For years after coming out as transgender, Ling’er, an aspiring influencer in eastern China, struggled from heartbreak to heartbreak. Her family refused to accept her. When she tried to find an interim job to support herself, employers would not hire her. And when her parents sent her to a hospital to try to change her gender identity, she was held there for three months, despite her repeated protests. She was forced to undergo treatment that included multiple rounds of electroshock therapy. So when she later sued the hospital for subjecting her to unnecessary and unwanted treatment, she was not optimistic. Then the seemingly unthinkable happened: A court accepted her complaint, in China’s first known lawsuit over so-called conversion therapy involving a transgender person. And the hospital agreed in October to pay her a sizable settlement.