Ageing Trans Identities: Understanding the Life Course of Older Malaysian Trans Women

Non-normative gender identities, particularly of trans and non-binary individuals, continue to be a significant topic of discussion in the public media. Their portrayal in the media often sensationalises and pathologises their identities, leading to their exclusion from various spaces such as shelters, public restrooms, sports participation, and healthcare. Many of these discussions overlook the day-to-day experiences of ordinary trans individuals. Moreover, older trans women have largely remained invisible due to the presumption of cisheteronormativity among the ageing population. Although research on trans ageing has made progress in the past decade, knowledge gap is still wide and its focus has been predominantly limited to the Global North, specifically the US, UK, and Australia. It is crucial to expand the geographical and cultural boundaries of the scholarship to provincialise the Western notions of trans ageing. Malaysia, with its unique amalgamation of postcolonial statehood, historical plurality, and the hegemony of political Islam (Peletz, 2009), presents an immensely interesting context for this study. This research aims to enhance our understanding of the lives of ageing Malaysian trans women by employing the Life Course paradigm, queer theory, intersectionality, and postcolonial frameworks (King et al., 2018).