Why are they treated like shit? The Third Gender

Today, with a great level of confidence, we shout out loud that we humans are very developed and we denote ourselves as ‘open minded’ or we just say that we don’t discriminate on any basis, we appreciate someone’s speciality but are we actually supporting our own words by our actions? If we do that’s an appreciating thing, I really respect those people who actually consider a human as a human or just respect other people and their speciality. By looking at the poster you might have got the idea what I am talking about, yeah it’s about the third gender which is transgender.

I met a lot of people my age or older than me, we also had conversations on many topics. This topic is also a part of it. While conversing with people older than me (5-6 years older than me), I noticed that people have unique views on transgenders or the LGBTQ community. Some of them really don’t have any problem with trans people, these kinds of people will have a good tone and will use such good kind of words while talking about transgenders. Some people think that it’s a disease. Yeah, I am not kidding, this is true but teenagers or adults also consider being transgender as a disease or a disgusting thing. Hearing these kinds of words makes me laugh, like Sir/ma'am, what kind of disease is it, would you mind explaining it? Is it caused by mosquitoes, or any animal or is it a virus? What are the medications for this disease? If I talk about people my age or you can say students, different places will have different environments and children’s behaviour towards a trans person but what I noticed in my surroundings is that in a place like Delhi which comes in tier 1 cities, there are still many students who don’t even want to discuss about the word ‘transgender’. I have experienced that many students just respect other genders on school assignments, they’ll simply write beautiful words about trans people on their projects but in real life, these people are calling transgenders or LGBTQ ‘chhakka’, ‘mitha’ and these people are laughing at them. I really wanna ask them, what is so funny about being trans? Is their face different from a human face? Are they having horns on their forehead? Or do they have any funny patterns or drawings on their face?

I don’t consider many cities as developed even if they are categorised as developed by the government. The reason is simple, I don’t consider big buildings, metro, good roads, parks, malls, hospitals, or people using brandy things as development until the people of that area are developed by their minds. Imagine a good city with all these things mentioned above, and now a group of people is abusing people based on their gender, religion, caste, or skin tone. What will come to your mind? Do you think that the city is fully developed? I don’t.

Now the question is, why do people still have such rigid thoughts about transgenders? As I mentioned earlier, the reason is the environment in which people have grown up. Most families in India don’t want to talk about such important topics with their kids. If the child tries to ask them questions about transgenders, parents ignore their question by saying, “This is none of your business” or “You are a kid you should stay out of this.” In schools, children participate in various activities. I remember a very common activity which is ‘gender equality.’ As a kid, I never knew the meaning of transgenders, that was my environment. So, I used to draw or write about women’s rights only. As I started to realize the importance of all genders, I tried to make posters or write about the actual ‘gender equality’ which must be among all genders. Whenever I tried to make something about transgenders, I was stopped by my teachers by saying, “You have to create content on gender equality with women.” I know that women need our support and they are still treated badly, but my question is from all those teachers and elders, why was I stopped from making pictures or content for transgenders if the theme is ‘gender equality’? I will happily do the same for women, but why was I stopped then?

How can we stop such behaviour?

Before I jump to the direct answer to this question, I’ll talk about which age group we have to target. You can’t go to an adult and tell them, they need to stop hating transgender, even if you ask them to, they will not. They are grown-ups now. They have already built their mindset and habits. I am not saying that adults can’t change their mindset, they can but it will be too difficult for them. We need to build a strongly developed mindset in kids and teenagers. We need to create such an environment for them so that they don’t find being transgender as bad or talking about them awkward and when they will grow up in such a society, they will not see a transgender with the same perspective as others see and they will not hesitate to talk about them publicly. There can be various ways to build such a good environment for the child. There can be many activities and small talkies that parents or schools can conduct with children. It’s upon you, how you want to develop that kid’s mind. When we create such an environment then that kid will never ask, “Why wasn’t I taught about transgender?” just like I did.

Ridhima