Audrey Tang is a Taiwanese free software programmer and Taiwan's Digital Minister, who has been described as one of the "ten greats of Taiwanese computing personalities". In August 2016, they were invited to join the Taiwan Executive Yuan as a minister without portfolio, making them the first transgender, non-binary official in the top executive cabinet. Tang has identified as "post-gender" and accepts "whatever pronoun people want to describe with online."
Biography
Tang's parents are Tang Kuang-hua and Lee Ya-ching. Tang was a child prodigy reading works of classical literature before the age of five, advanced mathematics before six, and programming before 8, and she began to learn Perl at age 12. Two years later, she dropped out of high school, unable to adapt to student life. By the year 2000, at the age of 19, Tang had already held positions in software companies, and worked in California's Silicon Valley as an entrepreneur. In late 2005, Tang began transitioning to female, including changing her English and Chinese names, citing a need to reconcile her outward appearance with her self-image. In 2017, Tang said, "I've been shutting reality off and lived almost exclusively on the net for many years, because my brain knows for sure that I am a woman, but the social expectations demand otherwise". In 2019, Tang has identified as "post-gender" or non-binary, responding to a request for their pronouns with: "What’s important here is not which pronouns you use, but the experience...about those pronouns.... I’m not just non-binary. I’m really whatever, so do whatever." The television news channelETToday reported that she has an IQ of 180. She has been a vocal proponent for autodidacticism and individualist anarchism.
Tang was named a minister without portfolio in the Lin Chuan cabinet in August 2016. They took office as the "Digital Minister" on October 1, and were placed in charge of helping government agencies communicate policy goals and managing information published by the government, both via digital means. Tang was quoted saying, "My existence is not to become a minister for a certain group, nor to broadcast government propaganda. Instead, it is to become a "channel" to allow greater combinations of intelligence and strength to come together." Tang was given this role in the Taiwanese cabinet, as a minister without portfolio, to bridge the gap between the older and younger generations. Tang is currently working on the development of free software, for the public to access, to show that the new Taiwanese sharing economy, is in fact a working system. At age 35, Tang became the youngest minister without portfolio in Taiwanese history.
