Longing For Acceptance, I Turned Toward Home
I went back to Malaysia whilst in transition, unsure if I would be welcome
The decision to medicalize my transition was enthralling but afflicted with sadness. As I swallowed the blue pill and slapped a patch onto my body for the first time, I knew my relationship with London, where I live, would be secure. I couldn’t say the same for my home, Malaysia.
In Malaysia, there are state-mandated religious conversion camps, a fatwa on gender reassignment surgery, and a clampdown against LGBT rights by a government that, despite its harsh regime, opponents still see as too lenient. When I told my loving and supportive Malaysian Chinese mother about my transition, she cried at the thought that I feared returning home. I cried too. Warm Christmas mornings, the counterintuitive delight of eating spicy food in thick Malaysian humidity, hearing distant thunder cracking the skies open with tropical rain. I worried these markers of my childhood, important pages in the story of my becoming, would fall away as I began to embrace my identity.
In Malaysia, there are state-mandated religious conversion camps, a fatwa on gender reassignment surgery, and a clampdown against LGBT rights by a…
