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Australia’s fa’afafine community is growing, and they want their voices heard
From the ABC News Breakfast By James Hancock
Read the full article hereQuote:Latoya Hoeg had an upbringing some kids can only dream of.Rather than struggling to fit in as a boy, her Samoan family embraced her differences.
“I was an effeminate person,” Latoya explains.
“I was just being me, and my family back in Samoa, when I spoke, they just went, ‘fa’afafine!'”
Fa’afafine means the mannerisms of a woman in Samoan culture, and the custom is practiced in other Pacific Island countries too.
Traditionally, they are important to family life, performing stereotypically feminine roles like cooking meals and caring for children or ageing parents.
Families of all boys would raise one or more of them as fa’afafine. They were not necessarily effeminate and could go on to marry women.
But over time, what it means to be fa’afafine has evolved to include the transgender community.
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Quote:It was Latoya’s mother who particularly nurtured her individuality.“They just guide them in the right way, they don’t push them into something — and that’s the way our culture is,” she said.
“I had brothers and they played rugby. I never held a rugby ball in my life.”
Fa’afafine are respected in Samoan society.
But, paradoxically, the nation’s LGBT community faces discrimination and sodomy is unlawful.
Latoya first experienced hatred when her mother got cancer and she was forced to move to New Zealand in the early 1980s.
Her mother warned her to cut her hair and wear men’s clothes to fit in and find work.
It turned out her fears were well-founded.
After being caught wearing mascara by her boss, Latoya brushed it off by saying she had been at a costume party.
Her boss expressed relief at the excuse.
“I can’t stand those sort of people,” they said.
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