Song Hong
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- Transgender students say gender transitioning is tough; varsities can help them feel safer
- Universities say they are committed to a “respectful” and “inclusive” campus; one has processed ‘several’ room change requests
- Students also cite concerns with use of toilets and of preferred names
She had not planned to come out as a transgender person until after university, once she was financially stable and independent.
But two months into university life, Kieran Elodie Ng realised she was not going to be able to “hide” this identity for four years.
She thought: “I can’t continue living like this — in a guys’ room, wearing guy clothes and everyone thinking I’m a guy (and) using my dead name.”
A dead name is the birth name of people who have changed their name as part of their gender transitioning process.
“I was having daily panic attacks,” she said. “I remember not wanting to leave the (hostel) room at all.”
So, Ng came out in October 2020 to her family and friends. It was “quite scary”, but many friends were “pretty positive” about it, said the 24-year-old Nanyang Technological University (NTU) mathematical sciences student. Like all the transgender students cited in this story, she has also since changed her name legally.
Her mother’s initial reaction was “sad”, her father “didn’t want to accept it”, and her sister “accepted it quite quickly”.
But following this big step, there were other hurdles to overcome on campus – involving, among other things, a months-long effort to switch rooms.
NTU transgender students say that of late, their school authorities have been more understanding. In response to queries, the four local universities that provide student housing told CNA Insider that they are committed to the well-being of students, including those who identify as transgender.
NTU and the National University of Singapore (NUS), for instance, said they are committed to building a “respectful” and “inclusive” environment on campus.
NTU’s Office of Campus Housing has processed “several” room change requests in recent years by transgender students, and all such requests “are processed similarly for all students”.
But as Ng and several others told CNA Insider, gender transitioning is tough, and universities can do more to help them feel safer – in areas such as housing, the provision of toilets, and allowing the use of preferred names and pronouns.
Such provisions would help them ease into university life in the same way as their cisgender peers, they said.
Transgender people have a different gender identity from their sex at birth. When they transition, they start to live their life according to their gender identity. Cisgender people are those whose gender identity corresponds with their birth sex.
By the students’ estimates, the number of transgender university students in Singapore is small, but no definitive figures are available. Ng, who is president of Kaleidoscope, an NTU student group advocating for sexual minorities, estimates that there are 50 to 60 transgender students in the university.
At the National University of Singapore (NUS), there are at least 10 to 20 transgender students, said Lune Loh, 25, who co-founded the peer support and representation group TransNUS. Transgender student numbers at the other local universities are not known.
Loh, who graduated this year in English literature and philosophy, lived in Tembusu College. It is an NUS residential college that a friend had said was “more or less queer/trans-affirming”.
Before Loh moved in, a professor wrote to welcome her and said there was a newly refurbished gender-neutral toilet in the basement that she could use, which she was “quite happy” to know.
But the toilet was also open to the public and got dirty easily, she said. And taking a lift down several floors each time to use the toilet or even wash her hands was “cumbersome”.
“It’s a lot of going up and down the stairs and lifts, every single day,” she said.
Each semester, she asked for a room change to a corridor for female students, but to no avail. Although the men living along her corridor were “nice people”, living along the male corridor was nonetheless “a thorn in (her side)”.
Over at NTU, Ng’s request to switch to a room on the female floor of a residential hall was successful, albeit after some administrative delays.
When the first semester of her first year ended, her room-mate moved out. Ng reckoned he was confused and felt uncomfortable after she came out.
Not knowing how accepting her next room-mate might be — which was too much to bear — she emailed the hall office in February last year to ask if a transgender student could change rooms. She had not found any information online.
She wanted to move to a female floor and had a doctor’s diagnosis of gender dysphoria, a condition that describes the distress over the mismatch between one’s gender identity and one’s sex at birth.
According to Ng, the hall office replied two weeks later and asked for relevant documents, which she submitted. She waited several weeks more and followed up weekly through a counsellor she was seeing at school. But there was no update.
Then came a chance to raise her housing situation with the university’s associate provost of student life, Victor Yeo. It came during a meeting last June to discuss an Inter-University LGBT Network (IULN) research project in which she was involved.
According to her, Yeo said he would speak to the hall office. Soon afterwards, someone contacted her to ask what kind of room she wanted, what her “situation” was and “what (her) transitioning process was already like”.
The university later assigned her a single room with an en-suite toilet in another hall. She moved in last July, about five months after she first contacted the hall office.
Although her new room costs more than her old one (which had a toilet shared by four residents), the move has made a difference to her mental health.
“It’s on a female floor, which I do appreciate. And that did help alleviate a lot of the dysphoria,” she said. “I have, essentially, a new start.”
DISTRESS, AND COMMON MISCONCEPTIONS
Gender dysphoria is a psychiatric condition with specific criteria and treatment, and distress experienced with it can range from mild to severe, said clinical psychologist Soon Siew Peng.In severe cases, the condition can impact “very significantly” on academic or occupational functioning, concentration, social functioning, relationships and other areas of life, said Soon of The Other Clinic, who has worked with trans individuals for about six years.
For some, gender dysphoria can be alleviated by socially transitioning – such as changing their names and/or pronouns, hairstyle and choice of clothing, she said. Others may seek medical interventions like hormone treatment and gender reassignment surgery.
A common misconception about transgender individuals is that they are “just confused”. This is untrue, said clinical psychologist Andrea Chong of The Psychology Practice.
Another is that they “can feel happy only if they medically transition”. In reality, individuals have “their own unique experience”, and socially transitioning may be more important for some of them, said Chong, who was previously with the Institute of Mental Health.
Youth is when social identity and having a sense of belonging and community are important, she added.
“Because you start to question: Do I have a place in society? Do I belong to any particular social groups? Can people around me accept me for who I am if I tell them the truth?”
WHY CAMPUS HOUSING MATTERS
Like their cisgender peers, living on campus is vital for some transgender students; otherwise, they may have to commute for up to four hours per day.A lot of social life also happens in residential halls, and some students want to partake in the suppers, sports and other activities.
“I didn’t want to miss out on the experience because throughout polytechnic, I was depressed and anxious. I didn’t really have a social life,” said Ng.
And for students with unsupportive home environments, the dormitory can be a space to transition and express their gender identities.
“To have my own space is such a great comfort because I know I have somewhere to go back to and be completely myself,” said Andy Winter, who is trans-feminine (someone who was assigned as male at birth but has more of a feminine identity) and graduated this year with an English major and a minor in creative writing.
The 25-year-old, who comes from a “very conservative” family, lived in a single room along a male corridor for most of her time at NTU. But she “felt safe” with the arrangement, which included using the male communal toilets.
“NTU halls are gendered like that,” she said. “It’s fine as long as I’m not sharing the room with (a) guy.”
It was the same for another trans-feminine student who wanted to be known as Sylfr. She began living on campus only in her second year at NTU as lessons were mostly online in her first year amid the pandemic.
This move, said the 23-year-old, “has probably been one of the better decisions I’ve made”.
Like Ng, Sylfr had planned to come out only after university. She initially lived with a male room-mate, who was quite supportive when she came out. But it was she who did not feel comfortable about “experimenting” in a shared room.
“Because it’s going to be weird if my entire wardrobe starts changing,” said Sylfr, who has had hormone replacement therapy for about a year and is now living in a single room with an attached bathroom on a female floor.
According to Chong, when transgender students have a room that is their safe space, “that sense of safety has lingering effects because it can create a more stable sense of themselves and, in the longer run, better mental wellness”.
‘NO MALICIOUS INTENT’
The transgender students are aware that safety is one of the concerns cited for not letting them live in rooms aligned with their identified gender. But their message is unequivocal: Sex predators, not transgender people, are a threat to safety.A “common concern” Ng has heard is that “cisgender guys will pretend to be trans women to be predators”. To this, she said: “This doesn’t sound like the problem of trans people. It sounds like the problem of predators.”
For transgender students, a safe space in university halls is ‘great comfort’ — but not a given
*This story uses preferred pronouns for transgender students. SINGAPORE: She had not planned to come out as a transgender person until after university, once she was financially stable and independent.
