#pride
Can you imagine yourself as a kid , who is in a situation who wants to badly urinate and you are unsure if you have to go the men's room or the women's ? How can you handle a situation when nature and fate is your arch nemesis . Being put in a situation where there is no solution for the most common and trivial of situations is a regular way of our life. The expression "I pissed on myself" literally happens to several of us out of extreme frustration as we curse the very existence of our physical self , unable to take a clear decision in which restroom we should rightfully relieve ourselves. The situation is at its nadir especially when the transformation onsets without a warning and neither ourselves nor our family-friends are able to take a comforting first step. Welcome to the Threefold existence of being a Transgender - The Undefined Human Race.
It is unknown if we should blame our mother for not feeding us properly or taking the right foods when we were in the womb or our fathers for impregnating our mothers with 2nd degree sperms. Whatever was the reason, we end up coming in to the world with so much excitement , only to be quickly extinguished in a few years for our failure to comply with the tried and tested human patterns of "Normalcy" and "Ideal existence". Man or Woman or Hmmm ? Are we a mere sound ? Are we indescribable ? Don't we also have 5 senses , experience hunger, sleep and sexual energy and the ability to defecate no matter how twisted our bodies might be ? It's not always the scorn that infuriates us, it's the sympathy that comes from a place of lack of understanding from the ( normal ) people. People are unclear how to live with us , man to man, woman to woman. Co-existing with us itself is like asking too much off them , so much that we end up magnetizing ourselves into bubbles in the society where we live together and grieve together about why we were even born. We can't even hear ourselves laugh in public simply due to the physical and vocal mismatch and we end up having heads dart at us in shock , like "what was that sound..." . If human civilization evolved to transport themselves across oceans , if they can make love to themselves even if they were of the same gender , if they can create new currencies , if anything appeared to be possible for humanity , why is our existence still not normalized ? Is is that big of an ask ? Tell me one thing , Yes. Our reproductive organs had got jumbled , our physical anatomy is crooked , our mental space is ambiguous , unable to decide when to be a man or woman ; which is the more dominant part of ourselves etc - But does that mean our entire race should be forever marginalized , oppressed ? Raped women and Black folks have had revolutions that roar their unfortunate mistreatments , but one must understand something here - a normal person doesn't put petitions and sue people - a rape survivor does, an acid attack survivor does . Normal people in normal situations don't cause uproars. When abnormal situations are the primary reason for normal people to rise in fury , what are we to say when our very normal existence is abnormal for no reason of ours?
Men ogle at us and Women avoid us , Boys tease us and Girls dominate us . Chaos is our friend for life.. All this internal vacillations of trying to figure out our identity from within converge in making us physically aggressive , coarse on the exterior and wounded in the interior, a colorful mess of human disaster . Our Indian counterparts often break down devastated when they narrate the day they were taught how to do the "clap" . The very sound of the clap is one of our identities . A sound. How different is this from a moo or a bark or meow. They give excruciating details of how they practice the clap and how to look people in the eye with confidence , how to decide what to wear and plan the most simplest of human gestures which are done effortlessly by the blessed normal ones. This constant ostracizing condescending pattern makes so many of us do the worst of things. Selling our bodies to maggots who would literally spread their legs or insert into anything that moved . We smell all the time. We smell of years and years of accumulated dirt from the tears that never saw a comforting hand to wipe it off. No designated , respected place of stay , no source of clean food or drinking water, tottered clothes and what not. We snatch food and articles from people and bully them into participating in acts of charity by wielding ourselves as witches who can curse people into doom . We expose our bodies to shock and stun people and capitalize that reaction into lending us something to live through the day. If one of us got sick, we can't even sit for a health check up without someone asking us to leave or treat us like rabid dogs. A temple , mosque , church doesn't make a difference for us , for we don't get to enter anywhere that easily for worship. Worst of all, parents allow kids to make fun of us by making gestures and calling us names and numbers. And think about our marriage life - with all this happening , can we even dream of getting married and starting a family ?
But there are some blessed sisters and brothers in our community as well , who meteor into the highest ranks by making a name for themselves in music, fine arts , social care and education systems . What irks and frustrates us is to see some rich people who undergo operations to convert themselves into the other gender , spending so much money through risky surgeries , implants and injections. If these rich individuals, who deliberately manipulate their bodies , spent a fraction of their money in our health care, in our daily sustenance , they would have earned so much blessings from the Transgender community. One must spend a thought to think if the calls of vanity need to be honored with such attention, when us folks fight to become normal.
When governments can build bridges and erect statues , when leaders can take care of physically challenged , blind and deaf friends , can't they not build societies for us where we have access to all the basic needs of life in every city like how there are railway quarters, army quarters? Until we build ourselves and grow respectfully into healthy , mature citizens we can live in these societies instead of living in the dark slums . Once we had shaped us into confident capable individuals , we can contribute something back to society and also derive comforts that are meant for all. You have no idea how much hope and yearning each one of us have . Whether to put it on god and fate, who created us like this , or blame humanity who fail to see look past our curse , being a transgender in a world that is hopelessly exponentially expanding across all horizons is the biggest hypocrisy of nature. We wouldn't completely say that situation is not getting better compared to the years before. We have inclusions in documents , forms , restrooms and it is catching up . But it is happening at a snails pace and in less effective contexts. It is a remedy applied after all the damage is done during the preceding years of judgement and derision. Not all of us get to live long , happy and wealthy - not even the normal ones . If that is the case , is expecting kindness & respect without judgement that big off an ask?
Take pride in who you are, but don't deride us because of it.
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