God has created a lot of different creations in universe, but we humans are the noblest of all — and for a reason. We have the power of will, to choose our actions, whether good or bad. We have a sense of humanity that teaches us to treat everyone with equal rights, without any sort of discrimination.
Now, in our country, where not even women have proper rights, it’s hard to expect them for the Transgender community, who are unfortunately being harassed and abused for the past many years. Murders, rapes, beatings, insults, and discrimination are a part of life for transgenders in Pakistan. While interviewing them — the transgender community in my area — before writing this blog, one of them told me that, quote, “My birth was a huge disbelief for my family, they seemed to be in a state of confusion about me. They didn’t accept me and handed me to a group of transgenders”. It shows what is in fact the truth; Pakistani families are not ready to accept transgender children and tend to treat them as a source of shame in society. Sitara, a friend of mine and yet another transgender from my area mentioned that, “Waleed, I don’t remember a single day of my life without [being] bullied, discriminated, or getting mocked by someone”. It clearly indicates that a person who is stigmatized as a transgender suffers a lot of mental and psychological torture in our society.
There’s yet another issue faced by them, which I think should be highlighted. It may be the most important one — the “financial instability”. While writing this sentence, 42% of transgender people in Pakistan are illiterate. They are illiterate not because they don’t want or try to study but because our society has never been ready to accept them. Our behavior towards them directly affects our children and makes them believe that transgender people are not supposed to sit with us, eat with us, play with us, and at the end of the day, live with us. Schools are not ready to give admissions to a gender fluid child, and in case they do manage to score their admission, students are not ready to accept them. They’ll start mocking and bullying them, which ultimately leads them to quit their studies. I don’t consider them special, but for a moment, if you talk about “special” schools for them; there are only 4 schools for transgender people as of July, 2021. Now, due to the lack of special schools for them and the attitude of our society, it restricts them from continuing or sometimes even starting their educational career, and they start begging on roadsides to ensue their survival or which is usually concerned with dancing, prostitution etc. which means they don’t have explicit job and opportunities — which makes them financially unstable. In short, majority of transgenders are unemployed or in a precarious jobs, and live on very limited financial resources.
One thing that I noticed was that they all were suffering a lot and yet, there was a smile on their faces. They were so affectionate and replied to all my questions patiently (however, usually in Punjabi). They want to change our attitude towards them, to accept their existence as a will of God, just as validated as anyone else. We need to give them equal rights and stop considering them as an inferior creations.