'It's a fraught experience just going out in public': The everyday toll of transphobia

Professor Nicole Asquith, a criminologist from the University of Tasmania, told SBS Examines that now transgender people have greater visibility in public spaces, they're also more likely to experience hate crimes. Image credit: Getty Images/SBS

SBS Examines

View Podcast Series

Follow and Subscribe

Download the SBS Audio appAvailable on iOS and Android

Transgender people represent a small minority in our population, and while their visibility has increased, they've been the focus of charged legislative debates and online hate.

Dr Clara Tuck Meng Soo, a GP based in Canberra, said many transgender people from migrant backgrounds face intolerance from their families, who may believe transgender identity is a Western invention.

“If you talk to most transgender people themselves, they would actually say that being transgender is actually a part of their innate identity,” she said.

“Growing up in Australia has actually given them the opportunity to actually explore and affirm their identity ... it's got nothing to do with being Westernised or actually rejecting their culture of origin.”

It's a belief that Kim, a transgender man from Malaysia, is familiar with.

“A lot of the narratives that I've been told when I was coming out is that being transgender is such a Western thing,” he told SBS Examines.

“But throughout time we have existed, throughout all parts of Asian culture. Whether in India, whether we have the hijra in Indonesia, we have our brother boys and sister girls, all the way down to our Faʻafāfine, as well as in Māori culture in New Zealand."

We exist everywhere. It's just not called transgender, but we're here.

This episode of Understanding Hate looks at the impacts of transphobia in Australia.

Transcript

spk_0

SBS acknowledges the Traditional Owners of Country throughout Australia.

Nic

From SBS Examines, I’m Nic Zoumboulis. In this episode of Understanding Hate, we’re looking at the impacts of transphobia. It’s a form of prejudice towards people whose gender identity doesn't correspond with the sex registered for them at birth.

Nicole Asquith

Trans and gender diverse people, as soon as they open their front door, need to be negotiating other people's attitudes, perceptions of them. And so, it is a fraught experience just going out in public.

Nic

That’s Professor Nicole Asquith, a criminologist from the University of Tasmania.

Nicole Asquith

The staring and glaring and the looks that people give you when you don't quite fit gender expectations, there is a lot of what we call hate incidents, verbal abuse, those sorts of things. Things that do not rise to the level of the criminal law.

Nic

Professor Asquith says now that transgender people have greater visibility in public spaces, they're also more likely to experience hate crimes.

Nicole Asquith

There has been a significant increase in online hate, which is now transferring into that in-person hate as well.

Nic

In January this year, the Queensland Government imposed a ban on prescribing puberty blockers and gender-affirming hormones to new trans patients under 18 in the public healthcare system.

Eloise Brook

I often hear that said, 'let children be children'. But the profound toll that would take upon young people who would have to effectively go back into the closet means it's no solution at all.

Nic

That’s Dr Eloise Brook. She’s the CEO at the Australian Professional Association for Trans Health. She says there's a lot of harmful misinformation around medical care for transgender people.

Eloise Brook

If you've got a young person who's accessing gender affirming care, the law requires that a parent is involved. There's no clinic out there that is going to give a script to a 12-year-old, and then that 12-year-old is going to go off to the chemist. It's easy to conjure up these ideas about what's really going on, but when you actually look into it, it's a fantasy.

Nic

Someone who has dealt with this misinformation on the ground is Dr Clara Tuck Meng Soo, a GP based in Canberra.

Clara Tuck Meng Soo

There are parents out there who say things like, I think my child's transgender, because they're being influenced by that. I think that's a complete myth, firstly, I don't think there's any evidence to suggest that having transgender friends creates a certain gender identity. Gender identity is so innate, children who are three or four know what gender they are.

Nic

Clara says for a lot of transgender people from migrant backgrounds, they face intolerance from their families, who might not believe it’s possible to be transgender.

Clara Tuck Meng Soo

If you talk to most transgender people themselves, they would actually say that being transgender is actually a part of their innate identity. And growing up in Australia has actually given them the opportunity to actually explore and affirm their identity and that it's got nothing to do with being Westernised or actually rejecting their culture of origin.

Nic

It's a story that Kim, a transgender man from Malaysia, is familiar with.

Kim

A lot of the narratives that I've been told when I was coming out is that being transgender is such a Western thing. But throughout time, we have existed throughout all parts of Asian culture, whether in India, whether we have the hijra in Indonesia, we have our brother boys and sister girls, all the way down to our Faʻafāfine, as well as in Māori culture in New Zealand. We exist everywhere. It's just not called transgender, but we're here.

Nic

Kim said it can be exhausting navigating who to trust within day-to-day interactions.

Kim

Transphobia unfortunately is really used to distract from the bigger systemic issues that are happening not just in our country, but around the world. We are a minority, but a lot of the heat and a lot of the hate and the vindictiveness, it's easier to push down onto a community where people think that because we're a minority, we can't really fight back.

Nic

Dr Eloise Brook says while there’s a good baseline of acceptance for transgender people in Australia, she's concerned about the influence of hatred coming from overseas.

Eloise Brook

So much of the voices that we're hearing from overseas are really regressive. For instance, in the recent Paris Olympics, there were no trans people involved. And yet there was an almost constant and savage attack against some women who were accused of being trans and whose lives were turned upside down even though they were women who aren't trans. So even if you start policing trans people and there are no more trans people to police, and they disappear, the same policing moves onto the next target, which is women who don't conform to the expectation of what a woman should be.

Nic

For Kim, he wants others to remember that trans people are more than just their gender identity.

Kim

We're not just transgender people. We're also parents. We're also people who love cooking and gardening. We also love spending time with friends, going to parties, going for picnics. We are people, we have beautiful stories, we have beautiful backgrounds, and we just want to live our lives and go about our day.

Nic

This episode was produced and presented by Nic Zoumboulis. To find out more, visit sbs.com.au/sbsexamines

END OF TRANSCRIPT