I was reading about section 377 of IPC. While I was searching about this,I was stopped by a link saying: Shabnam Mausi: india’s first transgenders MLA. Shabnam mausi was MLA from sohagpur seat of madhya pradesh, my own state. Then suddenly I read another link saying Kamla Mausi: india’s first transgenders mayor of Katni , a district of madhya pradesh ,that is neighbouring to my very own district. These informations were very inspiring and they encouraged me to read more and more about transgenders. I ended up watching 4-5 eye opening documentaries about their lives, one movie by Ashutosh Rana on Shabnam mausi itself, many news clippings and interviews and also how internationally their condition is.
I started to feel very bad. How can such a big section of our society continues to be without face and identity? Society discards them but they need society. In one of the clip I saw a transgenders saying in an interview that health and medical treatment is their one of the biggest problem. No hospital and no doctors treats them as humans . thus they gradually have stopped going to doctors and hospitals, mostly they cure their ailments themselves if they could , else they die a painful and silent death. It really shook me.
I have often seen them begging on traffic lights and on train coaches. It is very annoying for passengers and passers by. They are treated inhumanly for their this act. But today I am feeling as to what else can they do? It is us who has made them to do this . had this society ever accepted them,allowed them education and a respectfull identity ,they could also have got jobs and won’t be at others mercy. But now, they are not good enough to fit in any job, they lack education and skills for it. Even if some of them have it, who will give them job?? Their sexual exploitation is very rampant. If they have to live ,they need to do something and this drives them to begging or towards prostitution.
We need to understand one thing. Nobody chooses to be transgenders just to get rejected by family,friends and whole society. It takes lots of courage to live the real identity. They are only brave enough to accept themselves the way they are and still remain present in this highly unjust society.
I want to mention one Web series I watched on YouTube, “All about sec 377”,where they have shown the mental war of a transgender person, 24×7 he faces judgements of every other person he comes across with. He is confidant about his identity,he has accepted himself the way he is, but recurring denials of society make him to question himself, at last :- “ why I am like this? Why I am not normal?” this brought tears to my eyes, because there is nothing abnormal about him.
Why should they be called abnormals? Just because two-gender fallacy of this dominant society cannot understand them,cannot feel comfortable with them, because government t never took pain to write some rules for their identity ever. We as a society are shrinking their space to live and breath. It is not their fault but our ignorance , false pride and cowardness that is making their lives terrible. As a society if we cannot help them,let us not try to judge them,comment them and categories them as unwanted. For human beings ,gender should not be their real identity, it should be their deeds . Let us accept this.