Every day, the realities of my queerness make me hold on tighter to the ones I love. As a mixed race first generation immigrant, whose mother moved from Malaysia to the UK in the 1960s, I get to enjoy the benefits of the land that once colonised my mother’s. I can walk down the street holding the hand of my lover, and kiss their face, but if we went home to Malaysia, this love would be fined, caned or locked away. Not for me, as a foreigner to my motherland and of Chinese descent, but for my partner, a Malaysian born Malay.
In Malaysia, there are no LGBTQ+ rights, with a penalty of up to 20 years in prison for sodomy; Global Trans Rights Index ranks Malaysia as the second worst country in the world for transgender rights. And a privileged white man – the lead singer of British band the 1975 – has inadvertently made this situation worse.
Speaking on stage at Good Vibes festival in Kuala Lumpur, Matty Healy – a champagne bottle in his hand – told the Muslim majority crowd: “I do not see the point of inviting the 1975 to a country and then telling us who we can have sex with,” before kissing his male bandmate, Ross MacDonald. “I’m sorry if that offends you, and you’re religious … If you want to invite me here to do a show, you can fuck off. I’ll take your money, you can ban me, but I’ve done this before, and it doesn’t feel good.” The band were indeed banned within half an hour, and the next two days of the festival were cancelled.
Condemnation has been swift from Malaysia’s music scene – friends close to the scene tell me the cancellation has robbed local musicians of the chance to perform on a major stage, and festival vendors of cashflow – and also taken from the LGBTQ+ community, as the Guardian has reported.
However good Healy’s intentions or off-the-cuff his remarks, his apparent white saviour complex and performative activism mirror the post-colonial guilt that many white westerners seem to have when visiting countries once ruled by the British empire.
Britain ruled “Malaya” from 1824, taking over from the Dutch, who had been there since 1641 and before them the Portuguese from 1511, with Japan occupying between 1941 and 1945. After the war the British returned until Malaysia finally gained independence on 31 August 1957. It is illegal to be gay in 64 countries, and more than half of these countries were under European colonial rule at some point. Malaysia’s own 377A penal code that forbids homosexual activity is a homophobic legacy left behind from this colonial era.
A precolonial Malay archipelago was home to an acceptance of gender variance. The sida-sida were androgynous male-bodied priests who served in the palaces of the Sultans – they typically wore women’s clothes, and probably engaged in sexual relationships with the same or both sexes. They took on the role of protector of both the human and spirit world, safeguarding women and protecting food and clothing from being tampered with by humans or spirits.
In Borneo, the manang bali were a group of gender non-conforming shamans, responsible for ritual healing, and were often referred to as “transformed shamans”. Because of this, they took on the highest rank of shamanhood in the Indigenous Iban tribe and practised for hundreds of years, until the 1800s when the British came and brought Christianity with them.
As a Muslim country, sharia law is also enacted on LGBTQ+ Malaysians, with flogging and caning as punishments. In September 2018 two women were caned six times before a courtroom audience and fined 3,300 ringgit (£561) for “attempting to have lesbian sex in a parked car”. A queer Halloween celebration in 2022 at RexKL, an arts venue in Kuala Lumpur that hosts a wide range of events for the creative community, was raided; local queer organisation Justice for Sisters reported at least 24 people arrested on various grounds. The Islamic Authority picked people out at random, separating Muslims from non-Muslims, and 18 gender-diverse people who were said to be “male … posing as women” were arrested.
Healy’s terrible misjudgment was to steam into this highly complex and historically fraught situation without due care, or seemingly enough research. The British LGBTQ+ rights campaigner Peter Tatchell has argued in these pages that Healy “succeeded in drawing global attention to Malaysia’s persecution of its queer citizens”, and “simply wanted to show solidarity … That strikes me as perfectly valid.” But one queer Malaysian producer and DJ has argued to me in recent days that “careless displays of ‘activism’, in the form of a conceited performance, damage the work of grassroots activists”. Another queer Malaysian has told me that Healy’s behaviour will make rightwing politicians “more paranoid”, and give them more ammo to further anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-music narratives. The fear is that queer artists will find it harder to secure spaces for their events.
What’s doubly galling is that there are plenty of those grassroots organisations doing work in a more careful and sustained way. Justice for Sisters raises awareness about violence and persecution towards Mak Nyah (transgender women) in Malaysia. It was founded by Nisha Ayub, who also co-founded Seed Foundation, a non-profit organisation that provides support for the trans, homeless and other marginalised communities of Malaysia. This year, the groups Queer Lapis, Jejaka, Garabtaag and Justice For Sisters have been fundraising to help LGBTQIA+ refugees and migrants in Malaysia secure housing, healthcare, food and employment. Legal Dignity, meanwhile, is a queer-affirming feminist initiative sharing legal resources.
Healy is protected by his status – he can return to the UK, where will face nothing more than a travel ban or slap on the wrist. He flies into a country, makes a clumsy provocation, leaves damage in his wake – then posts memes poking fun at the cancellation and at Malaysia from behind the safety of his phone screen.
To Healy and his fans: if you want to actually help LGBTQ+ people in Malaysia, please consider funding the aforementioned organisations. And to other western artists whose intentions come from a place of solidarity: if we want to stand with causes that affect cultures other than our own, we must think deeply about our position of privilege, utilising our voice in a meaningful, respectful way. Listen to the folks in the countries you want to stand with, the ones whose real experiences are affected by these issues, and think about the repercussions of your actions. No one person is a representative of a whole community, but if we can weave our voices together and put our egos aside – rockstar or otherwise – we can slowly make meaningful change.
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