New blog

Hi - I've migrated to leonalo.wordpress.com. I no longer maintain my personal website www.leonalo.com, but you can still email me at leona@leonalo.com.

Happy new year!
Leona

Love, Give Us A Chance

I know I have signed off, but before doing that, I have to relate my experience today. I won't go into too much details as the lady in question has agreed to write briefly about her life experiences. As I was walking along Orchard Road - a rare sight you may say - someone grabbed my arm and said she was glad to see me. She turned out to be a trans woman who had written to me some months ago to encourage me to press on. We stopped by the IndoChine cafe for drinks and we had a brief but in-depth discussion. I have never felt much of a connection to local trans women before - that said, I do not have many local trans women contacts - but her story and experiences really touched me, especially when she related how her father used to flog her until she bled, and her grandmother would drag her to a corner and try to soothe her pain away, while consoling, "It's ok to want to be a girl, just be a morally upright girl." That was the turning point for her and she stopped parading at Changi village. Every year, this lady would visit her grandma's grave in Malaysia, and each visit would be particularly poignant because when the latter passed away, this lady's mother refused to let her attend the funeral because of the "state she was in".

If you are a trans woman reading my blog, and if you need the strength to carry on, then think of the one person who was the kindest to you when you were down, and let this person's kindess give you the strength and belief to carry on.

You are good enough now.

You are strong enough now.

You are courageous enough now.

Carry on magnificently and beautifully.

Merry X'mas!

Leona

Break

Dear readers

I'm taking a short break from leonalo.com and the associations of being a transsexual woman to find myself again. I just want to be Leona in the month ahead. I will be back in the new year with glad tidings.

I wish you all a warm and happy Christmas
Leona

Beautiful or ugly?

If we want to see beauty in something, all we can see is beauty. If we want to see ugliness in something, all we can see is ugliness. The way we see and experience things boils down to personal choice. Would I make a good mother? I don't know. Because I can't be sure that I will always see the good in people, and the beauty in this world, I'm not sure I will make a good mother. I'm not sure I can pass the right "perspective" to my child. Because sometimes, sometimes I don't see my own beauty. I don't always stand up and walk away when people say shockingly appalling things, like when one of my closest friends said gay men shouldn't be allowed to adopt children because they may abuse the kids, and another joked about how the kid would address his fathers...their remarks were callous and spine-chilling, because, who knows what they may think about me, about my own "right" to adopt. And so the world is a confusing, vexing place, because your friends harbour prejudices too, and when these are exposed, do you still choose to see the beauty in them, or recognise ugliness for what it is and call it by its name? There are no easy answers in this world. Yet perhaps it is only in moments like this, that we are closest to God and our beating heart, and we remember that we too, are fallible, and others too, have chosen to see the beauty in us, at some crucial moment in our lives.

I love the diversity of our multi-coloured world - do you?

In Fanny Flagg's Welcome to the World, Baby Girl, the lead character Dena Nordstrom discovers in a shocking plot twist her Negro heritage, and finally realises why her mum mysteriously disappeared so many decades ago. In the
1940s-1960s, there were vast pockets of discrimination in America and Europe against individuals with even one-sixteenth of "Negro" in their blood. And once you had "Negro" stamped on your documents, doors were slammed shut in your face. Dena's young, prodigiously talented brother was "outed" by a black columnist and was thereafter shunned by the music community. He ended up desperate and destitute, with his life in tatters. In order to protect Dena, her mum fled Europe to America where she raised the girl in stealth, before being "outed" herself.

Like Dena's ancestors, transsexual women today have to choose between living in stealth and asserting their identities. Many doors have been shut in my face since I "outed" myself as a trans woman. But at least, I do not feel impotent and helpless when trans women are bullied. I can stand up for myself, ourselves - and even if my actions do not bear any fruit, at least our voices are heard. To be able to make a stand, to live and breathe in your own true skin, that's what being alive means. And we don't just stand up for ourselves. We stand up for other oppressed people too. So when yesterday, some close friends of mine said the most appalling things about gay couples - that they should not be allowed to adopt children because they will only abuse the kids - I chose to stand up and walk out on them.

Leona

Transphobia on the Big Screen

Henceforth, all transsexual women should be portrayed positively on the big screen - true or false? I would replace "positively" with "sensitively". By "sensitive", I mean in such a way as to reflect their difficult social circumstances, and to avoid entrenching already pervasive stereotypes of the trans community. The Tamil film industry's portrayal of trans women leaves much to be desired. Here's why

Reverse the Tide of Fetishisation

Shemales, Tranny, Ladyboys - these are invectives flung about by hate-filled individuals, mostly men, to flay and dehumanise transsexual women. It does not help that disproportionate numbers of trans women are in the sex and porn industry, compared to their non-trans counterparts. In Singapore, Orchard Towers and Changi Village are considered "rites of passage" for trans women. Our Road to Santiago? No way.

Make a stand today against the porn industry and the sex trade. In Singapore at least, there is no excuse for turning to prostitution. If you need me to write a letter to or contact a potential employer to clarify your situation, I will help you.

Ours is already a difficult journey - don't make it more difficult. The next time someone - and this could be your friend, relative or casual acquaintance - starts to make the trite association between trans women and the entertainment industry, do not sit there and just smile. Stand up for who you are - a wonderful being who lives her life with pride and dignity.