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Tuesday, July 8, 2025

Vic­timised for sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion

Milly happy after being granted asylum

by

2732 days ago
20180114

Dey­one "Mil­ly" Guisep­pi fled this coun­try five years ago af­ter be­ing bul­lied, ha­rassed and vic­timised for her sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion and sought asy­lum in a Eu­ro­pean coun­try.

Guisep­pi has since been grant­ed asy­lum and is hap­py.

"I am in an en­vi­ron­ment where it is more pos­i­tive and I think more clear­ly and it is con­ducive to me pro­gress­ing, I can grow as a hu­man be­ing," Guisep­pi told the Sun­day Guardian.

"I think it's the best de­ci­sion I ever made," she said.

Guisep­pi, who was born a male, said at age three she re­alised that some­thing was dif­fer­ent with her.

"I knew but I just didn't have the words to say what that was."

It was on­ly when she turned 16, Guisep­pi said she was ac­tu­al­ly able to find the words to de­scribe what she was go­ing through.

"I was strug­gling to find my iden­ti­ty or to at least fit in or feel like I be­longed some­where. I al­ways thought that I was gay but then I re­alised I was trans­gen­der, many peo­ple just don’t un­der­stand in Trinidad and To­ba­go and they try to put every­thing in­to the box of be­ing gay," Guisep­pi said.

Guisep­pi said that be­ing trans­gen­der has to do with your gen­der, while be­ing gay has to do with who you are at­tract­ed to.

Even­tu­al­ly as Guisep­pi grew old­er, she de­cid­ed she want­ed to tran­si­tion.

"I de­cid­ed that I want­ed to tran­si­tion and didn’t want to stay liv­ing an un­hap­py life as some­body I wasn't," she said.

Guisep­pi ap­proached a pri­vate doc­tor for hor­mone ther­a­py to as­sist in her tran­si­tion.

The process, how­ev­er, was ex­treme­ly ex­pen­sive and Guisep­pi even­tu­al­ly sought ther­a­py at a pub­lic health fa­cil­i­ty.

She al­so had to un­der­go psy­chi­atric analy­sis.

"I was grad­u­al­ly chang­ing my­self, noth­ing ex­treme, by us­ing make-up and wear­ing clothes that was more fem­i­nine," Guisep­pi said.

Things, how­ev­er, be­came prob­lem­at­ic when she got a new boss who was al­so a pas­tor.

"He start­ed to ha­rass me about how I chose to ex­press my­self in the way I dressed and I was even giv­en a doc­u­ment high­light­ing the dress code for men and women," she said.

The com­pa­ny's hu­man re­source de­part­ment al­so got in­volved.

"The ha­rass­ment was be­com­ing con­tin­u­ous and I re­al­ly didn't want to go to work any more. It was a nui­sance, and if I can't work then I can't sup­port my­self," she said.

The Equal Op­por­tu­ni­ty Com­mis­sion could not help

Guisep­pi ap­proached the Equal Op­por­tu­ni­ty Com­mis­sion (EOC) and filed a com­plaint about vic­tim­i­sa­tion.

"I stood against the vic­tim­i­sa­tion be­cause I thought it was wrong, I was do­ing my work and I couldn't un­der­stand why I was be­ing ha­rassed like this, but I think it is part of our so­ci­ety in Trinidad where it is seen as be­ing bad to be trans­gen­der, gay or les­bian," Guisep­pi said.

"Peo­ple should be able to be them­selves, they shouldn't have to change for oth­er peo­ple be­cause I was not harm­ing any­body."

How­ev­er, ac­cord­ing to the EOC Act, peo­ple who claim to be dis­crim­i­nat­ed against on the ba­sis of sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion have no re­course.

The act pro­hibits dis­crim­i­na­tion against in­di­vid­u­als on sev­en grounds (race, eth­nic­i­ty, re­li­gion, sex, mar­i­tal sta­tus, ori­gin and dis­abil­i­ty), but sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion is ex­press­ly ex­clud­ed from pro­tec­tion.

Al­though the act in­cludes sex as a sta­tus ground, Sec­tion 3, the in­ter­pre­ta­tion sec­tion, pro­vides that "sex does not in­clude sex­u­al pref­er­ence or ori­en­ta­tion".

Both EOC chair­man Lynette See­baran-Suite and head of The Coali­tion Ad­vo­cat­ing for In­clu­sion of Sex­u­al Ori­en­ta­tion (CAISO) Col­in Robin­son have called for this to be changed.

Guisep­pi said this hurt.

"The EOC told me they couldn't help me be­cause gen­der in T&T is lim­it­ed to be­ing male or fe­male. It made me feel like that with me be­ing trans­gen­der that the EOC was telling me I wasn't a cit­i­zen be­cause of my gen­der, it was like they were say­ing they are un­will­ing to pro­tect me be­cause in the laws of Trinidad and To­ba­go it says that there are on­ly two gen­ders," she said.

"My gen­der was not pro­tect­ed un­der the act. It is a shame that all Trinida­di­ans can­not be pro­tect­ed from dis­crim­i­na­tion and it's a shame that all Trinida­di­ans can't live in their coun­try and be hap­py. I'm still proud to be a Trinida­di­an and no­body can take that away from me, but I think in chang­ing some of the laws we will be more in­clu­sive to peo­ple who are from the LGBTQIA com­mu­ni­ty. It is pro­tect­ing your cit­i­zens, which is ba­sic hu­man rights."

While go­ing through the EOC process, Guisep­pi was al­so phys­i­cal­ly at­tacked.

Lack of sup­port from her fam­i­ly was al­so an is­sue.

"It all reached a break­ing point," she said.

Guisep­pi bought a tick­et and left the coun­try for green­er pas­tures.

When she land­ed, she filed for asy­lum and had to un­der­go the req­ui­site in­ter­views.

She has since been grant­ed asy­lum.

"If Trinidad and To­ba­go couldn't pro­tect me and it is my own, then what could I do again. If my own didn't care about me and want to see the de­struc­tion of me be­cause of on­ly one as­pect of me then I had no choice but to move away and get out of that neg­a­tive sit­u­a­tion," she said.

"It was ex­treme­ly over­whelm­ing when I reached be­cause, of course, I didn't speak the lan­guage, there was dif­fer­ent weath­er, dif­fer­ent peo­ple and a dif­fer­ent cul­ture, it is still a bit over­whelm­ing some­times but I’m get­ting ac­cus­tomed to it," Guisep­pi said.

Guisep­pi is cur­rent­ly in uni­ver­si­ty.


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