (bold mine)
may i just say: HMMMMMMM. given that this dream and the goddess predict the fate of the 12 female characters and generally serve to reveal the truth about several elements of the novel, it's very... interesting that she also takes the opportunity to diagnose baoyu with a mysterious innate nature that means he will be rejected by the world even though the girlies love him. to me, this is a fascinating conflation of gender and sexuality; while generally this takes the form of attraction to the same sex being associated with an affinity with the other, in baoyu's case his own femininity is seen as the logical conclusion of an overwhelming "lust" for women. the goddess proceeds to orchestrate baoyu's sexual awakening in order to try and cure him of said "lust of the mind", which clearly doesn't work, proving that no matter how many girls you get it won't make the girl inside you go away ✨
secondly, when baoyu impulsively drags his page out with him to offer a sacrifice to a random goddess, the page half-jokingly prays to the goddess as follows, telling her that "as my master can't tell you what it is he wants, let me pray to you in his place":
"... And do help him in the nether world too, so that in his next life he may be reborn as a girl and enjoy himself with the rest of you, never again becoming a filthy man with a beard and shaggy eyebrows."" (Ch. 43)
moving swiftly on from that insane statement, i am delighted to inform you that this happens AGAIN, and in an apparently non-joking context (although other characters are noted to laugh afterwards). baoyu's grandmother - one of the 'truth-tellers' i mentioned earlier, as an elderly and wise female character - musing on what a weird boy he is, says this:
"... I've never known another child like him. One expects a boy to be mischievous, but this extraordinary liking he has for maids has been preying on my mind. I'm for ever finding him fooling about with them. At first I thought this intimacy was because he'd grown big enough to know about sex; but watching him more closely I realized that wasn't the reason, which makes it even odder. Could it be that he was really meant to be born a girl?..."" (Ch. 78)
i don't really know what else i can say about that. just fucking look at it.
lastly, some random titbits that don't fit anywhere specific:
this made me curse cao xueqin's name when i first read it. the doctor who mistakes baoyu's room for a girl's was actually there to examine one of baoyu's maids, and he gives her a prescription which contains certain herbs. baoyu takes one look at the prescription and goes "this guy is out of his mind! this is a prescription for a man! everyone knows these herbs are way too strong for girls' constitutions." so they go to the family doctor and get another prescription. baoyu looks at this one and goes "ah yes, this is more like medicine for girls. i mean, when the family doctor examined me last year he said those herbs were too strong for me, and obviously i'm much less delicate than you girls :)". this has no discernible purpose except for apparently getting a doctor to diagnose baoyu with biologically female by the standards of the time. i'm so tired.
before his dream in chapter 3, baoyu is visiting another household and is offered a room which he immediately takes a dislike to because it has a painting of a (male, obviously) scholar and a quotation about scholarliness and work on the wall. his hostess then offers him her room - which is perfumed, has a painting of a girl and a quotation about her, and is filled with feminine decorations and objects used or owned by famous beauties. to no-one's surprise, he is absolutely overjoyed to sleep in this one.
one of dream of the red chamber's most iconic scenes is the meeting of baoyu and his love interest daiyu, when they're about six years old. daiyu asks about the jade stone that baoyu has worn from birth (actually, he was literally born with it - long story as always). baoyu is surprised and asks her if she doesn't have such a jade; she responds that she doesn't. baoyu promptly has a massive tantrum, dashes his jade to the ground and sobs that none of the other girls have something like it so it must be worthless. i acknowledge that this is objectively a really weak point, and to normal people who aren't insane about trans!baoyu this probably has no gender undertones whatsoever, but to me this scene just really gives baby dysphoria tantrum somehow. his poor little brain just can't cope with the idea of being marked out from the 'other girls' in any way :(
something that is really funny to me is that several of the quotes i've picked, read out of context, could just be taken as showing that this character is an effeminate gay man. but an extremely salient fact about baoyu is that he is NOT gay. he is SO not gay that it is in fact BASICALLY THE ENTIRE POINT OF HIS CHARACTER THAT HE VERY SINCERELY LOVES WOMEN TO AN INSANE EXTENT. he is bisexual but crucially, his attraction to men is never really tied to his fucked up gender or stigmatised in a queercoded manner, BUT HIS ATTRACTION TO WOMEN IS. which could mean nothing.
there's more but this post is already so long that it gives my laptop a stroke when i try to edit it so for your and my sanity i'll leave it there 😭
now, personally, i think that a lot of this evidence, whichever way you look at it, is undeniably more than a bit sus. but you may still be unconvinced, especially as you have no doubt never seen baoyu appear on lists of the all-time top 10 best trans representation in literature (give me time). but @lesbworth, you may cry, you are an annoying english transgender reading the book in translation through annoying english transgender goggles - of course if you have an eggcup everything looks like an egg (to coin a phrase). well, never fear! the experts have my back!!!
the allegations (peer reviewed)
at least, some of the experts. @thirrith takes great pleasure in informing me that my takes would make certain redologists (scholars of the novel) want to do me an injury if they didn't have an aneurysm first. but a few who are not boring and swagless have had the same idea as me (as they should). this section got very long, so rather against my will i have decided to put the bulk of the academic context for my interpretation in another post which you can find here. a condensed version of this is below, but i would really recommend reading the other post in full, as the details are genuinely fascinating and the sources i use go into a lot more detail regarding the textual evidence (also, there are really just some thoroughly satisfying quotes backing up my interpretation).
with that said, the list of correct and sexy takes is as follows:
as far as i'm aware, the first scholar to argue that baoyu is trans was japanese redologist gōyama kiwamu, who published a book in 2010 which uses evidence from the novel to diagnose baoyu with "gender identity disorder" - that is, the book argues that he is a trans woman. gōyama further posits that the novel was written as a wishful gender utopia by cao xueqin, who he suggests also had trans tendencies. i can't get access to the book itself, which enrages me, but spiritually i am heartily shaking the author's hand.
a 2023 taiwanese redology paper, delightfully titled "is jia baoyu a transgender lesbian?"², reviewed gōyama's evidence for a trans interpretation of baoyu and put their own spin on it. they suggest that baoyu can specifically be seen as, you guessed it, a transgender lesbian - who both identifies with and loves women, and has a 'lesbian sensibility' in that he focuses on and is sympathetic towards love between women.
author of queer fiction and queer scholar li kotomi wrote an article in 2022 posing the question of whether dream of the red chamber can be considered a queer novel⁴. she discusses here the male bisexuality and sapphic love in the novel, before providing her own review of gōyama's book. while she disagrees with some of the medical framing of gōyama's argument, and thinks that declaring that cao xueqin was also trans is a touch too farfetched, li wholeheartedly agrees with a reading of baoyu as a trans person - noting that she herself has held this interpretation for many years. her conclusion, by the way, is that dream of the red chamber can definitely be considered a queer novel! (incredibly, many months after i started writing this and included this discussion of her article, li was actually outed as trans and forced to come out as a trans lesbian herself. i think she should be able to shoot the people responsible pointblank but i have to say, it's even more of an honour to know that she agrees with my takes now.)
there are also analyses of the novel which, while they don't explicitly argue for a trans interpretation, identify baoyu's deep gender nonconformity and identification within and outside the text with women, and provide literary and cultural context for this. in particular, louise edwards' paper "gender imperatives in honglou meng: baoyu's bisexuality" highlights how uncomfortable and incongruent baoyu is with the gendered categories available to him within the world of the novel, and argues that he is psychologically "bisexual" (in the gender sense rather than in terms of his sexuality!). the book androgyny in late ming and early qing literature by zuyan zhou further explores the context to baoyu's creation as a character, whereby political and social upheaval before and during the qing dynasty influenced a wave of gender non-conforming characters in chinese literature, and in particular the creation of many feminine male characters.
*remaining references in the part 2 post!
although as i've shown, i am evidently not the only person on the planet to have had this idea, we correct and sexy trans!baoyu truthers are still kind of in the trenches. there is plenty of analysis of gender and gender roles in dream of the red chamber, and some which deal with the androgyny of baoyu or other characters, but to my mind there are surprisingly few that align baoyu with transness or use queer theory to analyse him. this is utterly insane to me because even though i understand mine may not exactly be a popular take among more conservative redologists, to a modern reader who has any familiarity with the idea of trans people, i don't understand how it CAN'T spring to mind!!! as li kotomi points out: "the connection between jia baoyu and "gender identity disorder" (gid) is actually not surprising. it is not difficult for readers who have some knowledge of lgbt, queer theory, and gender theory to some extent to make this connection"⁴. AMEN TO THAT!
maybe the real trans baoyu was the friends we made along the way
so at last, thank you to anyone who has got this far in this rambling screed and above all thank you to @thirrith for introducing me to the novel and always very graciously being down to yap with me about it in the middle of the night <3. there's no real point or conclusion here - i just wanted to write this because a) i'm insane about it and b) i think dream of the red chamber in general deserves more tumblr exposure, and in particular baoyu's canonical queerness and just-barely-subtextual transness feels like it should be discussed by the girlbloggers. (trans-coded bisexual mentally unwell doomed by the narrative poor little meowmeow prettyboy protagonist?? he could have been brewed in a lab for you all.) that as far as we could find there was basically zero discussion of the queerness in the novel, let alone trans baoyu, among the few posts there are about dream of the red chamber - on the transgender site! - struck me as a glaring omission, so here we are.
(also, i cannot stress enough to those unfamiliar with him that baoyu is an extremely iconic character in chinese literature and culture. like. as famous as romeo from romeo and juliet is in the west. the fact that this guy(?) is thought of by probably billions as a classic romantic male lead meanwhile he's just walking around being trans as SHIT is INSANE!!! imagine if you read pride and prejudice and realised mr darcy was blindingly obviously a closeted tgirl and no-one was talking about it.)
you may notice that throughout this essay, i've never defined exactly what i mean by "trans", although i think you'll agree that the evidence lends itself best to a transfem interpretation if not specifically a binary trans girl interpretation like in gōyama kiwamu's view. this is because i'm not really arguing for any one specific take, since
a) for obvious reasons, despite how incredibly clear i do consider baoyu's egg vibes, trying to hash out the finer 2025-lgbt-labelled details of the internal gender identity of a character written in the qing dynasty is a fool's errand, and
b) given the absolute state of discussion on this topic, all i wish for is for more people to recognise A Trans Interpretation, i don't ask for anything more 😭
one last thing to mention is that i have not finished reading dream of the red chamber myself; it's long as shit and i read it little by little as a treat 🙏. i guarantee that even though i've already read about evidence from later parts of the novel, i will continue to find more insane things - because they are frankly impossible to avoid. in fact, while writing this essay and looking for something completely different, i came across an article⁵ that notes that each of the two dimension-hopping monks - bear with me - are associated with "converting" or buddhistly helping characters of a particular gender to transcend the earthly plane. one of them converts only male characters over the course of the novel; the other converts only female characters, and baoyu. you see what i have to deal with.
finally, i'm fully aware this will probably only get a handful of notes - but of that handful PLEASE give me your thoughts, whether you are another red chamber enthusiast or were only introduced to it through this post! i fear the state of affairs in which i can only bother one person who knows what i'm on about with this is untenable.
i leave you with this adorable photo of baoyu (right) and daiyu (left) from the 1977 film version of dream of the red chamber, one of the several adaptations in which baoyu is played by a woman - which he would, no doubt, have been very happy about. :)
¹ Cao, X., & Gao, E. (1994). A Dream of Red Mansions (X. Yang & G. Yang, Trans.). Foreign Languages Press. (archive.org links: volume i; volume ii; volume iii.)
² 鄭宗弦 & 楊奕成. (2023). 賈寶玉是跨性別的女同性戀者?. 性別平等教育季刊, (100), 149-153.
³ Cao, X. (1958). The dream of the red chamber (Hung Lou Meng): a Chinese novel of the early Ching period (F. Kuhn, F. McHugh, & I. McHugh, Trans.). Pantheon Books.
⁴ 李琴峰 (Li Qinfeng; Li Kotomi). (2022, September 11). 《紅樓夢》為酷兒小說？賈寶玉有性別認同障礙 兩角色為雙性戀者. 香港01.
⁵ 君笺雅侃红楼. (2023). 红楼梦：跛足道人为什么不度化贾宝玉，把他交给了癞头和尚？. Sohu.com.
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