The Sensitive Third World – LGBT

You cannot help but notice them, standing on the pavement, at signals – faces shining with a heavy layer of pancake, statuesque bodies clad in wispy chiffon saris or satiny, tight fitting salwar kameez, bangles on their hairy arms. So difficult is their live's today that people belonging to the third gender find access barred to malls, workplaces, even hospitals.

For some to be born as a female trapped in a male body or vice-versa, the gender of the soul to that of the body did not seem to match. It was like growing up in a confined body that you don’t recognize. For a long time in India, children born as hermaphrodites were handed over to the community of eunuchs. When these kids grew up in a community which demands that a man feels sexually attracted to a woman and a woman gets sexually inclined towards a man, these community people were called as hijda, chakka, sixer, enunchs. That is what it came down to and like all we care!

What I notice in some parts of the society who respect the sensitivities associated with sexual desire and demands that there has been a growing awareness of hermaphrodites and many young parents are contemplating corrective sexual surgery for their children. Though the genitals mark your identity, it is the hormones that decide your behavior. A misconception is when there is a sex change, society feels a person has changed his sex to get into a relationship with the opposite sex. But the fact remains, they do so to get a new identity and to have a relation with their own self, which was somewhere lost and definitely not for others.

Let’s face it, the double-standard mind-set that we have today says, it’s important to accept ourselves, but for a child as he/she grows up, what is fed is, people around you should accept you in the first place so you get self-acceptance. And that builds a lot of pressure. We bring up kids where the ultimatum is to get married. In situations like these, they are left abandoned because many don’t understand the sensitivities of this and they don’t see the family lineage going forward (I include the females because they will not bear kids in their womb to take the family forward). They start to live in denial and trust me there is no slow poison as lethal as living in denial.

First off, recognize and realize that having a certain sexual orientation is not a disease which pronounces a person as terminally ill. It’s a mix of biological, hormonal, genetic and psychological variances. If you ask a heterosexual to become a homosexual or bisexual it is not possible, then why force or give an option to opt out of it for a person who is a homosexual.

Everything in the society is clearly demarcated as male and female, right from how a child is supposed to play, what toys the child chooses to play with is so closely monitored to the responsibilities that he or she takes up at home or in the world outside on becoming an adult. Everything is so clearly outlined as the ‘man’ or the ‘woman’ thing to do. Baffled by the ‘abnormal’ behavior of a child when he/she confesses the liking's or that of a transgender child, many parents punish them – sometimes quite brutally – and unwittingly make them feel like a freak. When the so called “normal” kids play outside, they are warned from befriending the kids who fall under this “LGBT” category out of fear that these “normal” kids might as well develop the same inclination and as a result might ridicule the family. What is important today is to teach them that people who they interact with are as normal as the assembled “Male” and “Female” community.

Not so long ago, I was one among those many people who was always scared of interacting with people who din't belong to the quintessential community. I twitched my face every time I saw them. I ran in the opposite direction the moment I realized they were approaching me for money. I always felt inconvenienced in their presence. But as I “educated” myself about them I understood one important and quality emotion that they all have in common - they are never in search of sympathy. All they want is a life of dignity. This is only possible if we actively include them in the mainstream, so that they can have a dignified life as normal as anyone of us desire to have. What is stopping us from giving them the respect and acceptance they deserve?

Today, as I wait for signal to turn green, or in an auto, or in any public transport and I see a transgender approaching me, I do hand over money with dignity and smile back. It feels nice to be reciprocated with the same warmth. It is thus important to accept them socially and interact with them with equal ease like you and me.

Oh and one more thing, I now call them as my “smiling friends”.