Existing on the Fringe

Back in 2005, when I was working on a story exploring the deplorable conditions of intersexuals and hermaphrodites living in Pakistan, I wasn’t aware of the fact that there is something like ‘Transsexual or Transgender’ and that they are different from hermaphrodites. But I took the initiative and educate myself about the dynamics and cultural intricacies of diverse sexual identities living in Pakistan. The case of Shazina-Shumaile came up in 2007 which not only provided me an opportunity to study this issue in detail but also unveiled the blatant and irresponsible faces of media and social/moral dictators of Pakistan. Even having not a single clause in the penal code adequately applying to Shazina-Shumaile, the Lahore High Court still sentenced that allegedly “same sex couple” for three years. However, the sentence was adjourned after the interruption and constant pressure from a senior local psychiatrist and ASR resource center (human rights organization).

Recently in May 2010, when Rawalpindi bench of Lahore High Court had permitted Sami Saleem to go through sex reassignment surgery (SRS), I was anticipating the same kind of uncanny response over this historic decision in the legal history of Pakistan where the state has granted the permission for sex change operation to a biologically male but the breaking news got lost as Lahore was havocked with horrendous blasts just a day after the decision.

As an aftermath, I decided to pen down this article, especially for the readers of Pink Pages and conducted interviews of two really amazing and resilient transsexuals (Omi and Nenu, both Male to Female) to whom I am highly obliged for trusting and sharing their personal lives with me.

Omi is an undergrad student and challenges heteronormativity through critical social discourse on his blog.

Nenu is a commerce graduate and works for a newsweekly.

You define yourself as a transsexual, how do you relate to it?

Omi: Sometimes I think it was a lot easier when the only word I knew for describing myself was ‘zanana’, which can be translated literally as ‘womanlike man’. It was never fixed for me, and even now no feeling of identity is consistent. Since my childhood, I was sharply aware of my body and people’s attitudes toward my gender non-conformity. I just talked, walked and thought differently and then somewhere down the line when I had to deal with issues of acceptance and view myself from the mindset of rigid social order, I felt that I would never be able to live up to the ideals of manhood. Therefore, I consciously started defining myself as a girl in a boy’s body. But now, my transsexuality also has a political flavor, whereby I see myself as committed to femininity as a way of being. But, like I said, this has kept changing, and even now I see myself riven with contradictions.

Nenu: I feel like having body dysmorphic disorder. My identity is androgynous, neither fit for any gender box nor do I want it to be. It’s a matter of distorted body image or whatever that I don’t relate to being male. As regards to hair and make-up and fashion? It’s a thing I need to learn…but it would only be for special occasions when I’d like to dress up like a woman.

What were the problems you have faced in your life course due to your identity?

Omi: Mainly psychological and social anxiety. It has gotten better now, but I still remain borderline agoraphobic. At times, I feel prone to compulsions as a way of escaping myself and my social responsibilities.

Nenu: Not many. I guess they will come up when I will dress up in woman clothes or will entertain any such desire. But I will better keep it to myself. I have never behaved effeminately or expressed myself in any such way, publicly. Personally, I am a shy and insecure individual and most of the people regard these traits as feminine. I, although, completely disagree with this notion.

For any one living in Pakistan, family and religion earns a huge amount of space in one’s personal life, how do you reconcile with these social institutes while having a non-heteronormative identity?

Omi: Mostly, by assuming an outward heteronormative identity. Isn’t that all we can do? As for family and religion, yes those two are very important to me, and that is why, I think, I couldn’t shut my family out from my internal struggles. I ‘came out’ to them as gay, because that was the only label I knew of then. But at the same I also explained my sexuality in terms of a trans identity, reminding them how this was only natural for a girly boy like me. Even now, I find it easier to talk to them if I distance myself from the stigma of same-sex desire, although I do it not by faking heteronormativity, but by telling them that I never intend to act on it, explaining to them how for me the love of God will be enough, quoting Rabia Basri’s mystic verse. In a way, I believe it to be true as well, as I find sexual desire very limiting and problematic. In my relationship as well, I am more concerned with the emotional aspects of it than the sexual, and increasingly, experience lower and lower sex drive.

Nenu: My Family now knows and does not like it, but I do not bother them with initiating the conversation ever. Of course, it does come along when they are trying to pursue me to get married. Otherwise I steer clear of it. The fact is that I do not express myself the way I can, so although I am not being true to myself, I am out of trouble. Religion is not a problem unless it creeps up in my “discussions” with family. Also it helps that both Sunni and Shia authorities have issued fatwas declaring sex-change operations permissible. The question that this may be immoral or “unnatural” has taken quite some of my time, but I now think, aeroplanes, cars, clothes, houses…everything may be considered unnatural taken in such a context.

Did you look for any support and why?

Omi: I look for community. I think there should be a parallel world where I can feel at home, have the feeling of family. A community I can grow old with. Individualism – it’s not for me. I think an LGBT community can do this, as most of us ‘deviants’ here in Pakistan live lonely lives and understand how important community is. I also want to open myself up to people, get out of the mental closet I’ve put myself in.

Nenu: I did not, although I did make an online friend who introduced me to a local LGBT support group which has helped me loads. I am albeit slowly, getting over my social inhibitions and becoming more confident each day by trying out new ways to express myself whenever I am around them.

Tell us about your intimate relations, how they have been. (And if you haven’t any than what do you think is the reason behind it)

Omi: I’ve only had one relationship, which is ongoing, though now I call it complicated and see it as a marriage of convenience. It was love for both of us. It not only made me comfortable with my body but also made me accept masculinity; his masculinity and mine own. We see each other as fairly androgynous, although I think an initial issue for the both of us was that we made each other feel like girls. It seems silly now, though. But because this relationship happened outside the context of community, there were two problems: A. I invested too much in it and B. We two are stranded, unable to share our issues with anybody else. My boyfriend is more adjusted in the heteronormative social life; there is huge chunk of his everyday life in which he has to forget all about us, which I find increasingly unacceptable.

Nenu: I have never been into any and the reasons are varied. I am an extremely shy and asocial person. Hence I did not ask anyone out and if anyone ever shows any interest in me, I simply freak out. Another reason would be the dilemma in my head, a straight man/lesbian woman would want me as a woman, which I am not, and a gay man/straight woman would want me as a man, the thought of which makes me weird.

Have you thought about the aftermath of your post operation situation? What kind of problems, if any, you think you will face and how you will deal with them?

Omi: Well, I imagine myself going through SRS in a situation beyond my current family responsibilities. There are some expectations of family and friends that I can fulfil, career-wise. So for now I’ve basically postponed it indefinitely. When I do go through it, I think there will be a lot of issues, but I don’t see how that would be any more difficult than what I’ve already been through.

Nenu: I do not expect any kind of problems until and unless I am comfortable in my own skin, especially in intimate relationships. As far as social situations are concerned, I have been taking hormone treatment from a long time and still living full time as a man which at times create a socially ambiguous situation publicly.

Recently Sami has been granted the legal permission for sex change operation. Does this decision make any difference to you? Why and how?

Omi: Yes, it does. When it happened, I told my mom all about it. I’m hoping that with the court allowing Sami (who is a proper functioning male) to go through SRS and not telling him to fix his behaviour or take male hormones like my parents have always wanted me to, they would realize that it’s not just my ‘stubbornness’ and fixing really cannot happen.

Nenu: Sami’s case is very momentous as now when I would require legal permission, I can use this case as a precedent and have better chances of being granted the same.

(This article has been published in the October, 2010 issue of Pink Pages
Magazine).

(Courtesy Image: Diego Medrano)

Moments

A few moments are left.
Just a few moments more,
And I’ll depart from this city,
from his city.
Moments are all we have.
It was a moment, long ago
When while crossing a road,
he looked at me.
First time ever someone didn’t look but saw me.
I can still recall that look
which made me so special that day.
It was just a moment when
while I was humming a ballad, a love ballad
he started tapping his fingers on the table between us.
He was listening to me.

First time ever someone didn’t just hear but listened to me.
I still remember his taps.
It was also a moment when
while dancing in the rain
he kissed me.
First time ever someone didn’t just hug but kissed me.
His touch is still fresh within me.
It was a moment too
when I was sharing travails and tidings of my life with him
and he had tears in his eyes.

First time ever someone didn’t shed his tears for me.
Their twinkle is still shining with me.
It was also a moment
when while lying down on the roof top under the full moon
I told him that I love him.
First time ever someone didn’t conquer but won over me.
It was just a moment
when he handed me his wedding invitation.
He was getting married to his cousin.
A girl his mother had chosen for him.

First time I wasn’t defeated but lost.
It’s again a moment
that I am packing up and departing
from his city, his look, his hearing
his kiss, his tears, his win
everything, just everything.
It’s a moment again
that I am waiting for the bus
with sheer emptiness and nothingness
of heart and soul.

First time I am feeling such things.
There can be many ‘first times’ in life,
something said inside me.
It’s a moment again,
a last one in his city.
I am sitting by the window seat
with endless tears flowing from my closed eyes.
I don’t care about anyone, anything now.
No one remains important to me any longer.

First time no one remains important to me.
Simply a few moments to linger on.
Just a few last withering moments in this city
in his city.
And then everything will be over.
Just in this very moment someone has kissed me,
a known touch indeed.
And I come out of everything.
He is sitting beside me
with tears in his eyes too.

Once again I am looking at him with tears in his eyes.
‘I want to spend my life time loving you.’
The ballad I once hummed,
he is singing now.
A moment again.
Just a moment.
Moments… all we have.

(This poem has been published in the December, 2010 issue of Pink Pages Magazine).

Walking the Line

Every society is an accumulation of certain norms and belief systems which define and establish the standard operating procedures by which it functions. However, the basic difference lies in the nature of the society: traditional cultures have relatively rigid, conservative and holistic approaches towards social institutions and liberal cultures are more open, liberal and individualistic in nature. Therefore, gender roles are more fluid and less conventional in liberal cultures unlike traditional cultures that have more stringent gender role divisions with fixed gender types pertaining to what it means to be masculine or feminine.

Recently I was going through various perspectives explaining gender roles and gender culture and I realized that every culture has mostly the same expectations and prototypes of males and females. For example, traditionally, in every culture, women are supposed to be emotional, altruistic, interested in sewing and cooking, dependent and suitable for housework; whereas men are supposed to be aggressive, confident, interested in sports, independent and suitable for workplace environment. Although, with the passage of time, the degree of these gender roles has evolved, the effects of traditional gender division are still very strong.

To better explain this process, I would like to look at a gender-role socialization approach, which not only provides a sound rationale for the development of gender prototypes but is also helpful in suggesting ways to curb the traditional male/female gender role dichotomy. Gender role socialization explains how different agents (people and objects) in an individual’s environment provide models and rewards that shape his/her behavior to fit gender role norms. Agents can be parents, relatives, peers, literature or media – elements that serve as the basis for the development of gender prototypes and roles.

During my childhood, which wasn’t different from any average Pakistani childhood, I remember my parents determining different sets of rules and regulations for me and my younger sister. I was always made to wear blue whereas she was made to wear pink. As a child I learnt that colors do have a gender as well, but how or why is still a mystery to me.

Similarly, I still remember that after on of our routine sibling fights, when my sister was taking the mickey out of me, my mother would discipline me (in more technical terms physically abuse me) in relatively more harsher terms than my sister, saying “Tumhain sharam nae aati behan say lartay ho. Pata nae larkiaan nazuk hoti hain?” (It’s so shameful of you to fight with your sister. Don’t you know that girls are very delicate?) I think that if my mother had ever been kicked or punched by my sister, I would have got some sympathy.

Teddy bears, dolls, pink clothes, the gentle emotional tone of my parents encapsulated with lots of hugs and kisses – these were only for my sister because she was a girl and girls were supposed to be brought up like that where as guns, building blocks, trucks, blue clothes, harsh disciplinary actions, occasional hugs and once in a lifetime kiss were what I was brought up on. I was a boy and I needed to be made rough and though. That was the way my parents and their parents had been brought up, with similar kind of societal norms categorizing genders in to mutually exclusive blocks. Thus parents are the primary actors in this gender role acquisition and socialization that moderate our behaviors in certain ways to classify us in what our culture thinks a male or female should be.

Apart from it, the books we used to read or rather were forced to read (and we still are reading) model and encourage gender appropriate behavior. Everyone learned alike from Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Miraat ul Aroos and other local digest oriented stories. “What is beautiful is good” and is clearly rewarded. Specifically, men fall in love with beautiful women; good women are obedient, gullible, vulnerable and – if beautiful – will be rescued by men; other women (stepsisters and stepmothers) are evil, competitors for men; and a woman’s ultimate dream is to marry a rich, handsome prince.

Similarly, the media is also responsible for strengthening these stereotypical images of males and females. Almost every cooking oil ad claims that by using XYZ cooking oil any woman can become a great Maa, Bahu or Biwi or by using such and such whitening cream any woman can get a handsome and rich husband. Likewise, men are depicted as the great saviors and stuntmen while chanting “Darr kay agaye jeet hai.” Such stereotypical depictions are merely directing our behaviors towards a specific gender culture and making us gender static individuals.

Thus, it is clear that through various socialization agents, individuals tend to acquire specific gender roles but if we start re-establishing these gender roles since the beginning, we can have gender aschematic, dynamic society which will be more diverse and accepting and free from sexism and gender discrimination.

(This article was published in the November, 2010 issue of Chay Magazine).