“They were very rough,” she said, adding that she is fortunate that her family accepts her, unlike the case for some of her friends.

She said that she turned down a job offer at a bank when its managers insisted that she cut her hair short, and that she turned to sex work because it helped pay for the “monthly maintenance” required to keep her looking female, including hormones, and allowed her to dress as she liked.

One of the other litigants, a 25-year-old makeup artist who has been fined 1,000 ringgit on three occasions for dressing as a woman, said religious officers had once punched her in the face.

She said she wanted to officially change her name and gender, because it was stressful knowing that she could be arrested at any time and jailed.

“This is not just for me,” she said of the court case.

“It’s also for the community. This is something that needs to be done. We need to highlight the existence of transpeople in this country,” she said.

The Negri Sembilan State and central government departments responsible for Islamic affairs did not respond to requests for comment.

Thilaga Sulathireh, an independent researcher and rights advocate who has helped the four take their case to court, said that there were no publicly available figures indicating the total number of Malaysian men who have been prosecuted for dressing as women but that arrests were not uncommon.