This short presentation outlines the experience of being transgendered ("trans") people in Asia. The speaker examines the role that the psychiatric pathologisation of transgender (the idea that it is a mental disorder) may play in the lives of trans people. Recent research in seven countries, most of them Asian, indicates the belief that trans people are mentally sick is strongly associated with transphobia. The speaker proposes the de-pathologisation of transgenderism along the lines of the recent de-pathologisation of homosexuality; specifically, the urgent removal of "gender identity disorder" and related terms from all psychiatric manuals currently in international usage.