Interview with Mai Như Thiên Ân, the Founder of FTM Vietnam It was one of the biggest flash mobs Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) had ever seen. Five hundred LGBT people were dancing underneath an enormous rainbow flag, stretching 30 meters wide by 20 meters tall. Saigon was celebrating its first-ever LGBT Pride, VietPride, in September 2012. And one of the people dancing in the flash mob was Mai Như Thiên Ân (Ân), a transgender man who had come out. Ân had been hesitant to take part in the flash mob. He was struggling with depression, fueled by rejection by his family and at school. But his friend Nguyễn Thiện Trí Phong (a.k.a. Aki), a transgender man he’d met online, encouraged him, saying ‘if you don’t do it, who will.” The experience for Ân was life-changing. As Ân told ...
Archives for August 2019
Dating, Disclosure, and the Transgender Panic Defense
On July 31, 2019, BBC World Service aired a radio segment on dating as a transgender person. Specifically, they asked three transgender women, including myself, to share with them "how and when transgender people should reveal their identity to the person they are dating." They aired about one minute of the response I submitted to them, along with responses from the other two women. You can listen to the audio embedded below, archived from BBC's website: While it was exciting to be consulted on the topic by the BBC, I was disappointed that they did not include any of my statement where I discussed discrimination, stigma, and violence that transgender women regularly face. In particular, I discussed the “transgender panic defense,” an insidious concept that excuses violence against ...