For International Men’s Day, Henry Tse, founder and chair of Transgender Equality Hong Kong, continues a conversation from The Women’s Foundation 20th Anniversary Gender Equality Summit on ‘rethinking masculinity’
I have to admit that as a man (although I only successfully acquired a male HKID this year), I perhaps have not been aware of International Men’s Day as much as I should have. Now that I’ve had more time to think about it, I think it’s an important idea to explore, especially regarding the queer community in Hong Kong.
On paper, we’ve had the Sex Discrimination Ordinance since 1995. However, it doesn’t guarantee the equal treatment and protection of all men and boys in Hong Kong. Men are still subject to some rigid gender stereotypes, and our fellow men who are gay or transgender, are left out by Hong Kong’s Anti-Discrimination Ordinances.
Faced with such harsh societal and institutional barriers, it is not surprising to see that Hong Kong’s men have a higher suicide rate than women, and queer men are at greater risk of poor mental health (such as depression and suicidal thoughts), as reflected by data.
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These phenomena and issues, though underrepresented in the mainstream discussion, are certainly not only applicable to Hong Kong. It is therefore good to leverage the occasion of International Men’s Day to address these inequalities so that no man is left behind by gender equality.
I grew up looking very boyish and very far from the gender norm, in a household that saw my behaviour as problematic and pathological. My father, as the patriarch of the family, had a very backward understanding of masculinity. He saw my gender non-conforming behaviour as a mental illness that needed to be fixed. He would take me to different psychologists and psychiatrists to prove his point, although the experts refused to go his way. To this day, I’m thankful he did not manage to take me to conversion therapy.
Being in that traditional and old-fashioned family space, in addition to attending an evangelical girls’ school, was obviously very difficult for me as someone who was so unladylike. But I’ve always tried to focus on the constructive things in life the best I can, rather than on my “gender trouble”. I would focus on academia and sports (which also allowed me to bypass wearing the Cheung sam uniform at secondary school, something I deeply resented), and l was lucky that I was never really bullied by my peers at school for who I was.
