I’m an AFAB nonbinary/genderqueer English teacher here in Taipei. I’ve been here for a few months, and I’m getting tired of living as a woman. I’m able to dress masculine with no problem, but I’ve considered asking my coworkers to use my pronouns (they/them). Is this a realistic thing to do here in Taipei? My American coworkers struggle with it back home. My school is also really focused on bringing up their numbers and I’m afraid they’ll be worried that having an openly trans teacher will hurt their enrollment. Maybe that’s paranoid?
Also, are there any regular meet ups for nonbinary folks here in Taipei? I’m constantly being misgendered and I’d love to find a time/place to be around fellow NB/Genderqueer peeps.
Actually, I knew a guy who was transitioning. Used to wear a dress around town. I believe he moved down to some school in Miaoli and did quite well for himself. He was completely bald as well.
There’s a law that prohibits discrimination based on “gender or sexual orientation” (性別或性傾向), and each city has a gender equality committee to handle complaints. I suspect most of the cases they look at involve maternity leave or sexual harassment.
Maybe i’m just super out of touch, but honestly I had to google half of what the OP said to understand what the OP is talking about. I’m still not all that clear with the terms. I have a hard time imagining Taiwanese parents to be understanding of it, let alone agree with it. And maybe i’m wrong, but I feel like it would be a distraction to the students and confusing if all of the sudden the teacher just changed from being a woman to a man? And i’m not sure class time should be used to explain all of it to them. I used to teach and I still work with kids, I try to keep as much personal stuff out of my time as possible not related to what we are doing although obviously the OPs situation is not something I dealt with.
But best of luck on everything, i’m not sure if there is anyone here that went through what you are talking about, don’t know if anything I said was all that helpful from my perspective.
I agree with @Andrew0409 if “we” have a hard time understanding it, and I do (not that I have a problem with it personally, don’t get me wrong…) it’s as @Gain says… to progressive for most Taiwanese…
Thanks everyone for the replies. I don’t intend to spend class time talking to my kids about my gender identity. They can barely understand my simple lessons on things like baseball, so wasting my class time on that isn’t really an option. I’m more focused on asking my coworkers to just avoid calling me a woman, or referring to me as a lady. We have a large office and so we talk to and about each other a lot. I hear ‘she/her’ referring to me daily.
Thank you for actually googling things at least to understand what I’m talking about. A lot of people don’t even bother. I don’t expect people who aren’t in the LGBT community, or even if they are, to understand the nuances of gender identity. I appreciate those that read up on it.
I think for now, I’m going to continue to just be myself and if it comes up politely ask my coworkers not to refer to me as a woman/lady. I also started a YouTube series as an outlet so that I can get my gender expression out somewhere, when I can’t at work.
Frankly it would all be a lot easier in Chinese, since everyone can just refer to you as ‘他’
There are plenty of ambiguous people in Taiwan who seem to get along just fine, and you might find it’s a complete non-issue with your co-workers, if not the students.
But if he wanted to be, he could just change his name to Incontinentia Buttocks.
I guess you can ask your coworkers to refer to you by your name. I think you can’t force people to refer to you in a way that doesn’t match with their perception/knowledge, you shouldn’t get mad over it. The most important thing is how you feel about your sexuality, right? you don’t need other people to tell you who you are!
Also if you have that youtube channel you can release some steam there. Your frustrations can fuel your youtube business. So it’s not all that bad that you get frustrated about sex, gender, identity, etc…
PS: feel free to link your channel here. Many other youtubers spammed before
I mean I didn’t mean that you were going to have a class lesson about it planned. But realistically, if my teacher one day just changed gender and I come to class I would have a lot of questions. But I probably wouldn’t be so rude and or blunt and ask what happened in the middle of class as an adult with self control. Kids don’t have that kind of self control, it wouldn’t surprise me if the kids just blurts out a million questions. I learned to keep as much personal stuff out as possible in class, even simple things about if I have a girl friend becomes a whole things in class that I have to get under control with questions like do you guys Kiss etc. I just don’t think it’s realistic that the kids just stay silent on it.
Maybe. Under 7 is kindergarten? All I know is elementary kids are pretty ruthless and you need some thick skin. They got no problem saying teacher you got fatter if I put on weight, you got a big pimple, you got skinny, more muscular, a new haircut, you grew a beard, you shaved. Like there’s always one kid that will blurt out something about you.
If it’s manage properly by the school owners I think it will probably be OK, but that’s highly unlikely.
EDIT: Teens will probably be cool about it. I mainly teach students in their late teens and I’m amazed at how mature they are dealing with these kind of issues, while being incredibly immature in many other areas (such as having absolutely no idea about dealing with the opposite sex).
So, just to clarify, being nonbinary doesn’t have to involve a physical transition. It’s also not FTM or MTF, which is what most of you are referring to. I already present the way I want, so that’s not an issue for me. What I’m concerned about is the language being used, not my appearance.
My experience teaching here and in America is the kids are curious but also kind.
