New laws needed to protect rights of all Hong Kong's transsexuals
Sam Winter calls for new laws to address the rights of transsexuals, not only regarding marriage, but in recognising their gender without the requirement of drastic surgery
Sally is a young Hong Kong Chinese woman. She is bright, attractive, likeable - and transsexual. Born with a male anatomy, she has been identifying as female for as long as she can remember. She is gender dysphoric - deeply unhappy about being regarded by others as male, and about having a male body. Puberty was a really difficult time for her. She remembers trying to pray away the changes she saw daily in the mirror.
Sally has taken hormones for some years. She looks no different from other attractive young Chinese women. You would not know she is transsexual. Poor in general health, she has not undergone the invasive genital surgery that "W" famously underwent. She is, as we say, "pre-op'"
It is not surgery that all transsexual women can undergo. Some are afraid...some for medical reasons
Rejected for years by family and friends on the grounds of her transsexualism, unable to get a job because of a male ID card that leaves her open to whatever prejudices are out there, she recently slipped into a deep depression about her situation, attempting suicide twice in one week.
First hospitalised for emergency treatment, Sally was later committed into a local mental health institution; to a male ward, on the grounds that she had a male ID card. She spent several weeks there, surrounded by male inmates and male staff, until her discharge. She was deeply distressed and the experience has scarred her further. The bright light in Sally's life is her loving boyfriend. She would like to marry him. But that male ID card means she won't be able to.
When Ina was born, her mother was proud to have a son. But Ina grew up identifying as a girl. As a child, she would play with girls' toys, play girls' games, and dress in whatever female clothes she could get hold of. She hated being treated as a boy. Today a young transsexual woman, Ina would very much like to have surgery (breasts and genitals), but she has not so far had the chance. Ina's documentation shows her to be male. She can't get a job, and has no one to turn to. She does street sex work to survive. Recently, she was arrested for soliciting. She was prosecuted and sentenced to time in prison.
Correctional Services Department policy is that she is male. So there she is, a timid and anxious individual, female-identified but surrounded by male convicts. And, despite a compassionate magistrate's recommendation, hormone treatment is being withheld.
Julie is a 41-year-old transsexual woman, born in China, who came to Hong Kong around her first birthday. Experiencing gender dysphoria even in early childhood, and bullied in school on account of her feminine behaviour, she tried to repress her feelings for many years, hoping in vain that they would go away.