Our history and heritage, as we all know, shapes the kind of moulds we put our personalities into. There are legends and there are facts and then there are those stories that families keep under lock and key, hidden behind the boulders of the past. Our acceptance of the Transgender depends on a series of reactions that history has recorded. It would be incredibly hard to look at the world now and believe that the earliest records do show that transgender humans were greeted with great veneration as they were seen to be able to serve and understand a very complex mindset of both men and women, a different kind of ambidexterity.
However, what we find in records is often the surface of a much more intrinsic core and so is the case with transgender people. It is not knowledge that an outsider possesses but with an inclination to tap into the sentiments of this population, it gets easier to understand the struggles they go through.
The definition and interpretations of the transgender has gone through quite a few revisions over the years. In basic terms, it is a person who has been born with the physical orientation of a certain gender but the person’s mentality and if I may say so, soul alignment inclines towards another gender. Can someone, anyone ever stop to imagine the plight that they have to go through their entire lives? Getting through life, boosting yourself everyday to get people to like you is hard enough but leading a life in which people rarely understand you is a whole different level of a triumph.
The ‘hijras’ in India are popularly known to comprise this population and are considered to be a sign of blessing at weddings and festive gatherings but the acceptance here comes out of an attempt dipped in superstition due to the fear of bad karma and dharma.
As civilizations have moved on from the matrilineal societies to staunch patriarchal societies, we only now can feel the tiniest bit of a movement and at the moment, that’s all it is. Learned Indians are not ready to accept humans just like you and me because they have not been blessed with the same sexual and mental orientation that their body should coincide with. We often describe their minds to be too complex for our liking but we can’t really blame them because they’ve constantly been gushed with judgmental atrocities.
When we don’t quite understand a situation, the vital thing to do is to think rationally for a second, put yourself in their situation (repeated because we don’t quite seem to get it). Things we can’t seem to fathom are not problematic and definitely do not invite antagonism but gentle acceptance of a difference. Celebrate the courage that some people have to be able to make a public realization of how they actually should belong and go ahead and make that change.
Image Credits- cake.youthkiawaaz.com/2016/01/31/best-of-tumblr-gender-nonconformity-art
Baani Kashyap
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