Gender confused kids? Who's confused?
I read with concern The New Paper's front-page article on MOE's ongoing
efforts to train teachers to counsel gender-confused kids (TNP. 11 Sep 08).
My question is - do the counselling sessions aim to help the child find
his/her true gender identity or influence transgender youth to conform to
social norms?
It has long been established internationally that one's gender identity is
distinct from one's sex at birth. When the two do not match, the individual
experiences the medical condition known as "transsexualism". While I
recognise that a sex change operation is not a one-size-fits-all solution
for all transsexuals, it is certainly a "natural" and valid recourse for the
majority of transsexuals, contrary to the sentiments expressed by Professor
Tsoi. And contrary to what Ms Sarah S, a counsellor from NuLife Care and
Counselling Services says, male to female transgender children do not
necessarily behave the way they do because they lack a masculine father
figure in their lives. Has she done a nationwide survey to substantiate her
claims? Or is she commenting based on two to three individuals she has
counselled? A more important question in light of MOE's initiative - is she
one of their trained counsellors?
I myself was a victim of the lack of support in my childhood years. There
were lots of well-intentioned but misguided individuals - including a
prominent leader of the religious group mentionned in your article - who
tried to convince me that being transsexual was "wrong". This compounded my
loneliness and sense of alienation, leading to a suicide attempt in my late
teens. It was only when I fled to the United Kingdom for my studies in a
more tolerant and welcoming environment that I flourished academically and
socially.
I have remained in Singapore because I feel I still have lots to contribute
to this beautiful society of ours - a society founded on secular,
meritocratic principles and love and respect for racial and religious
diversity. I hope MOE will adopt the same open-minded, enlightened approach
when conducting its training sessions - and when selecting the service
providers.
Yours Sincerely
Leona Lo
Author, From Leonard to Leona, A Singapore Transsexual's Journey to
Womanhood
http://www.wo-manly.blogspot.com/
Response to TNP Article by Leona Lo
Friday, September 12, 2008
TODAYOnline: You are not welcome here, club tells Leona Lo (Nov 12)
Monday, November 12, 2007
You are not welcome here, club tells Leona Lo
Monday • November 12, 2007
Phin Wong
phin@mediacorp.com.sg
She has written about life as a transsexual woman and has given talks on transsexual issues. But on early Saturday morning, Ms Leona Lo was asked to leave a Clarke Quay nightspot, apparently for being a "lady boy".
Ms Lo was at The Pump Room with a Singaporean Chinese man and woman and an American Chinese man.
She said in an email to the media: "The bouncer … asked one of my friends if he knew me. My friend replied 'Yes'. Still, the bouncer … asked me to show him my ID. He said the bar did not welcome 'lady boys'."
Ms Lo told Today she refused to show him her identity card because it was unfair that she was "being singled out". Ms Lo and her friends then left the bar.
Her IC states her sex as "female".
A spokesperson for The Pump Room would neither confirm nor deny the incident yesterday, saying there was not enough time to investigate the matter.
Mr William Graham, director of the club, said: "The Pump Room has no general policy to exclude any particular groups other than the age guidelines we publish.
"We do however reserve the right to refuse entry, at our discretion, to any individuals whom we feel are not in adherence to our entry policy.
"For example, if the customer does not adhere to our dress code, is below our age guidelines, or if we feel they might create a disturbance or misbehave in the establishment based on prior experience, we might not welcome them."
According to the bar's staff, the age limit is 21 for women and 23 for men on Fridays and Saturdays, and 18 for everyone on other days. The dress code bars sandals, slippers, shorts and sleeveless shirts.
Ms Lo, 32, said she was wearing a "typical silver dress".
"I've been there before. The band has even sung 'Happy Birthday' to me," she said.
In her email, she added: "Ironically, Pump Room's anchor band is Jive Talking, which features a transgender lead singer."
Ms Lo recently launched From Leonard To Leona, a book chronicling her experience as a post-operation transsexual. She underwent sex assignment surgery in 1997 in Thailand.
Pink News, UK: Trans woman calls for greater tolerance of gender diversity in Singapore
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Trans woman calls for greater tolerance of gender diversity in Singapore
11th September 2007 16.50
by Gemma Pritchard
from Pink News, UK
A transsexual woman from Singapore has embarked on a mission to help turn around the "culture of shame" surrounding transsexuals in Singapore.
Unlike many other transsexuals in Asia who prefer to live privately because of the social stigma of sex change, British-educated Leona Lo has chosen to live a normal life, but in public.
Leona, a 32-year-old communications specialist who heads her own public relations company, told Agence France-Presse (AFP):
"Somewhere out there, not just in Singapore but throughout Asia, there are lots of young people who are suffering the way I suffered years ago."
These days, she draws on her experiences of gender identity crisis, rejection and discrimination to challenge social mores on behalf of the so-called silent community.
"It's this entire culture of shame that gets under your skin. It's not something that you can isolate and demolish because it is so much a part of our culture," she says.
While a few transsexuals are gaining prominence in Asia, notably China's Jin Xing, most continue to live in silence.
In May,a 32-year-old South Korean transsexual entertainer (Harisu), whose sex alteration led the country to change its family registry laws, married
her rapper boyfriend.
Parinya "Nong Toom" Charoenphol' s rags-to-riches story was made into a movie, Beautiful Boxer.
Former Chinese People's Liberation Army colonel and now woman Jin Xing is a prize-winning dancer and choreographer.
Discrimination is the biggest challenge faced by transsexuals, Leona says, recalling repeated rejection by prospective employers in Singapore despite her academic credentials.
"Singapore may be a cosmopolitan city, but many things are still swept under the carpet,"
No reliable figures on the number of transsexual men and women in Singapore, or the region, are available, mainly because those who feel they have been born in the wrong body prefer to endure their situation in silence rather than embarrass their families, Leona told AFP.
"It's because a lot of transsexual women face discrimination at work and experience failure of relationships that a lot end up in suicide, depression. They end up on the streets as prostitutes," she says.
This is why she has taken time away from her thriving public relations consultancy promoting beauty products to wage her campaign.
After much persuasion, one local university allowed her to speak to an audience of students but she is finding to find a way share her thoughts with the corporate world.
On September 14 she is to launch her autobiography, From Leonard to Leona: A Singapore Transsexual's Journey to Womanhood.
From Singapore, Leona plans to travel across Asia to bring her message for greater tolerance of gender diversity.
Leona says the association of transsexuals with prostitution in Singapore harks back to the 1960s when there was a flourishing culture of drag queens, including some transsexuals, on Singapore's Bugis Street.
As Singapore transformed rapidly into a modern Asian business centre, the government cracked down on Bugis Street. Transsexuals were lumped together with homosexuals, transvestites and prostitutes.
It was in this environment that Leona grew up.
"I did not think I was gay. I just felt that I was a woman trapped in a man's body," says Leona, who has a younger sister.
At age 15, Leonard discovered a book about transsexualism, which sowed the seeds of her eventual decision to undergo a sex-change operation in 1997.
"I discovered that book in the library and I said 'Oh my God! There are actually people like me!" she reminisces.
"That changed my life and I discovered that I could go for the sex change operation."
As an able-bodied man at the time, Leona entered Singapore's compulsory two-year military service at around 19.
Pressures of being forced to be "macho" during the training led to a nervous breakdown and drove her to attempt suicide by drug overdose, she says.
In 1996 Leona went to study in Britain, where a more tolerant university environment allowed her to cross-dress for a year as part of her preparation for sex-change surgery.
In 1997, she checked in to a Bangkok surgery for the operation.
"I was afraid. I could go in and I could die. But I knew at that point that I was going to change my life forever," she recalls.
"I had carried that burden within me for so long and I couldn't live anymore without doing it."
Leona endured a lot of pain during the procedure, which took 14 days, but the feeling of having a new identity was "wonderful, euphoric!" she told AFP.
She warns other transsexuals who might be considering sex change surgery that getting a new identity "is not a magic wand" and they will have to live under a culture of shame and discrimination.
Family support is crucial. Her mother was the first person she told after the operation, and her father had already learned to accept her for who she is. "By that time, they had already decided that they would rather have me as a woman than lose me as a child," she says.
She hopes now to become a wife and mother.
"I look forward to a fulfilling relationship with a loving man, getting married and adopting three children.
"I've also reached a critical juncture where I'm more self-assured and finally able to lay to rest the painful aspects of my past and move confidently as a woman."
TNP: Poser of 'Third Gender' (Jul 30)
Monday, July 30, 2007
Poser of 'Third Gender'
ACCEPTING ME AS PERSON= OPENING UNACCEPTABLE GATE?
S'porean transsexual mulls over tough question FOR years, Ms Leono Lo knew it was not going to be easy. Asking to be accepted on a personal and human level is in sync with
| By Ng Wan Ching |
30 July 2007
FOR years, Ms Leono Lo knew it was not going to be easy. Asking to be accepted on a personal and human level is in sync with
The gay debate might have had some airing but what about the Third Gender? Transsexuals cause discomfort because they challenge conventional notions of male and female bodies.
Part man and part woman.
Fear of the unfamiliar spawns fear of such fringe groups and their lifestyles multiplying. Will it destabilise the traditional structure of family here?
Ms Leono Lo is aware of social prejudices and has no antidote to offer.
So she's doing the only thing she can think of - opening up and telling her story so others might see her as a human being.
Ms Lo had known something was different about her since she was 12years old and went by the name Leonard.
She knew she was not a homosexual.
But what was she then?
At 15, she chanced upon a book at the Jurong East Community Library called Cries From Within, co-written by the late Professor SSRatnam who performed
Said Ms Lo, 32: 'Every word in that book made sense to me. Finally, I had the words to describe how I felt. I read it from start to finish in one sitting.'
Today, she has not only written a book chronicling the stories of 13 transsexuals, My Sisters, Their Stories, but also her autobiography.
HER JOURNEY
The book, From Leonard To Leona, details incidents which marked her journey from manhood to womanhood.
It is published by Select Books and will be out in the first week of September.
She started giving talks this year to help others understand.
'I do this so others may feel that they can live openly too,' MsLo said in an interview with The New Paper on Sunday.
She strikes you as just another woman, from the top of her coiffed head to her slinky outfits, attitude, outlook and slingback heels.
Her life took a turn at 21, while at university in the
Her parents had no idea that she was going to have the operation.
Said Ms Lo: 'I was born a woman in a man's body. I only realised something was not right when I discovered I liked boys. But not as a gay man. I liked boys and I wanted them to like me as a woman.'
The realisation of her situation drove her to a desperate suicide attempt when she was serving national service. It was only then that her parents found out.
As an only son, she found that the situation was particularly difficult, and for her parents as well.
They hired an exorcist and monks. She was made to drink 'holy' ashes and pray at the temple.
'It took them two years to accept me for who I am. Now, my mother and I have a normal mother-daughter relationship where we discuss lipsticks and such,' she said.
During national service, the army downgraded her to a clerical position.
But she still had to serve out the 21/2years.
'It was difficult. It helped that I had a boyfriend who was very understanding. We had an innocent relationship - no sex, just holding hands and being together,' she said.
They later separated amicably.
PARENTS' SUPPORT
After finishing her studies in Catholic High and
'My parents supported me,' she said.
But in her first year in the
'I had researched the subject, spoken to the doctor and decided I had to get it done,' she said.
She used the tuition money that her parents had sent her for the air ticket and surgery fees.
'My parents were upset, of course, when they found out. But, ultimately, they forgave me and topped up my tuition money,' said MsLo.
When she flew back to the
Then she wanted to change her passport to reflect her new gender status.
'But when I went to the Singapore High Commission to do that, they told me it could not be done without changing my identity card first,' she said.
She had to wait until she next returned to
She does not hide her status from anyone, including the men she dates.
Her employers were wonderful.
Ms Lo started work at the Health Promotion Board (HPB).
Then she joined Hill and Knowlton.
When they promoted her, she decided it was time to quit and start her own business.
'I wanted to be able to speak freely as a transsexual and didn't want that to conflict with my work or compromise my employers,' she said.
That was about three years ago. Today, her public relations company, Talk Sense, which concentrates on healthcare communications, has grown and she is looking to hire people.
Among her clients are HPB and Bayer Schering, a pharmaceutical company.
Apart from her books, MsLo also started a series of talks this year.
Titled 'Dare to be me - breaking free of the culture of shame. A
She has given the talk twice, once at a friend's art gallery and another time to sociology students at the
RAISING AWARENESS
She also plans to conduct the talk at various
These talks will be conducted for free monthly.
She said: 'Compared to others in the region, transsexual women here are considered lucky in that we are granted legal recognition in our new gender.
'However, this is only the beginning of a journey that is fraught with difficulties because of the 'culture of shame' that still prevents many of us from moving ahead in life and fulfilling our dreams and ambitions.'
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