Living in the Shadows: The Story of a Jamaican Transgender

Dressed in a pair of black slacks with matching mid-rift top that exposed toned abs and a soft green jacket with silver embellishments splashed across the breasts, complete with pink head scarf and brown loafers, Tiana alighted from her heavily tinted vehicle to greet me cheerfully, yet hesitantly. She began by telling me where it all began. “I realized I was different from I was about five or six and that I wasn’t attracted to girls, but that I was attracted to sex,” she started out tentatively. “I knew, even mentally, that I am a girl,” she said struggling with her words as if she expected me to judge her.

That’s when Tavoy Malcolm (the name she was given at birth) began experimenting with the idea of being a woman. Donning his best female voice, as a teenager he would make up telephone numbers and try out his new voice. A relationship developed with one of his callers but when his friend turned up at his house to meet the girl he had been talking with, it aroused the suspicion of his parents.

Confronted with the question whether he wanted to be a girl, Tavoy lied to his parents as he “did not want to disappoint them”. For the next few years Tavoy carried on as if nothing had happened, even pretending to be attracted to the opposite sex.

Still, he could not shake the urge to dress up in his mother’s clothes every time she left for work. Before long the young boy’s escapades were uncovered. His mother had returned home one day to find her teenaged son parading in her garb. Years of denial came back to haunt Tavoy and, as he closed another chapter of his life, his true self began to take centre stage. But nothing could have prepared Tavoy for the swop he was about to make. With it came a brutal and unimaginable discrimination.

Labelled “effeminate” along with two other males while at Cornwall College, Tavoy and his friends became easy targets for the entire faculty. One fateful day, while in sixth form, Tavoy and his friends, then members of the school’s dance group were fingered in an on-campus fracas. All three were immediately suspended from participating in all extra-curricular activities by the school’s principal. It was a big blow for Tavoy who was at his happiest when dancing.

It also meant he had to quit the Inter-Secondary School’s Fellowship of which he was a part. Maligned, Tavoy and his friends dared not launch a protest knowing full well their voices would not have been heard. No longer shackled by the confines of school life, Tavoy began his full-fledged transformation to Tiana. He had never felt freer knowing he could finally be himself.

But he remained trapped in his skin constantly aware that he would never be accepted, that there were parts of Jamaica he could not go, and that he could not express himself like any ordinary Jamaican. On that path he shocked a few people, too. “When my father saw my pictures, he went coo-coo!” said Tiana. We didn’t talk for about six or seven months,” she said. Tiana knew her father was sending her messages through her sister, and so she decided to send him one of her own. “I told her to tell him that this is who I am and that I am not going to change,” Tiana said defiantly. “Dad eventually came around,” she said with a smile, the relief evident. “Just be careful,” came his fatherly advice.

As for her mother, Tiana said mothers always know and so she was not convinced her mother had bought her story years earlier. But knowing she had the love and support of family made all the difference. Still, she said, it has not erased the hurt she feels when she considers how she has been socially excluded from so many aspects of life in her own country. Her initial dreams dashed, Tiana, who has eight subjects at the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate examinations – five Ones, two Grade 2s, and a 3 – had aspired to become a teacher. By the end of high school, though, Tiana had become so disheartened with her chances of fulfilling her potential that she did not bother to turn up for her Caribbean Advanced Professional Examinations.

Instead, she got dressed each day and left home for her aunt’s place. Youth human rights activist and Gleaner columnist, Jaevion Nelson, says “many LGBT people in these situations who have had their education end prematurely end up never living their dream of becoming a teacher, doctor, or nurse or are never able to support themselves, partner or family.” He continued, “How they manage the exclusion they face is dependent on and can be compounded by their socio-economic class and the social capital they enjoy”.

This, is of course, “very different and extremely difficult for many, if not all transgender people”. In such a situation “LGBT like Tiana, unless they have family or other support especially in terms of money they will have a very hard time covering basic needs for food, clothing and shelter. become dependent on or a partner. In Tiana’s case, she sustains herself through work she does with the Jamaica Forum for Gays, Lesbians and Transgenders J-FLAG – but it is by no means her ideal job. These days, she is eyeing a career in media and communications. She has thought about the obstacles she will face, such as being told by her institution of choice she is too much of a distraction. But she is equally defiant she will fulfil her potential and contribute to society in a meaningful way.

She says intolerance of LGBTs can only continue to hurt and isolate people. Some LGBTs have been victims of hate crimes, beaten up, others chased from their homes and neighbourhoods in a long list of infractions as reported by J-FLAG. According to Nelson, “In some cases, for the rest of your life in Jamaica, you are the subject of harassment and bullying and even violence, which often leads to people being displaced, moving from place to place or to homelessness.” Repeating words she echoed in a 2011 YouTube video, I Am Jamaican, Tiana spoke of the isolation and venom she felt from persons whom she said did not understand her choice and, as such, had set out to make her life and that of other related minority groups, uncomfortable “There are three things most persons think of when they hear of gays: sex, disease, hostility,” she counted off on one hand, a notion she said she hoped to dispel.

I ignore the stares and the insults, this is who I am and that I am not going to change

Wringing her fingers in child-like fashion, her well manicured acrylic nails blotted with fire-engine red were suddenly visible. “I feel alienated and isolated mostly,” Tiana remarked, as she looked away in the distance. She began to choke on her words as she shared how she handles the indifference. “I ignore the stares and the insults. I’ve learnt that if you don’t have anything good to say, say nothing. I understand that I am a minority and people are going to go on their side.” Yet, she said, she’s intent on changing the attitude of intolerance, even as the hurt welled up in her voice.

Questioned whether the stares were not justified and could be viewed simply as curiosity rather than animosity to what many Jamaicans deemed a lifestyle not reflective of the country’s Christian values, Tiana shot back: “It’s hypocrisy! I know many Jamaicans who do it undercover. But a lack of education… causes them to hide it.”She went on to explain the open aggression of some LGBTs as a “natural defence” that
“kicks in” but said she could not excuse the behaviour either way.

She hopes for the day when tolerance of diversity becomes a reality in Jamaica and wants the Government, whose response she said up until now has been a “farce”, to protect her human rights as with all its other citizens. As for Nelson, who himself works alongside J-FLAG, the discrimination is far-reaching and at times a matter of survival. “Being LGBT can also mean that you have difficulty finding employment or a place to live.” He pointed to a 2012 a survey conducted by Professor Ian Boxill of the University of the West Indies, Mona, among some business people that found “many of them would not hire an openly
LGBT person”.

For Tiana, the killing of 17 year-old transgender Dwayne Jones in July last year “opened the eyes of many”. She feels “what he did was brave” as he paid the ultimate price by putting the issue on the table. “I have to commend him,” she said. Tired of living in the shadows, at 23 Tiana she says she just wants acceptance as she loves her country and has no intention of leaving it.

“I want persons to understand that we are normal just like them, I just want to gain acceptance,”