Transgender Advocacy in Malaysia: SEED Foundation’s Strategic Efforts Against Conversion Therapy

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-352-8_29How to use a DOI?

Keywords

APTN; conversion therapy; SEED Malaysia; TAN; transgender rights

Abstract

Given that the practice of conversion therapy under the premise of religion — one that violates the basic tenets of universal human rights — still exists, transgender rights and human rights violation in Malaysia is real issue to tackle with. As a transgender-led non-profit organisation focusing on the transgender community, SEED Foundation Malaysia aims to be a voice for trans rights and put an end to conversion therapy in Malaysia. At SEED Foundation, the primary object is to promote the legislation policies for transgender rights and protection against abuses experienced by them. The strategies used by SEED Foundation in their advocacy can be examined from many perspectives, such as those offered by the transnational networks framework, agenda-setting research, and the research on information and symbolic politics. SEED Foundations have successfully deployed what is known as value politics to their benefit in the form of information politics, for instance by increasing awareness on the public stage of the violence generated by the practice of conversion therapy against transgender individuals. And meanwhile, they've built a wide-ranging network of relations with inter-national non-profits via leverage politics, especially groups such as the Asia Pacific Transgender Network, and made loud noise on the global stage. Researchers have explored these methods through qualitative de-scription and careful document analy-sis to highlight local challenges and SEED's initiatives that address those challenges. This research seeks to present a more holistic view of the challenges the Malaysian transgender community face and how SEED Foundation's advocacy indirectly focuses on such reform.

Copyright

© 2025 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Putu Ratih Kumala Dewi
AU  - Baiq Nayla Adisty Variza
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/01/21
TI  - Transgender Advocacy in Malaysia: SEED Foundation’s Strategic Efforts Against Conversion Therapy
BT  - Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Humanities and Social Science (ICHSS 2024)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 349
EP  - 363
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-352-8_29
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-352-8_29
ID  - Dewi2025
ER  -