We’re sure that most of you have seen an article detailing a robbery that had happened in Johor concerning a trans teen.
She is a 17-year-old trans woman and had been robbed by a man that she had met on MiChat. Now the problem is that in the original Facebook post of the article, about 6,600 people have reacted to it and the breakdown of the reactions are as follow:
2,300 people found it funny that a trans woman was robbed and beaten up while 22 other people loved that news. Other than that, people also started sharing the teen’s picture and crafted a story where she was kidnapped and raped (the police have denied this).
The comments section was filled with people saying that she should have “manned up” and some of them said that she deserved it just because she’s a transgender.
To gain more insight and to educate ourselves on this issue, we have contacted Gisele Rimong, a trans activist.
Gisele told us that when she saw the news piece, she and the other trans people were very sad because of how the people reacted.
“The teen in the incident is the victim. There are some people out there who say that she deserves it because she is a trans woman.”
“But what she deserves is sympathy from the people because she is also human and she just got robbed.”
She mentioned that people should look at this incident from a human’s perspective and not from a religious perspective.
Gisele also brought up that media portrayal and reality is different. She notes that media portrayal of the trans people is always one-sided and many people will be voicing out their dissatisfaction about their community. But when they meet a trans person in real life, they are mostly polite and tolerant.
“Instead of blindly hating on trans people just for the sake of it, try to listen to their story too.”
The activist has said that all they want is to be treated like humans and not discriminated against just because they are different from other people.
“We just want the same rights as everyone else, education, housing, jobs, etc.”
She would like to remind everyone that just because one trans person did a bad thing, it doesn’t mean that all of them should be branded the same way; that will be really unfair. She ended the interview by saying,
“We hope for a better future, a more equal Malaysia.”
Also read: Cyberbullying is A Huge Problem in M’sia As We’re Top 10 in The World For Cyberbullying Reports
