Why Is Our Society Still So Intolerant Towards Transgenders

(Shakira Nandini, Oporto)

How many times have we reacted in a proper way to things different from our conveniences?

How many times have we shrieked at the sight of people slightly different from us?

The answer surely can’t be counted even in that super fast brain that some of us have.

It is the nature of human beings as the great comic book writer, Stan Lee, puts it in his comics, is to react differently to unknown things and sometimes, even violently (The most famous case, the X-Men). Now, we do not have mutants out here like in the comics but we do have some sexual mutations, those mutations are called the transgender individuals in our society. We have seen numerous individuals, male and female, slashing some traits of the opposite sex. And the reaction in each case remains the same, labeling him or her as the girly or the boyish type. Very frequently, such cases lead their ways into the clutches of crime and mental instability. The society exhorts us to treat these individuals with a difference, a difference created by the society, itself, against individuals having a varied sexual desires and personalities.

The very polite boy, who likes to hang out with the girls, is a gay, or a girl who sleeps with a girl is a lesbian, we do jump to conclusions in seconds, though very rarely, these predictions are true. For a boy, he can hang out with the girls, maybe he is not the robust types. Or a girl might like to sleep with another girl; maybe she is just afraid of the dark, who has given the society the right to infiltrate the boundaries of their privacy? And even if it has, who has allowed them to jump to conclusions rapidly without a proper argument and debate and dictate their social behavior?

Those individuals who have faced such incessant taunts in their childhood are either mentally in-stable or have secluded themselves from the society. Many boys, tagged in their childhood, as girly, take up drinking just to prove that they are guys. So, our society now needs a guy to drink to prove that he is a guy, such is the hypocrisy. Taunted by the society by its dogmatic agendas that a guy or a girl should have a fixed set of characters , these individuals simply drift away, sometimes lock themselves up, in their own mind, which I believe, is a lot more beautiful than many of us.

You can imagine that if our society reacts to only indications like that, how it will react to actual case of homosexuality. I admit, heterosexuality, is the general case, but being homosexual is not a difference, it is rather just an exception to the general case, and examples of such exceptions are abundant in Mother Nature. Also, being homosexual, does not at all affect the person that anyone is, it just affects his sexual desires, which I suppose, is a private thing in our country.

Dr. Shakira Nandini
About the Author: Dr. Shakira Nandini Read More Articles by Dr. Shakira Nandini: 280 Articles with 243618 views Shakira Nandini is a talented model and dancer currently residing in Porto, Portugal. Born in Lahore, Pakistan, she has a rich cultural heritage that .. View More