By nakedwriter
A religious leader prays for ill-fate to befall our prime minister. Our indigenous women are sexually abused and the police tries to tell us it is not really a huge deal. The opposition leader is being tried for having anal sex. Where does all of this leave us? What should we, young Malaysians abroad, make of this?
If anything, Malaysia is proving to be a working model of heteropatriarchy, a hegemony of interlinked systems that seek to marginalize minority religion and groups, women, deviant sexualities, and poverty. Recalling the utopic vision of 1Malaysia, so begins the state machinery that erases all differences and particularities. 1view shall prevail - the view that our schools and educational programs are not really tools for brainwashing but tools for building nationalism. 1religion shall dominate - all those other idolizing polytheists can burn in hell, and as for the Christians, we shall ban their access to God. 1power is right - Barisan Nasional preaches pure truth and is the only party able to lead our country out of the shit it's stepping on. 1heteropatriarchy - Mak Nyahs, Malay gay men, tomboy lesbians, and Sisters in Islam will burn in the barzakh for their deviant proclivities. 1class - the ruling rich elite that irritate each other with threats of democratic elections as education levels plummet...
1Malaysia, 1religion, 1race, 1history, 1gender, 1sexuality. All others who deviate from the prescribed norm of being a member of Bangsa Malaysia will be persecuted through non-egalitarian economic policies, stifled political activism, and just plain outright discrimination based on your gender, race, class, and sexuality. You don't have to look far and wide for examples: Penan women, Indian Hindus who want out of Islam, the poor villagers of Kg. Buah Pala, the raids on sex workers and gay bars, and Anwar's alleged anal sex.
And all this within the year 2009 alone. What am I returning to?
By nakedwriter
In my country, our bodies are beaten and bounded by the government. They throw gas canisters at us when we fulfill our constitutional rights to assemble freely. They raid night clubs frequented by queers trying to create heterotopias, or spaces for self-expression. And they tell us, in school, in the workplace, on the street, what not to wear, how not to act. In my country, my body is not mine alone.
These underlying notions of curtailed sexuality, religious devotion, democratic exercise, fair representation, and artistic expression haunt an article on "homosexuality" published in Kosmo! today. Zaril, the gay-identified man interviewed in the article, tells us how the "restrictions of religion and culture in Malaysia makes it different from the other countries that openly accept gay communities" ("Disebabkan kekangan agama dan budaya, Malaysia menurut Zaril, tidak seperti sesetengah negara lain yang menerima golongan gay secara terbuka.").
Kosmo! has not been having a good reputation among the progressive folk of Malaysia. Recalling their recent exposé on our late Yasmin Ahmad, we look at Kosmo!'s front page headlines with skeptical hesitance. Indeed, the first few paragraphs of the same article belie their biased journalism: "Listening to him speaks seems to validate [homosexual] relationships that clearly defy the laws of nature and religion" (Kedengaran seperti dia menghalalkan hubungan sejenis yang terang-terangan melanggar hukum alam dan agama itu.). But amidst the ownership of their bias, I appreciate the sincerity in which they try to present Zaril's view on things. The journalist who starts out with a warning, a dis-ownership of condoning homosexual relationships, suddenly retreats behind Zaril's voice so that his views and experiences come to the fore of the article.
It is with Zaril's honest uncertainty of the future that the article ends with, echoing perhaps the uncertain future of marginalized minorities in Malaysia. "We ourselves don't know until when we will keep on becoming gay. Maybe until we don't like men, anymore," he concludes. (“Kami sendiri pun tak tahu sampai bila kami akan jadi gay. Mungkin sampai kami dah tak minat pada lelaki,” akhirinya.) Reading this article, surprisingly, did not make me raise my fist in revolutionary anger. I note the honesty on both Kosmo! and Zaril's part. After a disclaimer at the beginning, the journalist leaves Zaril all the room to tell us his story, the story of the Malay gay male and the story of a growing rhetoric around LGBTQ rights in Malaysia (which I will try to examine next time). In both their honest uncertainties, Kosmo! and Zaril leave us thinking less about whether homosexuality is something Malaysia can or cannot accept, and more about the opening space for that discussion to take place.
By nakedwriter
No, this has nothing to do with biology. Nor is it concerned with whatever you own beneath the drag you're wearing. On the contrary, it is about unashamed nakedness - the type that bodies are praised for having before the fall. It is about owning up, undressing, revealing and embracing all that is there, skin, and flesh, warts and scars and cellulite.
I want to be stripped and to strip our Gods and Menteri's and Teachers and Elders who tell us what they told us. It shouldn't be a quick yank in the spotlight of an auditorium, but a shedding of cloth piece by piece, like unpeeling a yummy ketupat of nasi impit to eat with rendang. A short reading and viewing of works on gender non-conformity in Malaysia is my starting point. Pecah Lobang, Bukak Api, Mak Nyah (Teh Yik Koon), and other feminist/queer writings by Tan Beng Hui. I want to undress them, turn over their words, peer into the pits, and run through the streets to uncover, dis-cover, and re-cover what is lost and what is gained in the expression of their present forms, writing and film.
Where does my gender queer faggotry stand in all of this? Between Islam and Barisan Nasional, between Pakatan Rakyat and bangsa Cina, between Kuala Lumpur and Mak Nyah, between AIDS and gay-bar raids, between Utusan's fucked up journalism and First Troop Kajang, between Amerika Syarikat and Malaysia?
Let us begin!
By nakedwriter
It's funny how several posts ago, I wrote about the experiences of transmen captured in photographs, and someone asked if I was transitioning. I wasn't then, but I do feel some part of me transitioning now towards a more queered space in the gender binary.
Also, I have decided to come out by writing a complain letter to the national English daily back home. Wish me luck!
Re: Reporting of trans-issues in the Star
Dear Editor,
I read with enthusiasm and appreciation several articles featured in Star Mag on October 4th regarding the transgender identity, what it means, how we should respect the gender pronouns people choose to live with, and bringing an awareness to your readership about gender-based hate crimes and discrimination perpetuated by members of our society, the police force, and insensitive comments made in the mainstream media.
However, it is disheartening to see the Star fall back on its awareness by publishing a news article on October 7, entitled "Transvestite: A straight life from now for me" which used disrespectful gender pronouns.
Nonetheless, I want to congratulate your effort and commitment to making sure that your news and features do not fetishize us trans-folk. I also recognize that your news reports have ceased to use derogatory language to describe us. I hope to see this continue and improve as we move into a society that is more accepting of gender non-conforming individuals like ourselves.
Best wishes,
......
By nakedwriter
I hobble back to my room
under the stars watching
as they always do
when I walk alone
back back back to my room.
I hobble back to my room
world turning around me
as I leave into the night
turning away once
and for all
in the clear crisp night
laughs and goodnights
echoing back and forth
i hobble hobble
and found the final lines
of a chapter lying
in the night
two souls sweep
but they sweep
alone in their own
night time
their own dreams
and quiet echoes
two souls weep
because i hobble
back one last time
and never return
to that night.
By nakedwriter
closed eyes silent in prayer
a gentle smiles curves
up to the two
bronze tumescence that
sit between dangling
vines that, when you swing
them drowsily along with
your tail, you call on the
spirits of the willow tree,
large, sturdy, and old,
yet you could not see me
your eyes were closed
your prayers silenced.
an ugly boot hits your head
and stays there against
the bark of your cranium
a shoe caked with
mud and prejudice lands
itself on your branching
snout
then comes two
three more ugly men's
shoes - the bulky, dirty,
darker than the brown
type of your skin, more
bulbous than your roots,
more violent than your size.
they've guillotined your head
and your eyes pained
in silenced prayer
tells me a sorry story
about your tail, swinging
like a willow vine in the wind
waving whispers to the flies
which you gently whisk away
before those religious men
came
with their parangs and banners
came
and decapitated head between them
came
shouting
scarring scaring
away those Hindus
who planned to plant
a willow tree of worship
inhabited by spirits
spirits that sit on your sturdy
back -
all now is no more
except for a face
silenced in prayer
tranquil and calm
as you graze the grass
of hate.
By nakedwriter
ivy leaves redding edges
vines crawling down around
the one old what-used-to-be
kerosene lamp pendulumly
hanging under the arch
a cold wind blows
and picks up the hairs
on my hands and the rectum
shivers in the chill
up the spine
to my nose
leaves fly across the window
they that have fallen
red edging
arriving fall.
By nakedwriter
On Merdeka day, I stayed mute. I refuse to congratulate a country that does not know how to respect its different minorities. I refuse to honor our heroines and heroes, who fought in the name of independence, under the banner of peace and on the shoulders of genius, when our current leaders, both Pakatan and Barisan are squabbling over nothing.
After all, they are synonyms for the same thing: failed flawed coalitions. Uncompromising, disrespectful and embarrassingly narrow-minded in the way they handle topics of race and religion. After all the temples that were destroyed, denied funding and existence, you do it again. You shove another temple to your shelves of other rotting promises.
And as we watch your child-like drama unfold, our transmen and women live another day under the baton and fat cocks of (our?) policemen. Our children go to schools without desks and chairs, without textbooks, and missing teachers. Our women go missing from the parliament, imprisoned within a society made up of insensitive misogynists. Our people's residences are bulldozed, faith destituted, and heritage lost.
I cover my face, cowering, covering, when I am asked about our sexually abused Penan women, tortured political prisoners, and marginalized low income families. I don't want to point at you, Najib. You've been the butt of too many jokes and misdoings. You smell like the butt of insensitivity and inexperience.
This is sedition. Because I want to aggravate your grip on the reins of our country. It's time the horses neigh and throw you off our backs. It's time we were free again. It's time.
It's time for another Merdeka, an Other which is not you.
