Rory's statement
My name is Rory, Im 21, Im from Malaysia, but Ive been in London for about two years for university. My preferred pronouns are they, their, them. I identify as genderqueer because I dont want to confine myself to one or the other and I guess I prefer to be ambiguous.
Im on my final year of Computer Science and I definitely want to stay here in London after I graduate. I was supposed to study accounting and finance, but I changed my mind last minute because I found it too boring. It was pretty risky because I didnt have any background in computing or even programming, but Im now on my final year and its been really good for me. I dont want to settle down back home because I think London is the most comfortable place for me and Ive met a lot of queers here, while at home Im not really myself. LGTQ people are not recognised in Malaysia and a new law against gay people has been approved quite recently, so they can throw you in jail for 20 years and give you some lashings just for your sexual orientation.
When I was growing up I wasnt either girly or boyish, I was more in-between, but back then, even though I knew I was a bit different from everyone else, I kept everything to myself. Since I moved here and Ive had access to the queer community, Ive been able to be more open about my gender identity and sexuality.
I think unfortunately people are still quite ignorant about gender and if youre not actually in the community, its unlikely that youd be exposed to it and you wont learn about it. Personally I didnt know much about it myself and only once I started meeting other queer people Ive found out a way to describe what I felt since I was little. For example I didnt realise that you could be gender fluid before coming to London.
I underwent a brief period of transition where I took Testosterone. I was on it for approximately 7 months until I decided to stop. The main reason I stopped was because I felt I was comfortable with the level I was at and happy about it.
I am currently under a student visa. I've been on it since the start of my university course and it will run out this October 2013. I really hope I could somehow extend my visa to continue to do a Master's Degree or try to get a job. The latter option is definitely much better since the fees to do a Master's degree are very expensive for international students.Id love to keep working to combine my programming skills with art applications. For my final year project Im trying to translate artworks into sounds for blind people, focusing on Mondrians work.
My supervisor is an expert in music cognition and psychology and most people in my class are doing projects on how music affects people, so I decided to try something different. At first I thought about doing an installation, an art gallery for blind people where they could go in and hear sounds, but Im afraid that I wont be able to do the installation because of time limits, so Ive changed slightly the project and maybe in the future Ill be able to finish the whole thing as I envisioned.
