{"id":11624,"date":"2025-11-15T03:52:57","date_gmt":"2025-11-14T19:52:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=11624"},"modified":"2025-11-15T03:52:57","modified_gmt":"2025-11-14T19:52:57","slug":"meet-the-malaysian-muslim-trans-woman-whose-50-year-old-secret-reshapes-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=11624","title":{"rendered":"Meet the Malaysian Muslim trans woman whose 50-year-old secret reshapes history"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div id=\"\">\n<div datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1xdhyk6 ec74h0k0\">For 50 years, Sari Kartina Abdul Karim kept a secret that would reshape <a target=\"_self\" class=\"e1yy41x40 ef9u0v01 css-1ankfgb ecgc78b0\" href=\"https:\/\/www.scmp.com\/topics\/malaysia?module=inline&amp;pgtype=article\" title=\"\" data-qa=\"BaseLink-renderAnchor-StyledAnchor\" rel=\"noopener\"><span data-qa=\"Component-Text\" class=\"css-0 ef9u0v00\">Malaysian<\/span><\/a> history. In 1974, at the age of 26, she became one of the region\u2019s earliest Muslim trans women to undergo gender-affirming surgery and, in a rare moment of religious recognition, married with the approval of a Johor mufti.<\/div>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">For five decades, she kept her story to herself. But now she says that silence has finally outlived its purpose.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">\u201cIt feels like someone who was blind suddenly being told they have their eyesight again,\u201d she told This Week in Asia in an exclusive interview.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">\u201cFor 50 years I carried everything inside me. I stayed quiet for my mother and father because I felt responsible for protecting them. Now that generation has passed, I finally feel free to speak.\u201d<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">Kartina, now 76, lives in the Netherlands, surrounded by the routines of retirement and a small Malaysian community she volunteers with. She spends her mornings with coffee and her two cats, and her afternoons working on a memoir she calls <em data-qa=\"ContentSchemaRender-defaultRenderMapFunctions-Component\" class=\"css-1mniedq ex3nmsa15\">My Fifty Years Journey to Womanhood<\/em>.<\/p>\n<div class=\"image-inline-container e1a5rv550 css-1llrc1m e1yqhwb40\" data-qa=\"Component-renderMap-StyledDiv\">\n<div class=\"image-inline caption e1fvabeq0 css-19sk4h4 ea9pn0s0\" data-qa=\"Component-Container\">\n<figure class=\"image-inline caption ea9pn0s1 css-1y21teo e1gf69pb0\" data-qa=\"ArticleImage-ArticleImageContainer\">\n<div data-qa=\"ArticleImage-handleRenderImage-ImageContainer\" class=\"css-0 e1gf69pb3\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"An undated photograph of Sari Kartina in her twenties in Johor, Malaysia. Photo: Sari Kartina\" data-qa=\"BaseImage-handleRenderImage-StyledImage\" class=\"e1gf69pb2 css-6ikqhs e445x7d0\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/img.i-scmp.com\/cdn-cgi\/image\/fit=contain,width=1024,format=auto\/sites\/default\/files\/d8\/images\/canvas\/2025\/11\/13\/a09b4bbd-59b9-4a9f-be7d-f686b52ac775_163d4091.jpg\" title=\"An undated photograph of Sari Kartina in her twenties in Johor, Malaysia. Photo: Sari Kartina\"\/><\/div><figcaption data-qa=\"ArticleImage-DescriptionContainer\" class=\"css-1ixmelf e1gf69pb1\">An undated photograph of Sari Kartina in her twenties in Johor, Malaysia. Photo: Sari Kartina<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">She left Malaysia in the early 1980s, but the defining chapters of her life remain in the southern city of Johor Bahru and Singapore, where she grew up and began the transition that would shape her future.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.scmp.com\/week-asia\/people\/article\/3332687\/meet-malaysian-muslim-trans-woman-whose-50-year-old-secret-reshapes-history\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read Full Article At Source <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For 50 years, Sari Kartina Abdul Karim kept a secret that would reshape Malaysian history. In 1974, at the age of 26, she became one&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1864,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2611],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-buzz-headlines","wpcat-2611-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11624"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11624\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}