Reclaiming Transgender Identity Through Intersectionality and Decoloniality: A Critical Autoethnography of an Academic-Activist Performance

Abstract

ABSTRACT As a Malaysian Muslim transwoman and a social justice researcher, exploring her transgender identity in a conservative society positions Aisya within a long history of oppression and injustice alongside other global marginalised and vulnerable assigned-male-at-birth transgender groups. This paper offers reflections on Aisya’s lived experience of discrimination arising from her trans identity. It focuses on linking critical theory (decoloniality and intersectionality), methodology (autoethnography) and theological epistemology (a progressive Muslim standpoint), while the analysis ‘tells’ the autoethnographic ‘transgender identity’. By exploring her lived experience in a heterocisnormative neocolonial setting, this paper encourages a critical discourse of decolonising Aisya’s transgender identity by using intersectional feminist theory and critical authoethnography as methods of decolonial performance. This paper contests the colonial matrix of power by dismantling colonialism through rebuilding and rediscovering ancient and pre-colonial knowledge of Indigenous and colonised people to decentre heterocisnormativity, gender hierarchies and racial privilege. Ultimately, this paper invites readers to come along on a social justice journey through decolonial intersectional feminism, arise together in critical solidarity, and carry compassion, care, love, and the desire to heal from the grievances of colonialism.