Happy Trans Day of Visibility! 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️

This is my first TDoV since moving back to Singapore, and the twelth since I began my transition. It’s been a long and sometimes difficult journey, but somehow I’ve ended up as the first (to my knowledge) publicly out trans professor in the Singaporean academy. For me, this comes with a responsibility to raise awareness about the challenges of being trans in Singapore, and I’d like to do some of that today.

A brief history

Thirteen years ago, I made a plan to study in the United States so I could transition away from family, took a bonded government scholarship to hedge against them disowning me, and gamed out the possibility of the scholarship itself being revoked, concluding that it was unlikely as long as I did well academically. So off I went to begin my transition, knowing I’d eventually have to return post-PhD to serve my bond.

Later, during a pre-PhD RA stint in Singapore, I chose to detransition for the sake of my research career, but at a huge cost to my own mental health. I decided then that a future in Singapore would be unbearable if I could not live and be recognized as who I am — and so when I was next in the US for my PhD, I proceeded to get all the surgical and transition care I needed.

Things, as it turns out, couldn’t have gone more according to plan. Though they were initially very upset, my parents didn’t disown me. As painful as detransitioning was, my RA stint helped me find my PhD lab — which, being at MIT, completely insured for trans healthcare. I excelled academically, so much so that I received a faculty job offer from NUS, and was able to transfer my bond to the university. Which brings me to where I am today.

Being trans in Singapore

I share this journey, not because it’s particularly arduous, but because it shows how risky and fraught transition can be, even for someone with as much privilege and opportunity as I began with. No one should have to worry if their family will disown them, or if their government will blackball them for transitioning. No one should have to destroy their own mental health by hiding who they are, because the alternative might mean losing their career. And no one’s access to transition care should require one to migrate to another country.

Unfortunately, these conditions are just part and parcel of being trans in Singapore. Anti-discrimination law is non-existent for LGBTQ people, even though a 2025 survey by TransgenderSG shows that 65% of trans people report workplace discrimination. Most health insurers fail to cover even the most basic forms of transition care, let alone surgery — which is a requirement for legal gender recognition. And while Singapore has thankfully avoided the trans-scapegoating-mania that has swept the UK and US, social stigma remains high, with less than half of participants in the above survey having come out to family.

I could go on about how Singapore’s gendered education system creates a hostile environment for queer and trans youth, or how mandatory military service can be hell on earth for trans women and femmes who are forced to enlist or undergo reservist training. But I’ll stop here, and just ask that you show up for the trans people in your life and your communities, whether that’s in Singapore or elsewhere. This TDoV, some of us choose visibility to remind society that we matter and exist — but we need your solidarity too, to make that mattering a reality.