Reclaiming Transgender Identity Through Intersectionality and Decoloniality: A Critical Autoethnography of an Academic-Activist Performance

ABSTRACT

As a Malaysian Muslim transwoman and a social justice researcher, exploring her transgender identity in a conservative society positions Aisya within a long history of oppression and injustice alongside other global marginalised and vulnerable assigned-male-at-birth transgender groups. This paper offers reflections on Aisya’s lived experience of discrimination arising from her trans identity. It focuses on linking critical theory (decoloniality and intersectionality), methodology (autoethnography) and theological epistemology (a progressive Muslim standpoint), while the analysis ‘tells’ the autoethnographic ‘transgender identity’. By exploring her lived experience in a heterocisnormative neocolonial setting, this paper encourages a critical discourse of decolonising Aisya’s transgender identity by using intersectional feminist theory and critical authoethnography as methods of decolonial performance. This paper contests the colonial matrix of power by dismantling colonialism through rebuilding and rediscovering ancient and pre-colonial knowledge of Indigenous and colonised people to decentre heterocisnormativity, gender hierarchies and racial privilege. Ultimately, this paper invites readers to come along on a social justice journey through decolonial intersectional feminism, arise together in critical solidarity, and carry compassion, care, love, and the desire to heal from the grievances of colonialism.

KEYWORDS:

• Intersectional feminism
• Islam
• decolonisation
• queer studies
• transgender
• Malaysia

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Aisya Aymanee M. Zaharin

Aisya Aymanee M. Zaharin serves as one of the board members of Forcibly Displaced People Network (FDPN) and Australia GLBTQIA+ Multicultural Council (AGMC) while doing her PhD on navigating Asian values and media responsibility. Her research includes fields in political science and history, decolonisation to LGBTQI+ and Islam with a focus on improving social inequality, promoting cultural relativism and social responsibility concept. Being an intersectional feminist allows her to understand the depths of how people's social identities can create overlapping inequalities and discrimination. She shares the voices of those experiencing intersecting discrimination and further integrates these with her lived experience and learnings through her academic-activist performance. Her recent collaborative publication on countering Islamic conservatism on being transgender has received almost fifty five thousands views since it was published a year ago, indicating an urgent resolution on the foresaid issue.

Maria Pallotta-Chiarolli

Dr Maria Pallotta-Chiarolli is an Honorary Fellow in the School of Communication and Creative Arts, Deakin University, and founding committee member of the Australian GLBTIQ+ Multicultural Council (AGMC).