Andi Suraidah (she/her), Legal Dignity

As a Malaysian with a colonial legacy of criminalising consenting same-sex sexual relationships and plural gender identities, Muslims who are of diverse SOGIESC bear the double burden of being criminalised under a pseudo-dual legal system, despite that this system has been constitutionally challenged. While the federal law criminalises homosexual conduct and imposes a higher sentence of death penalty and fine, shariah laws similarly penalise SOGIESC- related offences to the utmost extent permitted by Malaysia's shariah courts – maximum imprisonment, fine, and/or caning.

Dr. Anthony Chong

I would like to begin with a few facts about Deaf people in Malaysia. It is already difficult to live as a Deaf person in mainstream society, as many people are ignorant about Deaf people and do not understand that we are a linguistic minority. We experience poor access to information because of the ignorance of others, not because of our deafness. We are compelled to spend time and money on speech and listening therapy, even though such therapy does not always work for many of us. Despite its futility, people around us continue to insist that we give importance to speech and listening therapy. This has caused us to  lose a lot of valuable time, money and energy in fruitless efforts towards mastery of oral communication. If we could pursue self-empowerment via sign language, our natural language, we would acquire sufficient literacy skills to access information in the mass media and other sources to function better. 

By Jose Monfred Sy
Project Leader, Program on Alternative Developmen
UP Center for Integrative and Development Studies

LGBTQ+ peoples have existed and played crucial roles in societies across Southeast Asia for the longest time. However, today, our lives have been marred by violence, discrimination, and exclusion from economic and political participation. At the regional level, the responses from Southeast Asian governments and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations or ASEAN against SOGIE-based crimes and the disregard of LGBTQ+ peoples’ rights are inexcusably unsatisfactory. Often, religious beliefs have been invoked as grounds to deny us fundamental freedoms, such as the rights to free expression, political association, family, health, and the like. Disavowal from gender stereotypes and sexual norms are always met with harsh criticism and religious intolerance.

BE ME

These short stories are snippets of queer life from so many different places; some familiar though many are not. It is a good reminder to me, that I am not alone, that LGBTQ folk exist all over - they struggle, they create, they resist, they dream. Reading the stories, I feel connected even through words, to the author's imagination, based on their lived reality, which often in some sense is similar to my own story and in many ways so different.

The Book of Sainted Aunts

At one time in our life, we may have stumbled upon the majestical stories of the Greek Gods and Goddess. We started wondering if it’s simply a myth or could all of these beings actually exist once upon a time. What is this book about? It’s about you. Who you are, and who you could be should you choose to be one of the sainted aunts, or you are already one.

A/PART: An Anthology of Queer Southeast Asian Poetry in the Pandemic

I really like this book a lot. It talks about poetry written by those in the LGBT+ community, and is aimed towards those in the community. It helps those in the community to express themselves, with all their insecurities and problems, especially those concerning the COVID pandemic, projected into beautifully crafted words on paper. I rate it 8/10