Regina Ibrahim is a transgender person on a mission to tell the world to stop trying to change her, or those in her community.

“Like it or not, transgenders exist. It’s terrible denying us our rights. Trying to ‘cure’ our sexuality is a waste of precious time.”

To Regina, the Transgender Day of Remembrance, commemorated annually on Nov 20 since 1999, is a day to remind people not to waste time trying to change the gender of transgender people.

“There is no magic formula to cure our so-called sexual dysphoria (gender identity disorder), so deal with it like a human, please,” she told Malaysiakini in an interview.

For others, today is a day to remember the 271 people who were murdered this year by anti-transgender people.

Regina ( photo ) is the author of ‘Perjalanan’ and ‘Mak Nyah’, both written in the Malay language and published by independent publisher Fixi.

Her latest book ‘Mak Nyah’ is an anthology of 27 short stories, about lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people (LGBT) and straight men and women, which will be launched during the George Town Literary Festival at the end of this month.

A former teacher who hails from Bukit Mertajam, Penang, Regina said all parents should equip themselves with the knowledge and understanding of the transgender community.

“At least their trans-sons or trans-daughters can be better persons, if not a perfect cisgender (a person who is not transgender).

“A better person means a person who is responsible, who can contribute to their community and to society, regardless of their sexuality,” Regina explained.

She is not happy with the way the media portrays transgender people, saying that news people need to address issues related to the community, without being biased.

No choice

The media is often biased about what is right or wrong in terms of sexuality, in spite of the lobbying efforts of NGOs to help the public understand the transgender community.

Regina singled out the Malay language newspapers as being rather biased in their portrayal of transgender people.

“I am not promoting or boasting about how glorious it is to be a transgender but we have no choice. We want to lead meaningful lives,” she said.

Regina believes that training people to tolerate one another is necessary as many cisgender people are also not perfect.

“They are blind at heart ( cacat hati ) and often judge others blindly.”

She is using the remembrance day as a platform to empower her community; it will be a solid base for the “perfect” public to gain an understanding of the world of transgender people.

“We want equal rights, not special rights,” she said as she went on to lament that state policies for transgender people are lacking.

It would be great development, Regina said, if the Transgender Committee headed by DAP Tanjung Bungah assemblyperson Teh Yee Cheu in Penang gets to move with its work, for this would help ensure her community to be more free from violence and discrimination.

Religious interference

Freelance writer Yuki Choe would ( picture ) like to see the transgender community look beyond their own comfort zones and to move on like the cisgender persons around them.

To Choe, the situation for transgender people is not that bad in Malaysia, and she wonders why Human Rights Watch (HRW) has declared Malaysia unsafe for the community.

She was referring to HRW’s 73-page report , “I’m Scared to Be a Woman: Human Rights Abuses against Transgender People in Malaysia,” released last year, which documents government abuses against transgender people in Malaysia.

Choe said Malaysia has not come to the situation where transgender people are murdered, or die in very “brutal and inhumane” circumstances.

“I really hope it will never ever come to this situation here,” said the 39- year-old.

Having followed many deaths of transgender people worldwide for years, Choe notices a similar pattern: most of these deaths take place in “religious fundamentalist” societies.

She described “the increasing shift to Islamic radicalisation” in Malaysia as a worrying factor for the future of the transgender community.

One example of this is the Federal Court ruling that Section 66 of the Negeri Sembilan Syariah Offences Enactment, which bars cross-dressing of males as females, is legal.

And in spite of notable studies and research done about the community, Choe lamented there is too much religious interference in the lives of transgender people.

Matters are blown out of proportion, she said, by religious zealots getting paranoid and imposing their morality on transgender people.

“This is something that needs to be addressed, and changed soon,” she noted.

Choe hopes to see ignorance in the guise of religion out of the way soon so that there would be much more opportunities for transgender people to participate in society and contribute to the betterment of this country.

“We are all talented,” she said, adding, "More than just memories and remembrances of transgenders, what is more important is the visibility of those still struggling on this earth."