Forum » Gender Society Public Forums » General Forum » ts Wedding_Love, Religion, Acceptance?

ts Wedding_Love, Religion, Acceptance?

Tags : None
  • Hi,

    Thought it would be good to provide some sort of a postscript, an 'after-the-event' report regarding the recent ts wedding in Malaysia. This may be valuable for the archives. (First thread, a description of the wedding, was posted in the General Forum last week -- "Grand Wedding for ts in Malaysia".

    Transsexual Jessie Chung's wedding is a milestone for tg acceptance in Malaysia - it propelled the issue right into the open and the debate is still raging everyday in the newspapers.

    The general public has been sympathetic and supportive largely because Jessie is a very successful professional working woman (a high achiever), a really sweet girl, the marriage was blessed by both parents (very important in asian culture), and the couple is really in love.

    It did however caused a split among the Christian churches but was generally accepted in Eastern religions (Buddhism, Taoism, etc), except for Islam which has not commented on the wedding at all. The Government made a terse statement that the wedding is not legally recognised but has been asked to reconsider its stand on transsexual matters in many letters to the newspapers.

    And yesterday in the newspapers, a transsexual in Malaysia, accompanied by 5 of her sisters, made a police report against some policemen for harassing her. Police HQ is investigating. Life gets more interesting...

    ---------------------

    Nov 20, 2005
    The Straits Times Singapore

    ALTARED STATE
    It's a compelling love story - boy meets boy, boy falls in love with boy, and boy marries surgically altered boy in lavish wedding amid a media frenzy. It's been a long road to the altar for Jessie Chung, the boy who would be the bride

    By Wong Kim Hoh


    THE heady scent of lilies and white roses is in the air.

    Photo 1 "Jessie Male_Female.jpg"
    Jessie Chung, when she was not really a man, but not yet a woman.


    Scores of floral baskets line the driveway and the garden of the new bungalow, 10 minutes away from Kuching's international airport.

    Parked just outside the gate is a RM$300,000 (S$135,150) Ssangyong Chairman limousine still decorated with ribbons and bows.

    Welcome to the morning after at the new conjugal home of Jessie Chung and Joshua Beh. The couple just had a RM200,000 wedding reception the night before - attended by more than 850 guests and featuring flower boys in white coat tails and an 18-member string orchestra - at Kuching's Crowne Plaza Riverside Hotel. It was the country's first public wedding between a man and a transsexual.

    Jessie Chung was born Jeffrey Chung more than 30 years ago. Although blessed by Christian (and not Catholic as described in earlier press reports) pastors at the reception, the union is not recognised by the Malaysian government.

    The RM700,000 home, which cost another RM100,000 to furnish, and the Chairman limousine are gifts from the bride's father. Probably the huge Hitachi plasma TV, too, since Mr Chung Fook Siong is the sole distributor of Hitachi products in Sarawak.

    Jessie is his first son, and the second of his six children (four girls and two boys). A fortune teller apparently once told Mr Chung that one of his children will spend the first half of his life as a man, and the second as a woman.

    He was uncannily accurate: Jessie completed the last of her three-phased sex change operation in 2003.

    As she sits next to her husband in their bedroom, Jessie, the KL-based partner in a successful health business, says in a voice which is low and slightly husky: 'I did not tell my father about the operation although my mother knew. I didn't want to break his heart. From young, I had been appointed not only by him but also my grandfather to take over the family business.

    'I did not dare come home to Kuching during festive occasions for two years. I stayed in Kuala Lumpur.'

    Her younger brother broke the news to the patriarch after he clamoured to see Jessie.

    'He kept quiet for a few seconds and then told my brother: 'Ask him to come home. I will face this with him'.'

    She adds: 'When we met, he calmly told me that I had to go public so I can live out the many years ahead of me with my head held high.'

    Jessie has pouty lips which she highlights with dramatic red lipstick and a habit of covering her mouth with her hand when she laughs.

    She has been feminine for as long as she can remember. 'Even when I was just four or five, I'd want to wear dresses and my mother would let me.'

    Not wanting to embarrass her father, she tried to suppress her effeminate ways.

    She left Kuching for high school in Toronto when she was in her teens. Thinking she was gay, she explored her sexuality by having a three-month relationship with a professor.

    'I realised he treated and loved me as a man, not a woman.'

    There were other brief flings but she never got the fulfillment she craved.

    She got herself psychologically evaluated in Canada but as a Christian, she couldn't accept the assessment that she was a transsexual.

    She buried herself in her studies. Besides a Bachelor of Science from the Hawaii Oriental Medical College, she also has a Master's of Science from Lafayette University in the US; and certificates and diplomas from the Beijing Medical Institute as well as the International Therapy Examination Council (ITEC) from Britain.

    To prove that I was a man, I even got engaged to a girl when I was studying in the US,' she says.

    Holding on to Beh's hand and sounding sheepish, she lets on: 'I asked her if it was okay that we did not have a sex life after marriage. She agreed. She was just a nice, pious Christian girl from Kuching.'

    Photo 2 "Newly-weds.jpg"
    The newlyweds in the bedroom of their Kuching home. -- STEPHANIE YEOW

    But Jessie couldn't go through with the marriage. 'After we got engaged, I actually lost my relationship with the Lord. I couldn't pray, I couldn't live with the fact that when I told her I loved her, I didn't mean it.'

    She started getting desperate. For two years, she would go to 'deliverance' sessions, hoping that her faith would help to expel her desire to be a woman. But those feelings only became stronger.

    'Something told me to go to Taiwan one day. So I did. I was browsing in a bookshop and came across a magazine with the number of a pastor. I called her, and she removed all my fears.'

    In KL, she saw a psychiatrist for an evaluation. For six months, she attended nearly 15 interviews which involved - among other things - completing complex questionnaires.

    The result again proved that she was a woman trapped in a man's body. She decided to have a sex change.

    Despite her demons, her professional life went well.

    She started out with two successful homeopathy and acupuncture clinics - in Kuching and KL. She closed the former after deciding to make KL her base. She also started Natural Health Farm, a successful health products business with 19 branches in Malaysia.

    She appeared on TV to give health talks and was the host of two health programmes on Malaysia's Radio 5 and RFM 98.8 as a man.

    She even cut two Chinese albums, eight and four years ago respectively.

    Ipoh-born Joshua Beh, 30, met the then Jeffrey Chua five years ago when the latter was giving a health talk.

    The soft-spoken accountancy graduate - whom his wife pronounces to be '100 per cent straight' - from the Agricultural University of Malaysia says: 'She was a very good speaker.'

    They started a friendship when he joined the same church.

    At that time, Beh, the only son of a sub-contractor and a housewife, had a girlfriend whom he had been seeing for more than five years.

    'Jessie then was just a nice and caring guy. There was no attraction.'

    Disillusioned with the 'creative accounting' he was sometimes asked to do in a construction firm, he quit to join Jessie's firm.

    He fell in love with her when he saw her as a woman, after the first of her operations. 'She had long hair, big eyes, full lips and curves - just the sort of look I wanted in a woman. I already knew her as a terrific person but when her look came out...'

    The fact that she used to be a man was not a concern, he says. 'My dilemma was how to initiate a relationship. She was in love with another man.'

    Indeed she was, with an engineer.

    In fact, she had six suitors, a fact readily confirmed by Beh and their close friend Brian Choot, who is sitting in on the interview.

    'I was actually engaged to him. We had an engagement party for 300 people at my father's house.'

    The relationship with the engineer - who had the word Jessie tattooed on one of his upper arms - was a rocky one which lasted two years. Incidentally, he was present at the wedding.

    She admits to two-timing him with Beh, a fact which both men knew.

    'I was really in love with the other guy, but I liked Joshua also. I was torn.'

    Beh, meanwhile, says: 'I'd get her sometimes for one week or two before she went back to the other guy.'

    He proposed to her six times. On the fourth attempt, he brought along a fruit knife to a gathering of nearly 40 people.

    In the midst of it, he stood up and said: 'What more do I have to do to tell you people I love her? Is this enough?'

    He took the knife out and slit his upper right arm, twice. He used the blood to write her a love note there and then.

    Jessie recalls: 'I nearly fainted and just cried for more than an hour.'

    Some people would probably call such behaviour psychotic but the groom says he was at his wit's end.

    'I just wanted her to know that I would love her forever. I didn't know how else to do it, I just hoped the letter would release and express all my passions and belief.'

    Unbelievable as it may sound, their group of 70 friends - half of whom supported Beh, and the other half the engineer - even organised contests to determine who should win Jessie.

    Beh's camp lost in the group debate. But he soundly trounced his rival in badminton, archery and basketball. He also got a landslide 70 per cent votes in the final 'polls'. Sadly, that didn't wean Jessie off the engineer completely.

    It took another year before Beh's persistence and sincerity won her over, for good. 'We are matched in many, many ways. I don't think of the other guy now. He's now dating my niece,' she adds, laughing.

    The groom, surprisingly, did not face resistance from his parents. 'My mother was unsure but when she met Jessie, she gave her approval.'

    The fact that his wife will never be able to conceive is not an issue. They are not ruling out adoption when the time is right.

    The couple didn't plan on being caught in a media maelstrom. The press, however, latched on to Jessie after she sang at a public concert organised by her uncle in Kuching.

    'Suddenly the papers all reported that I had a sex change,' she says.

    She is, however, candid enough to admit she does enjoy the attention.

    'I used to be a singer, I like being like a movie star. It is also good for business although I first thought that all the publicity would ruin it,' she says. Apparently, her business takings have gone up by nearly 30 per cent.

    'Many people just drop into the office, wanting to see how I look like.'

    She makes no apologies for her lavish wedding. 'It's a grand wedding but we want to make a statement. It's a statement for those who love us and who support us. It's also a statement for those who don't believe in us.'

    Quietly pleasant and a lot less loquacious than his wife, Beh says: 'I don't like the attention but for her, I'll do it. I hope the attention will help to make the public understand that she's leading a normal life, that she has settled down and she's doing okay.'
      November 20, 2005 5:19 AM GMT
    0
  • Interesting article, Jennifer, thank you for sharing it.
    "A live lived in fear is a life half-lived." - Native American proverb. "Inside every man is a woman who was drowned in testosterone before birth". - Wendy Jeanette Larsen "It is better to be hated for what you are than loved for what you're not." - Andre Gide (French writer)
      November 20, 2005 5:56 AM GMT
    0
  • Hi Jennifer. Thanks for the update. I wish them well.
    You can get anything you want at Alice's restaurant.
      November 20, 2005 1:29 PM GMT
    0
  • Last words...
    "My husband loves my lips; he says they are full. Of course, the thing that attracted him to me was my femininity".

    Interview with Ms. Jessie Chung
    New Straits Times, Saturday, November 19, 2005
      November 20, 2005 6:28 PM GMT
    0