#I apologize if I sound messy or anything like that I'm heavily sleep deprived but I thought this was a super interesting question xD

[terresdebrume]

You might have answered this before, like this may be a known thing on your blog, but are you out as trans at work,and if not, do they think you're a cis guy, or a cis woman? I am really interested in your personal posts about your students and the various cultural shit at play, and the ones you've tried to support in various ways regarding queer issues and super conservative traditional families. and also about your desire to have a baby, which presumably work would know about. So I was just wondering if you were Mr Matt at work, or not? I am looking to travel and I have no idea of the level of acceptance by employers in Asian countries. Obviously feel free to ignore this if it isn't something you want to disclose but I've been wondering for a while.

Hey :D

I don't mind the question at all :D

I am out at work kind of by necessity because I haven't changed my legal name yet nor started any kind of medical transition... So like, practically speaking, in terms of visual, more people read me as a soft butch woman than a guy, and I regularly correct students who accidentally misgender me for various reasons x)

But I am Mr. Matt and the students don't know any other name for me, and my colleagues probably don't clock my deadname too much when it's left on internal documents so I'm more or less 'eh' about it xD

In terms of practicality, it's important to keep in mind that I am a white foreigner who makes almost 8 times the median salary every month, which affords me a LOT of leeway! Also the existence of trans people doesn't seem to have penetrated the Cambodian collective consciousness the way it has the European or American mind, so a lot of people haven't had the opportunity to form a lot of prejudice.

Because of that, I feel like for a lot of people they just see me as doing my weird foreigner thing and largely ignore it xD I also rely a decent bit on being a low maintenance trans guy: I pick my battles about the way people gender me and generally feel okay just like. Ignoring a lot of instances. I don't know that things would go as well, professionally, if I were to demand changes more forcefully.

Another thing worth noting re: Cambodia is that as far as I know there isn't really any legal framework to protect me against discrimination. Part of the reason why I stay in my school despite some shit that makes me angry is that I'm reasonably sure things will go fine overall, bc I've proven I was a good employee and we've had no scandal about me (well, apart from that one kid who was taken out of my class for discriminatory reasons)

Like, for the baby thing, I'm not too worried about *getting* the pregnancy leave or about not getting my job back when I'm done (although I'm aware that if they chose to do that I won't have any recourse) but more about things like "but how are we going to tell the parents about that???"

(Which ftr my preference goes to matter of fact honesty)

All that said: my school is also more culturally and ethnically diverse than most other schools for various reasons, which also influences the way I'm perceived in a major way. Most of my friends are also teachers and queer, and things have been fine for them overall, but they're also all cis so idk how it would play out if they were trans

As for traveling, well. I always do recommend at least looking up if your particular brand of queer is illegal where you want to go (it's not illegal in Cambodia), because you want to know where things stand before you land for sure! But at the same time, transphobia and queerphobia exist everywhere, it's not like there's a place where we can go where no asshole will find you, it's more a matter of like. Do you feel safe in your environment and can you be happy there—and a LOT of that is going to be a very case by case thing, I think

Also my personal philosophy on that is that if I stop going to places where there's transphobia I can't go to my parents' houses anymore so, you know. I stay flexible xD

ETA: Another thing I should add is that I'm 173cm and currently weight 96kg. I tower over and am significantly heavier than most of the Asian men I meet, and that also is its own layer of safety! And I mean, there are moments where I don't feel fully safe here, but it's mostly a gender neutral feeling (ie: drive by robbery is common here and sometimes I don't feel safe from it, but I don't feel like my gender identity plays into that)

But like, from a specific queer standpoint, the only time I felt unsafe as a trans guy, was that time I went to a friend's going away lunch and somebody's +1 (an expat) said he'd go full on mass shooter if a drag queen were to enter his nephew's school and was met with resounding silence from the other expats there, including my friends