Forced Child Masculinization In Malaysia?

Was alarmed to hear about this revolting development coming out of Malaysia.   

66 kids deemed by their teachers as 'effeminate' boys were taken out of their classrooms and sent to four day government sponsored boot camps in which they will try to 'indoctrinate away the trans and gay'.   The camps will involve physical training and teaching "masculine behavior" to keep them on the "right" path.

Umm hmm.   Who's to say they aren't on the 'right path' now?   

Besides, I know a bunch of people in this community who got GI Joes, Hot Wheels cars and toy guns for Christmas, were all district performers in football and other various sports, Boy Scouts, joined the military and still transitioned.

There are people I know who had 'masculine childhoods that are so far out of the rainbow closet a Navy SEAL team couldn't shove them back in.

Malaysian activists have tried to shut down the camps but so far have failed in their attempts to do so.  Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak has turned a deaf ear to public outcry over the masculinization camps, which violate the UN Declaration of Human Rights and the Malaysian Child Act of 2001  

The stated purpose of the Child Act is to protect children "in all circumstances without regard to distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, social origin or physical, mental or emotional disabilities or any other status."

Forcibly sending effeminate kids to a four day camp in order to keep them on the subjectively deemed by some adult 'right gender path' could be counterproductive to the health and welfare of the kids stigmatized by being sent to these camps in the first place.


Let's just hope that Prime Minister Razak sees the light and stops this idiotic program.

Fatine Gets To Stay In The UK

In August 2006 Ian Young, who was working as a security guard at the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, sat next to a beautiful 32 year old young woman in the crowded Starbucks at the base of the Petronas Towers.

Little did the then 26 year old know at the time he would be sitting next to his future wife. He also didn't know at the moment she was trans. Fatine and Ian struck up a conversation and at the end of it when she got up to leave Young asked her out.

Fatine transitioned at age 17 and after revealing her trans status to him, he still took her out to a local bar. A friendship and romance was kindled that night which eventually led to her moving to the UK and marrying Young.

But Fatine's paperwork to remain in the UK with her husband met some resistance and she faced deportation to a Malaysia that is not exactly friendly to trans people thanks to increasing Islamic fundamentalist anti-trans sentiment.

The UK Home Office wanted her to go back to Malaysia and reapply for admission into the UK, and she had already had some questionable nitpicking occur with her application in addition to outright transphobia in the Kuala Lumpur office because gender code on her Malaysian passport didn't match the presentation of the person in possession of the passport.

The publicity surrounding her love story also plucked some nerves in Malaysia's Muslim community and generated death threats on her FB page. Had she been deported, as a Muslim she faced being arrested and tried under Sharia law upon her arrival, so she applied for asylum in the UK.

I'm happy to report that it was recently granted, and now Fatine can focus on living her life with the man she loves.

I love happy endings.

Malaysia's Muslim Transsexuals Battle Sex Change Woes

TransGriot Note: It's an old article, but one that will help shed some light on some of the challenges our transgender brothers and sisters face in Malaysia.


By Liau Y-Sing
Thompson Reuters
Sun Sep 2, 2007
10:44pm EDT

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - When Khartini Slamah first came out as a transsexual, he was a dutiful Muslim son by day and a prostitute by night, working on the streets of the Malaysian capital.

The option of sex change surgery was out of the question in this moderate Muslim country where Muslim transsexuals are banned from changing their gender and same sex relationships are a criminal offence.

"I tried to find a job but because of my sexuality I was turned down," said the 44-year-old former prostitute who now works as an activist and counselor to other transsexuals.

Twenty years later, sex change surgery may be routine in some countries but it's still banned by law in Malaysia -- at least for Muslims. The ruling doesn't apply to non-Muslims who make up about half of the estimated 30,000 transsexuals in Malaysia.

The ban stems from an Islamic belief that it is wrong to alter that which God has given. This belief also forbids Muslims from dressing up as the opposite sex and undergoing major cosmetic surgery other than for medical reasons.

Non-Muslims don't have the same problems, although they do sometimes have trouble registering their new gender with the state and like their Muslim counterparts, many have to work as prostitutes as there are few job opportunities for transsexuals.

Malaysia's transsexuals are in a legal limbo.

In February 2005, a Malaysian court allowed a non-Muslim male transsexual to change the gender on his identity card after he showed medical evidence of sex-change by surgery, media reports said at the time.

But later that year, the government declared as invalid the marriage of a couple in which the wife was a non-Muslim man who had undergone sex change surgery, saying it was a same-sex union.

"We are tolerant of them (transsexuals). But whether we will have laws that will protect them -- I don't think with the conservative nature of our culture -- that we will," said criminologist P. Sundramoorthy.

For Khartini, dressed in a flowing lilac tunic with his feet squeezed into stiletto heels, the conflict between sexual identity and religion is sometimes too hard to bear.

"We are all in a dilemma. We are Muslims. They say this is not allowed, but they never tell us what are the options. I felt like it's being used to oppress. But I know that religion, Islam is so flexible...," said Khartini, a practicing Muslim.

INNATE OR IMBUED?

Despite its modern exterior, Malaysia remains conservative. Capital Kuala Lumpur -- a bustling metropolis dotted by towering skyscrapers, flashy art galleries and riotous gay bars -- has a deeply religious underbelly.

U.S. singer Gwen Stefani was forced to cover up her usually revealing stage costumes when she performed recently in Kuala Lumpur after Islamic groups expressed fears she could corrupt the country's youth.

Government plans to introduce sex education in schools and to give free needles and condoms to drug addicts provoked a fierce debate, with some religious leaders saying this would promote promiscuity.

The past few decades have seen a rise in religious fervor among Muslims in Malaysia, with an increase in the popularity of Islamic banking and more women eschewing Western attire in favor of traditional Malay dress and headscarves.

Transsexuals are still social outcasts, the victims of physical abuse and verbal harassment by the public, police and religious authorities, who advocate counseling and the use of hormone injections to suppress transsexuals' inclinations.

"We very much encourage them to return to their original form," said Abdullah Md Zin, a minister for religious affairs. "We cannot accept them."

Transsexuals say their preferences are innate.

"There's something biological," said Teh Yik Koon, a criminologist and sociologist. "In my research, there are those as young as three, four years old, who don't feel as if they fit into their assigned gender role."

Few doctors perform gender realignment operations in Malaysia so those seeking the surgery must pay exorbitant prices abroad. Muslims, who make up 60 percent of Malaysia's 26 million population, risk being brought before Islamic courts, which under Malaysian law hear civil cases involving Muslims.

Islamic cleric, Mohamad Asri Zainul Abidin, one of Malaysia's most moderate Muslim leaders believes transsexuals should be fined or jailed if counseling proves ineffective at deterring them.

"We must try to reform them and give them advice. We must not allow them to stray," said the cleric. "Imagine if this world were filled with transsexuals -- what would happen to the human race?"