- By Michelle Woo

 

At a boba shop in Los Angeles, Alexander Yoo sits with his green milk tea. He’s wearing a short-sleeve collared shirt and khakis. His black messenger bag is propped against the table stand.

He speaks about himself openly, like he’s done this many times before. His father is Korean; his mother is Filipino. He recently celebrated his 30th birthday in Las Vegas. He’ll unabashedly belt Journey ballads at karaoke lounges. He loved Will Ferrell in “Blades of Glory.” 

And, of course, there’s what we came to hear: a descriptor that Yoo hopes will one day be as easy for the world to digest as any other.

He used to be a woman.

Yoo identifies as transgender, an umbrella term that refers to people whose gender identity differs from conventional expectations of what it means to be male or female. It includes those who have gone through sex reassignment surgery or hormone treatments. It applies to cross-dressers, those with ambiguous genitalia and those who switch between gender identities. For many in this small community, their journeys to crossing the gender divide have been filled with frustration, shame and silence.    

While the mainstream media has turned a spotlight on transgender issues, with recent stories of a transgender politician, a police commission president, a sports columnist and a prom queen, most Korean American transgender people continue to live unseen. In a culture where gender roles are rigid and issues surrounding sexuality remain taboo, they find themselves marginalized within a minority.

“In Asian American communities, there is a code of silence around LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) issues, especially transgender issues,” says Cecilia Chung, deputy director of the San Francisco-based Transgender Law Center and a transgender woman herself. “There’s added shame, guilt and negative stereotypes. With male-to-female transgender people, there’s the whole idea of losing the family name.”

Yet, across the nation, Korean American transgender people are slowly emerging from the shadows, sharing their struggles and seeking support. Stepping beyond family and social stigmas, they tell their stories  — whether or not people are ready to listen.

 

“Those Are For Girls”

Growing up as a child in Los Angeles, Yoo, who went by his Korean name (many transgender people don’t wish to disclose their former names), considered himself a typical Asian overachiever. His parents were both doctors and were deeply rooted in the conservative Christian church. He went to Korean school every Saturday morning. He prayed to God every night.

Yoo looked like the other girls. He went through a floral dress phase, a preppy phase and a “perfect curls phase.” (“God, my hair took so much time. But I looked good,” he recalls.) In old scrapbooks, there are photographs of the young girl trying on her mother’s lipstick. He loved the color pink.

“I know it doesn’t sound at all like a typical textbook narrative,” says Yoo, now the founder and president of GenderQueer Revolution, a Los Angeles-based organization exploring gender and sexuality. “Sure, you hear stories where a [transgender person] says, ‘When I was a kid, I was playing with trucks.’ But that’s not me.”