The predominantly male group has grown to 134 contributors who have submitted hundreds of photos of themselves wearing feminine clothes or cosplaying. More than 9,200 GitHub users have dropped by the Dress repository to give it a star of approval.

Dress was started by a 19-year-old programmer from Guangzhou, in China’s southern province of Guandong, who prefers to be known as Akechi Satori.

“Boys who pursue cuteness and choose to dress in an adorable style isn’t an outrageous thing … I originally just wanted to put mine and friends’ photos on there,” Satori said in an emailed statement.

Satori, who identifies as a woman and started wearing feminine clothes several years ago, did not expect the Dress repository to receive as much attention as it has.

“It’d be false to say I don’t have a sense of achievement. But I’d like to thank all the lovelies who have contributed to the project and helped us get to know so many friends who have similar interests,” she said.

Some Dress contributors do not show their faces in the photos and it is not possible to verify everyone’s genders.

‘Big dudes in dresses’

Suji Yan, a Shanghai-based entrepreneur, is often credited as the programmer who first drew attention to the trend of cross-dressing coders, popularly known as “big dudes in dresses”.

In a now deleted 2013 online post, he observed that if he wrote code while cross-dressing, there were fewer bugs or errors in his work.

“I started cross-dressing in high school when I went to anime conventions. People told me I looked good in girl’s clothes,” Yan, 23, said in a phone interview.

The trend spread and jokes on it have become widespread in the Chinese programming community. There is a saying that “four out of five programmers have cross-dressed”, while another jokes that coders start as junior programmer, then senior programmer and finally a cross-dressing programmer.

Yan, who is straight and recently married, said his wife has no problem with him cross-dressing but he does not cosplay as much as he used to now he is running a start-up that provides online privacy services.

There is another reason that made him pause.

“I wonder if the cross-dressing trend is harmful to the transgender community,” Yan said.

“Some people cross-dress for comedic effect and terms like ‘big dudes in dresses’ can have a negative connotation.”

Apart from those who cross-dress for pleasure, the trend has become infamous as an entertainment feature at technology companies’ annual parties.

Critics have panned the practice – along with another popular party turn of having female staff wear provocative costumes at internet company events – as “low” and perpetuating negative stereotypes.

“Lewd performances such as male colleagues cross-dressing in heavy make-up has become a standard at large Chinese internet companies,” PingWest, an online media portal focusing on technology, reported in 2017.

The article went on to say that IT workers were already thought of as “distasteful, messy and perverted”. Even though these stereotypes were unfair, it said, Chinese internet companies were not helping.

Social stigma

Cross-dressing as a performance was not always stigmatised in China, and at least two of the country’s modern leaders, Zhou Enlai and Hu Jintao, performed in female theatrical roles as adolescents.

Chen Yaya, a researcher in gender equality at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences said cross-dressing had a long history in China, and had been widely practised before the age of the internet.

While there was a distinction between those who cross-dress for performances and those who do so for pleasure, the increased occurrence and acceptance of the two in China indicated society’s greater understanding of gender constructs and diversification of gender expression, she explained.

“Cross-dressers have their own online spaces for communication and sharing. I think this is significant in promoting diversity in gender and expression,” Chen said.

Yet progress can be tenuous. Chen said the government’s strict control of the Chinese internet, as with other aspects of society, meant a safe space for the community was under threat.

While GitHub, which hosts Dress, is still available in China, there are fears it may face censorship, after the Chinese IT community started a repository called 996. ICU to protest against unhealthy working conditions. It has become one of the most popular projects on the platform, with more than 230,000 stars from users.

An act of rebellion

The phenomenon of cross-dressing coders came under the national spotlight last year when one of China’s better known programmers appeared on a television programme in eastern China with his disapproving father.

Tang Feihu, who goes by the name Xiaodao, is a former Google software engineer and blockchain entrepreneur who has cross-dressed since high school.

Xiaodao and his father Tang Chengxiang appeared on Jiangsu TV’s Have Words to Say, a show which helps families and friends overcome conflicts. His father told the programme he did not understand why Xiaodao grew his hair long and cross-dressed. He said he was ashamed by his son’s actions.

“He wears dresses. How could I show my face?”

Tang senior said that, when he shared Xiaodao’s photos with his friends, people asked if it was his daughter because of Xiaodao’s appearance. When his son was younger, he would force him to get his hair cut in a conventional boy’s style.

The programme’s hosts, who mediated between the father and son, said Xiaodao’s unconventional style was not something to be ashamed of and that Tang senior’s forceful ways had probably made things worse.

The softly spoken Xiaodao, who appeared wearing a long ponytail and gender neutral clothes, seemed to agree with their assessment.

“Take the haircuts for example, it’s a reflection of many things. He doesn’t accept some of my views,” he said.

“Over time, I didn’t want to communicate with him any more. I didn’t think I could persuade him or make him understand.”

Xiaodao, who is bisexual, said he took to cross-dressing in part to rebel against his father and mainstream society.

“When I started cross-dressing, I thought it was a way to go against the mainstream. If it becomes part of the mainstream, then I don’t see value in taking part in it any more,” he said in a phone interview with the South China Morning Post.

The mainstream seems to be more accepting of cross-dressing, if the audience of Have Words to Say is anything to go by. A poll of the 200-strong live studio audience showed only one third felt Tang senior’s concerns were legitimate.

Diversity prevails

The Dress repository on GitHub has received its share of criticism from other programmers on V2EX, an online forum popular with the coding community.

“Simply put, it’s just transvestism. Are these things accepted now?” a V2EX user wrote.

“This kind of serious cross-dressing, I really can’t get on board with it.”

Satori is not bothered by detractors. She dresses how she feels, wearing feminine or casual clothes to work. Her colleagues have no objections.

“For those who don’t accept or don’t understand this phenomenon, no matter how much we debate, it won’t change their stance,” Satori said.

“In today’s diverse society, voices that support different ideas cannot be killed.”