We have a number of very pressing health concerns here in Malaysia. In recent years, we have been bestowed with the mantle of Asia’s fattest country. This is not surprising, considering that we are one of the world’s top per-capita sugar consumers, leading to more and more Malaysians contracting diabetes and cardiovascular disease, among a range of other serious conditions.
The nation is also battling steadily rising stroke and cancer statistics, not to mention the perpetual on-going efforts to combat the threats posed by dengue outbreaks and influenza epidemics.
With so many in the country stricken by the previously mentioned diseases and conditions, the Health Ministry recently decided that it must do all that it can to stop us from falling victim to any other additional maladies and therefore has very considerately spent its valuable time and resources on organising a contest for youth, aged between 13 and 24, to purportedly promote healthy sexual and reproductive practices for adolescents.
The National Creative Video Competition on Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health 2017, which was launched a few days ago and based around the theme of “Value Yourself, Practice Healthy Lifestyle”, was originally split into three categories, namely, “reproductive sex”, “cyber sex” and “gender identity disorder”.
Contest participants were required to submit an educational video based on one of those categories, with winners standing to walk away with prize money ranging between RM1,000 and RM4,000.
LGBT community a popular target for ridicule
The third category of the competition in particular was highly perplexing, if not dubious, as it required participants to submit video entries on how to prevent, control and fix “gender identity disorder”.
This “disorder”, according to the contest form, referred to those who were gay, lesbian, transgender/Mak Nyah, transvestite, tomboy and for good measure, a rather ominous “lain-lain”.
Yesterday however, the Ministry had an unanticipated change of heart and decided, after a meeting involving leading transgender activist Nisha Ayub, amongst other stakeholders, to be unexpectedly progressive and remove the discriminatory elements present within the category in question, such as “gender confusion” and “LGBT”.
The fact that it didn’t claim to have been misquoted alone deserves a standing ovation, not to mention its somewhat swift response to the continued outrage and wide criticism that the category has drawn ever since the contest was announced.
Despite the removal of the controversial elements however, it is important to acknowledge that in large part, such an unusual decision by the Ministry has most likely only been made due to it being faced with increasing disapproval for promoting such impugnable content.
It is crucial to remember that the Ministry’s first line of defence to public outcry over the contest was to actually strongly assert its targeting of the LGBT community under the pretext of health awareness and disease prevention.
The Ministry, along with certain quarters, had initially attempted to justify the inclusion of the controversial “gender identity disorder” category as a means of addressing and stemming the increasing prevalence of HIV and AIDS in the country, insinuating that both go hand-in-hand with the LGBT community, whilst conveniently forgetting to also shine the spotlight on the fact that the spread of HIV in the country is more prevalent amongst heterosexuals.
If the Ministry did indeed seek to genuinely engage with youth in a discourse about HIV and AIDS, a simple solution would have been to dedicate the third category to that specific subject, instead of arbitrarily taking aim at a specific group of individuals.
Health awareness needed for all, not LGBT group specifically
Having read the original contest details, there can certainly be no doubt about the existence of a serious disorder requiring urgent intervention, but that disorder would appear to have less to do with the subject of gender confusion and more to do with a confused agenda that seeks to propagate and legitimise misguided and unfounded beliefs around the subject of LGBT as factual and true information.
The voicing of religious and cultural concerns that are seen to be in conflict with the LGBT community is one thing, everyone is after all entitled to their own set of beliefs and opinions, but cloaking those views under the guise of educating and promoting better health practices amongst our young, via a public platform no less, is quite another.
Such erroneously and heavily prejudiced attempts to skew easily impressionable minds and influence their thoughts in a certain, unwarranted manner, will undoubtedly do more harm than good to the very audience the contest is targeted at.
Such attempts will also further expose an already disenfranchised and heavily marginalised LGBT community to the possibility of more abuse, victimisation and unsubstantiated vilification.
Whilst the efforts by the Ministry to encourage dialogue and engagement amongst the younger segments of society in regard to their overall well-being is no-doubt commendable, the way to promote positive and effective sexual and reproductive health practices is certainly not through discrimination, intolerance and worse, fallacies.
What can we hope to achieve by telling the younger generation that individuals who don’t fit in neatly with the mainstream understanding of gender and relationships are “broken” and somehow need mending and altering in order become whole again?
When we single out a group of people on a national level and exclusively link them with a propensity for engaging in dangerous practices and an unhealthy lifestyle, we are only further disseminating seeds of prejudice within society.
We should alternatively be directing our time and attention to correctly educating our young on issues that are of actual relevance to their sexual and reproductive health.
We should be empowering them to engage in healthy, conducive and respectful relationships, whilst abstaining from practices that may jeopardise or compromise their safety and well-being, as well as that of others.
More fact-based knowledge, less stereotypical perspectives
Our aim and duty as a progressive society should be to equip our young with factually-backed knowledge around unsafe health risks and consequences, rather than blatantly trying to influence them into developing narrow, stereotypical and highly inaccurate perspectives of others who may be different from them.
Instead of encouraging our youth to come up with ways of discriminating against the “non-mainstream” segments of society, we should be channelling all of our efforts into helping them manage the various instances of sexual misconduct and deviant behaviours that are increasingly plaguing their specific communities.
Surely, teen pregnancies, gang-rape and baby-dumping are all far more urgent, pressing concerns as compared to figuring out ways to “prevent, control and fix” the gender identity and sexual orientation of others.
Let us have our priorities in the right order, and not on imagined disorders for a change.
Gayatri Unsworth is an FMT columnist.
With a firm belief in freedom of expression and without prejudice, FMT tries its best to share reliable content from third parties. Such articles are strictly the writer’s personal opinion. FMT does not necessarily endorse the views or opinions given by any third party content provider.
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