Sat, Apr 11, 2015 page3

• High-school teacher changes gender

  RESPECT: Tseng Kai-hsin had prepared for the worst, but the open-minded acceptance she encountered at school was as surprising to her as it was a relief

  • By Su Mang-chuan and Chen Wei-han / Staff reporter, with staff writer
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  After his wife’s death, transsexual high-school teacher Tseng Kai-hsin (曾愷芯), a male by birth, decided to undergo gender reassignment surgery to finally become a woman and find her true self.

  A biology teacher at National Taichung First Senior High School, Tseng called for heightened transgender awareness among the public, saying: “Transsexuals are not monsters.”

  Originally having been the given name Kuo-chang (國昌), Tseng renamed herself Kai-hsin — pronounced similarly to kaixin (開心), meaning happiness — to redefine her attitude toward life, she said.

  

  National Taichung First Senior High School teacher Tseng Kai-hsin, center in gown, poses for a photograph with her students in Taichung on Wednesday.

  Photo: Su Meng-chuan, Taipei Times

  Tseng said she experienced discomfort wearing masculine articles of clothing and short hair while yearning to don girls’ outfits and to wear a ponytail when she was a boy.

  She struggled with a gender identity inconsistent with her assigned sex early on in life, but had to repress her gender identification in a society where transsexualism was a taboo, she said, adding that her role as her family’s first-born son put an extra burden on her quest to find herself.

  However, the woman in her could not be contained and she began hormone treatment to look more feminine, until she met the woman who would later became her wife on the Internet, she said.

  Tseng said she identifies herself as a woman and is attracted to other women.

  She ceased her medication and married her wife — who did not know about Tseng’s closeted identity even after she was diagnosed with breast cancer and died — because Tseng worried that the disclosure might exacerbate her condition.

  Struck by the fact that she had never been able to be herself throughout her life, the 51-year-old said she resolved to transform herself last year.

  She lost 20kg in six months and went to work with long hair and nail polish, dressing in a less masculine way to gradually transform from a man to a woman, she said.

  She said her colleagues at first associated her behavior with her wife’s recent death, asking tactful questions such as: “Why are you getting prettier?”

  “I will be getting prettier and prettier,” Tseng said in response.

  She later revealed her secret to her colleagues, who, to her surprise, admired her bravery and helped her to come out to others, she said.

  National Taichung First Senior High School principal Chen Mu-chu (陳木柱) later told the faculty to respect Tseng’s decision, she said.

  The school’s consulting center provided not only mental support, but a gender-friendly toilet on campus, she said.

  She later told her students the truth and they found nothing strange about her transsexualism, she said.

  She said she had prepared for the worst — early retirement — before making up her mind to reach out, as the authorities at a private school where she had previously taught had made a lot of fuss simply because she wore nail varnish. However, the open-minded acceptance she encountered at her current school was as surprising as it was a relief.

  Tseng said her mother is still in denial, but that she is hopeful that she will change her mind one day.

  Tseng plans to undergo sex reassignment surgery this summer to become a real woman, she said.
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