[The World, People I Met] I Hope That She Is Safe Today…
By
Neoul
Published:
October 22, 2014
Translated
by Jieun Lee
Editor’s
note: This is the first
column in the new series, “The World, People I Met” by Neoul, author of I
Want To Throw Flowers: Living
As a Victim of Child Rape [which
was first published as an Ilda series].
I have a
friend after my own heart. She is neither beautiful nor slim;
however, she has attractive eyes. I am going to write
about my friend as I think many people should pay attention to her story.
Negated Because of Sexual Identity
My
friend is a transgender person (someone whose
biological sex and gender identity are
different). If you imagine her by conjuring images of
beautiful, slim, and “feminine” people like Harisu (the Korean transgender
model, singer, and actress) or other women who appear in K-dramas, this would
be a mistake. She is—as many transgendered women are—just like anyone else you
would see walking on the street.
My
friend is a woman. Ever since she was young,
from the very first time that she can remember, she has always felt
like a woman. But the fact that she always believed that she was a woman has
been called into question by people since her kindergarten days. Teachers asked
her
to get into the boys’ line and made her wear a male kindergarten
uniform instead of the one with the
flapping skirt. Nevertheless, according to her, she never doubted that she was
a woman. Then, that assurance was
shaken when she was no longer allowed in a female
public bath.
When
she entered school, she decided to “pretend to be a man.” She shaved her head
and behaved much tougher and manlier than the other male students did. This was
the only way she could protect herself.
Nearing
her high school graduation, she thought that she could stop pretending to be a
man, openly live like a woman, and be able to wear a long skirt. However, her
family did not allow her to do so.
She
went to study in Australia, majored in
nursing, and gradually started to live like a woman. In Australia, in fact,
diverse bodies exist because society doesn’t force
acceptance of uniform standards of what a “woman’s body” should be. My friend
was not treated like a freak because of her rugged body, muscular build, and
square-shoulders. Unlike her experience in South Korea, she was never stopped
from using the women’s restroom.
However,
when she needed to do field work just
before her graduation, she was once again negated in terms of being a “woman.”
At the hospital, because her biological sex was that of a man, she was asked to
perform different duties than those for women. Caring for patients was for
women only. Her deep desire to become a “white-robed angel” was never to become
a reality. For the first time in her life she had thoughts about dying. She
attempted suicide and ended up in a psychiatric institution.
A society that demands dangerous and expensive “sex reassignment surgery”
After
coming back to South Korea, her feeling that she needed to live as a woman
intensified. The process, however, was not at all easy. In South Korea, when
transgender people decide to change sexes, they need to undergo sex
reassignment surgery (an alternative term for genital cosmetic surgery or a sex-change
operation). In March 2013, the Seoul Western District Court made an exception to
allow five female-to-male
transgender men—who had not yet undergone genital cosmetic surgery—to change their
[legally-recognized]
sex. However, the Supreme Court’s precedents and established
regulations stipulate that the requirements for [legal] sex
change must include a diagnosis of psychological transsexualism, a sex change
operation, and [that transgender people
declare that] they have lost their reproductive capacity.
Sex
reassignment surgery not only costs a
fortune but is also painful and hazardous to one’s life. Yet, the reason why
many transgender people venture into such an undertaking is because societal
pressure demands uniform standards about what men and women’s bodies should be.
Transgender
women have diverse thoughts about their bodies.
Some are satisfied with just
hormone therapy, others are satisfied with
breast enlargement surgery. My friend does not feel repulsed by her own body
but dislikes the label of “man.”
In
fact, according to her, undergoing only hormonal treatment and hair removal
procedure is enough to make her feel that she is living as a woman. However, to borrow
a line from the movie Like
a Virgin
[Cheonhajangsa Madonna],
for
those “not wanting to become a woman but wanting to
live as a woman” sex reassignment surgery has
become not a choice but “a necessity.”
As my
friend started to look for money for her surgery, she did not receive any
financial support from her parents. They said that
because it was her choice, she should find the money on her own. Her mother, a so-called “glass-ceiling breaking
successful woman,” asked her why she chose to live as a woman, as it
is a really hard job. She responded by saying that she did not choose to live
the difficult life of a transgender person: it
was not a matter of choice. She explained to me that
she should be grateful for being neither
expelled from their home nor cut off from her
family members like other transgender people she knew
had been.
Her
first part-time jobs were as a kitchen porter and gas station attendant.
However, it was impossible to live as a woman on low-wage
jobs. In order not only to pay the cost of genital cosmetic surgery but also to
be approved to go under the surgeon’s knife, she needed to go through a long
period of psychological counseling to get a record that she had been diagnosed
with “Gender Identity Disorder.” She also needed not only to undergo hormone
therapy for the rest of her life but also to find
the money for hair removal treatment and the re-shaping of her body,
which costs tens of millions of won.
In
spite of her financial predicament, she was able to get
double
eyelid surgery and a nose job. Her cosmetic surgery was not
an effort to become beautiful but a way to start living every day
as a woman without anxieties; as no matter how much she took care of her looks
by wearing a skirt and putting on makeup, she was often
chased
out of women’s restrooms. It was only after undergoing
surgery that she could become free to use the
women’s
restroom without any apprehension.
My
friend gradually began to acquire a woman’s body by means of hormone treatment.
By chance, she was cast in a minor part in a film and found the experience fun,
although it was not highly paid. She tried to find more jobs in this field
because she wanted to make a career of it. After meeting with her, a manager
who at first told her that she performed the minor role of a nurse very
realistically refused to send her out on job interviews after checking her
identification card. Individuals with bodies that do not match their gender
often experience rejection when they
seek a job.
On September 6, 2012, the first broadcast of XY Talk, a transgender group talk show aired by the cable channel
KBS Joy, also became its last broadcast because of public opinion demanding its
cancellation due only to the fact that transgender people were on the show. © KBS Joy
Transgender Women Sex Workers Ask the Meaning of
“Choice”
When a
person is rejected numerous times, he or she no longer tries again. When my
friend was about to forgo trying again, she
“chose” to work as a sex worker. There have been
a few cases like her before, in which transgender women have chosen
to work as sex workers in order to make a living because it was too difficult
for them to find a conventional job. In South Korea, no record is kept of
how many transgender women work in the sex industry.
On
August 18, 2015, a murder case occurred in which a transgender woman was
stabbed twenty times by her male john.
People often say that being a sex worker is a “choice,” and that if “you are
beaten or receive unfair treatment, this is the outcome of your choice.” Yet,
there are a number of instances in which the word “choice” is not fair to use
for people living as a minority without social acceptance. [The truth about
choice can be found in what] the American neuroscientist Sam Harris has said:
free will is definitely an illusion.
My
friend knows very well that her job is not safe and that she might face danger
at any time. Although she does the best she can to avoid meeting strange
people, there are often unexpected occurrences. Recently, there
have been a few incidents when she was not paid by men who then
blackmailed her, saying that if she asked for money [for sex] they would report
her to the police.
“The Act on the Punishment of Intermediating in Sex Trade and Associated Acts”
does not define my friend as a victim of sex trade because she has not been
driven into the sex trade by force or pressure. Because of this, even though johns
use violence against her or do not pay her, she cannot even report any of the
incidents to the police. In fact, she could even be
brought up on charges of prostitution. As
others have told her that if convicted of prostitution
charges it would be very difficult for her to apply for a legal sex
change, she endures violent acts against herself.
Even
ten years after the enforcement of the special law on the sex
trade, it is still important to decriminalize the status of women
sex workers in order to protect their human rights. Unfortunately, transgender women are
often left out. To this day, even counseling centers, rehabilitation
facilities and shelters
for
female sex workers do not help
them. It is time to discuss the people who have been excluded from the law.
When my
friend wakes up every morning, she drinks a cup of water then goes out to
exercise. After her workout she comes back home, has lunch, and turns on her
laptop in order to make some money. She looks for male johns
because she is a transgender woman sex worker.
Feminist
scholar Susan Bordo says that
the female body is a medium of culture and a territory on which a social
control is directly practiced. As long as our society requires a uniform female
body or until it accepts the diversity of bodies,
the issue of transgender women sex workers will
be difficult to solve. And the state of affairs in which transgender women sex
workers who have not changed their sex cannot be protected by law—even when
they are in danger—will continue.
If my
friend’s reality is that she has to work in the sex trade, I hope that she is
safe today and that one day there will be a place
where she can find refuge and help whenever the need
arises.
*Original Article:
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