By Ahmed Wafi
Over the holidays, I managed to meet someone whom I befriended on social media. She was different from most people I’ve ever met because she was previously a he.
I have previously made other attempts to meet her but for one reason or another we could not agree a date until that sunny Friday. As I walked into the coffee shop I immediately noticed her fashion sense and haircut was the most distinctive.
She was scrolling through her phone with her hair tied into a bun, coloured in nails and glasses resting above her forehead. I greeted her, shook her hand and took my seat across from her.
“Sorry I’m late, have you been here long?” I asked.
“Ummmm, maybe about ten minutes.” She replied while clicking away on her iPhone.
My new friend chose to maintain her anonymity and will only be referred to as Kim.
This is Kim’s story.
She was enjoying her coffee while I was busy gathering my notepad and pen from my disorganised bag. This was the first time she would be interviewed about being a transgender and I was ever so grateful.
“How’s work?” I asked.
She seemed to take a second to think about the question before answering.
“Alhamdulillah,” she said with a smile, “it’s been going fine.”
Her praise of Allah made me think that this woman who was previously a man sits before me and she believes in Allah the Almighty. She believes in His oneness and she thanks Him for her life. She is a Muslim and a human being just like you and me and like you and I, she has her sins and her own problems to worry about.
This is not merely Kim’s story, this is also a story of growing up and problems people who have a different set of problems compared to most of us.
Kim is a 26-year-old aspiring fashion designer hailing from Taiping, Perak. She resides in Kuala Lumpur, currently staying with a few friends in a rented house. She is the seventh from eight siblings and is a graduate from a renowned local public university. Her housemates are mostly gay men so there isn’t a lack of variety in the household.
Unlike other transgender women, Kim did not take the initiative to perform an operation but rather she opted to consume hormone pills. These pills are designed to make one’s skin visibly softer, closely resembling that to the skin of a woman, stops the growth of the hairs that come natural to men and dysfunctions the male genital.
She began consuming these pills at the age of sixteen and continued for two years but after she achieved the desired results and due to health constraints, she stopped consuming them.
“I’ve been this way for all my life, as long as I can remember.” Kim recalled while scratching her head before taking another sip of coffee.
“Even as a child I was always following my sister, playing with barbie dolls and what not, I never ever played with robots and such,” she added.
Her early childhood was an interesting one. She was a mama’s boy in her early childhood and could not stand being away from her for long periods of time. Kim was active in many tahfiz competitions and even attended a tahfiz school but for only two weeks. She missed her mother too much to continue schooling there.
What’s interesting is that one of her elder siblings also made the transition from man to woman. Her elder brother (now sister)’s life is as different to day and night when compared to Kim’s.
Kim is a fashion designer operating her own business, she still has strong ties with her family back in Taiping and visits them on a regular basis while her elder sibling left her family on slightly more hostile terms and now works as an escort.
Her mother has accepted the fact that her son is now her daughter but advises Kim to not be disrespectful to the kampong culture whenever she goes back to Taiping. When she returns home, she does not colour her nails nor wear much makeup and even dresses slightly more masculine.
“I’ve been given a lot of advice throughout my life and the only thing I can do is accept the advice,” she asserted.
“But the one thing I dislike is that when people begin to talk about me to my mum because this makes my mum feel bad about herself and there’s nothing I can do about it,” she added.
Obviously, Kim has a tremendous amount of respect, appreciation and love for her mother and rightfully so. She seems to acknowledge the troubles her mum had to face raising a son who made the transition to become a daughter. This amount of respect seems to lack in many of today’s children.
When she’s back in the city, she enjoys clubbing when she’s off from work. Her mum knows of this and even advises her about it from time to time and being the mama’s boy (now girl) that she is she will listen. Kim may be guilty of many things but durhaka is not in the list.
Her choices has also affected her relationship with her other family members including one of her brothers who she no longer speaks to. “My brother is an Islamic Education school teacher but we no longer speak that much anymore for one reason or another but I don’t think it’s because of me being transgender.”
“We stopped speaking to each other shortly after he got married,” she shrugged but the topic of family did not seem to bother her.
I managed to find the courage to question Kim’s decision to become who she is today to which she replied “deep down I know it’s wrong but this is who I am and I don’t think I can change that.”
“I have friends who are transgender like me but they perform their five daily prayers in congregation whenever they can.”
This really makes one think about their choice of life and the sin they commit and whether or not if it is similar to the sins that most people commit on a daily basis.
“Not many people actually tell me that what I do is wrong, the only person that really does is my mum.”
She acknowledged that the LGBT community is wrong in the Islamic perspective but in her own words, it’s who she is. In her workplace and when she’s out in public she does not receive much discrimination or hate except for the occasional cat calling.
When asked about her relationship status, she says that she has been single for two years and claims that it’s hard to get into a serious relationships because of her gender but says that one night stands come easy. She was previously in a serious relationship with a man she met when on holiday in Australia a few years back but that did not last.
“Do you ever think you want to be a boy again?” I was oozing with curiosity.
“I was never a boy,” she said with a smirk. This led to me releasing a giggle.
“I have thoughts to change but at the moment those are just thoughts,” suggested the 26-year-old.
It had been an eventful encounter that managed to stir up some thoughts and this had slightly changed my views about the transgender community in Malaysia.
There is no doubt that being transgender is wrong, even Kim herself admitted that what she’s doing is wrong. But where do we go from here? Are they supposed to revert to their original gender or is damage control the way to go? ***