Fight or Flight Response: An Intersectional Critical Discourse Representation of a Malaysian Muslim Transgender Woman in News Reports

In a Muslim-majority country such as Malaysia, the transgender community is not only subjected to the nonrecognition of their gender identity but also to persecution and hate crimes as there is a lack of a legal framework to protect their rights. Despite several human rights advocates and religious scholars raising their voices highlighting the injustices thus far against this minority group, the Muslim transgender woman is still looked upon as a deviant and her transgenderism, a sin, by society at large. This study adopts the intersectional critical discourse analysis approach to investigate the portrayal of a Muslim transgender woman in the local English news media. It examines the use of sensationalism in news headlines, frequency of voices, presuppositions, vocabulary, grammatical agency, and visual semiosis to uncover the hidden power relations and ideologies embedded in news discourse within the context of transgenderism. As the main role of the media is to educate, inform, and shape public opinion, the hostile treatment of transgender women in the news should be addressed with urgency and more inclusive news articles put forward given that the local coverage of newspapers is pertinent to empower the informed and develop programs and policies that protect marginalized groups.