The LGBT community exists. It’s a global movement and Singapore has its share of people who identify with it. I personally have no issues with the LGBT…If that’s their orientation, who the hell am I to say it’s wrong? Transgender, gay…everybody’s human at the end of the day.
Still, it’s not easy being transgender.
I’m not, but I’ve read about their plight online and always felt that people should just mind their own damn business. So what if a person’s transgender? If he/she is a law abiding, positively contributing member of society what’s the big deal?
Apparently, MOE doesn’t think that way.
A transgender former student in one of Singapore’s JC has taken to Reddit to air out her grievances, stating that MOE has gone out of their way to make her school life a living hell.
In a thread that’s blown up on Reddit, the anonymous Redditor goes on to describe her journey of just trying to study normally, but gets shafted at every turn by MOE.
Here’s the lowdown, if you don’t want to read the whole post.
The Redditor in question is transgender, male to female. Having gone to specialists at IMH, she’s diagnosed with Gender Dysphoria by the folks at MOH.
She was diagnosed while she was in JC, and thus, through her JC informed MOE of her condition. MOE’s initially response was one of support and assurance. They apparently told her they were willing to work with her to accommodate her condition.
Apparently, that didn’t go so well.
Just as she was about to undergo hormone therapy, MOE stepped in and said nope.
According to the girl, MOE’s reasoning was that since she’s in an MOE school, they get to dictate what she can do and what treatments she can take. Holy shit!
During all this, she also had to conform to new rules that forced her to adopt a male’s haircut and wear the male school uniform, despite identifying as female. Even worse, if she does the hormone therapy, and couldn’t fit into a male uniform because of it, she’d be expelled.
MOE is of course denying the whole thing…as expected. In fact, their original Facebook post initially didn’t even acknowledge the girl’s preferred noun, being referred to as he/him.
Just take a look at the comments calling MOE out on that and you’ll see that they clearly went back and edited their statement…
Just a look at how other Singaporeans have been slamming the MOE on Facebook.
Reading the comments in the Reddit post, it seems like this isn’t the first time that MOE’s taken this route to deal with students that are ‘disruptive’.
It’s sad that issues like this don’t get a lot of attention. Singapore claims to want to be an all-inclusive society, yet we still have archaic thoughts about gender identity.
Well…at least those in power at MOE are.
Most Netizens are more woke, with a ton of support coming in for the girl.
Of course, there are also people who think that MOE’s in the right.
Then of course…there are the clowns.
It. Transformer. Great choice of words.
Sift through the comments though and you do find gems like this one by Monisha Raha Jawahar.
Monisha brings up a really valid point regarding the law.
It’s high time that we wake up as a society. We need to accept the damn fact that it’s a whole new world out there. We need to reassess our way of thinking and adapt. At the very least, we should open our minds to be more accepting.
Hopefully, the MP the girl reaches out to can help.
Fingers crossed.