Nguyen Van Nga, born in 1988, and Nguyen Van Chau, born in 1991, grew up in a small house on Doan Van Bo street in district 4 in HCM City. 

Their names, Nga and Chau, were given by their father, who had led a life of poverty and cherished the hope that his two sons would grow up well and have lives happier than his own.

When they were kids, Chau and Nga realized they were different from other boys. Though they looked physically male, they had the soul of girls. They liked wearing dresses and playing with dolls, and often used their mother’s lipsticks to make up each other.

Because Nga and Chau’s appearance and gestures were feminine, their parents tried to make them practice looking manlier and tougher.

Locals called them a derogatory word, ‘be de’ (fag), and even prohibited their children from making friends with Nga and Chau, because they feared the children would "contract ‘gay’ disease".

‘At that time, the concept homosexuality and transgender remained unfamiliar to the majority of people, so we suffered from discriminatory treatment. My sister and I played with each other alone. Our world just existed in a closed room, with some self-made toys for girls,” Chau recalled.

Chau and Nga’s coming out path was thorny. Nga was the first who declared her chosen gender identity. She confidently grew her hair long, wore girl's clothes, used lipstick, and wore high heels.

However, she incurred physical and mental pain. Chau witnessed her sister endure countless beatings from their father, and teardrops from the mother.

As the beatings became unbearable, Nga decided to leave home to join a troupe and took various jobs to earn a living.

Later, their parents, feeling sorry for their child, went looking for Nga and advised her to return home.

“I realized that parents’ love and tolerance is endless. Parents and family are always the biggest support for children,” Chau said.

Some years later, it was Chau’s turn to come out. Their parents were not as shocked as they were when hearing the confession from Nga, but they still felt great pain.

Chau said that her path was not as difficult as her sister’s.

“My sister was beaten three times, but I was beaten only once. My sister came out first, so she had to experience a tougher road,” she said.

Attitude of parents

“No one wants to grow up into people who have the ‘body of a caterpillar and soul of a butterfly’. However, we have to accept the truth,” Chau said.

The only thing Chau and her sister could do was struggle with their fate.

Chau was the first to decide to have a transgender operation. She had quickly saved enough money from her business for the operation.

One day in 2015, the father, on an old motorbike, took Chau to the airport for a flight to Thailand for the operation. Chau saw her father standing quietly at the airport gate and felt sorry for him.

In 2018, on the same motorbike, the father took Nga to the airport. He was in tears both times when seeing off his children.

After the transgender operations, Nga and Chau returned home to love from their family members. Both of them felt happy as their parents took care of them during the post-surgery period.

The mother helped the children clean their wounds, and the father cooked nutritious dishes.

Chau and Nga’s parents’ most difficult time is now over, and their main concern is the health of their children, not their gender identity.

“My parents always tell me and Nga that we need to live well and become good-natured people,” Chau said.

Nga now works for a troupe, and Chau runs a restaurant.

Thanh Minh