BORN WHICH WAY?

         As soon as I took this course, a figure came to my mind as I watched a Japanese TV show a few years ago. It was about a famous Japanese model named Tsubaki Ayana who is working actively now for being accepted by the public as a woman.

She was born to a fairly rich family as the first kid and was raised as an ordinary boy, but it didn’t take his parents long to realize that he acted differently. When little Ayana chose clothes, he liked girl’s clothes better. He played dolls with his sister and he hung out wearing skirts secretly. That was when his mother couldn’t take anymore and sent him to a boys’ school to make him feel like a real boy. However, he was at first not accepted by his classmates and his mother said to his face that she felt him disgusting. Although he finally was accepted by his school as well as his classmates, who took him as real friend and a real girl, he was sent away again to France for homestay. Her French mother Mimi didn’t realize that she was actually a boy until the TV show gave her an interview and brought her a letter after 8 years. Fortunately, she was always seen by the old French couple as their real daughter, making up her loss of love by her born parents. After Ayana went back to Japan, she was abandoned by her parents and that was when she decided to do part time job while attending college where she was not accepted as a girl. She wrote a posthumous paper and then went to Thailand and did sex-changing surgery.

She was alive, born as a whole new person after the surgery. She then was accepted again by her parents as her sister gave the posthumous paper to their parents as soon as Ayana went to Thailand. After 24 years’ struggle, she became a real woman being accepted by all the people she loves, especially her grandma, who was always in support of her even before she went to boys’ school. Right now, she is working actively for the rights of trans-sexual people in Japan. She thinks her story can help all those people who have the same troubles as she did.

Surprisingly, Japan is one of the countries that accepted most trans-gendered groups. Many TV show hosts are trans-gender people who are increasingly being liked these years. So why is that still so sensitive in a country of freedom?

Attached are photos of people who were all born as male and right now love as female on TV in Japan.