Gender is fluid. Gender is performance. Gender is historical an experience. Gender is social, political, cultural, economic roles. Gender is complex composition of many things around us; of carrying out a certain body in a certain fixed, rigid, unwritten norms convenient to the hetero-patriarchal system. It is a transgression; a breaking of boundaries to experience freedom of expression. It is a journey of life; a journey from body to mind, body type to a culture of living, a personal journey – leading to a political journey; that which is an assumed threat to the historical existence of patriarchy, reproductive based living and “male/man power”.
In this journey of gender, different people express their gender differently or even break the norms or rigidity to their needs. The norms of gender based on social morality are rigid and claustrophobic. It forces people into a homogenic life of hegemony. While the women’s movement did break gender norms for the rights for women in terms of mobility, right to body, consent, social institutions etc. At the same time one can also recognize that hetero-patriarchy at its convenience has loosened the norms of gender around the economic sphere but without separating the sex-gender associated roles and traits.
On the contrary life offers diversity and multiplicity in all spheres and gender is one of the many expression modes and a major part of a person’s individuality. The hetero-patriarchal system makes this journey of gender so rigid that many times, that this could be one of the reasons for the shift in gender. The concept of “Trans” is a journey from the assigned gender or sex to a comfortable, aspired gender or sex. It is the individual’s choice to complete the journey or not. Many times the individual might not want to stay in a particular phase which is neither of the extremes of the “two points”.
The problem is – this journey is visualized or understood as a horizontal single layered straight journey from point one to point two being male to female or visa versa – this is the binary that is fixed by the society. If this perspective can be changed to understand and visualize a circle of gender expressions, which could be according to the individual’s understanding or choice the fluidity can be retained. Retaining of fluidity makes space for freedom of expression and also growth of the individual in multi-spheres more comfortably than that of restricted fixtures of positions becoming life’s inevitability.
The present system of gender and sex is not only mixed up but also very much based on the hetero-patriarchal convenient rigid boxes – the box that jails an individual for a life-time of feeling incomplete. There are many efforts from centuries to break the boxes. Even when you break the boxes you remain outsider. Even the trans journey ends up reinforcing the hetero-patriarchal convenient boxes of gender, for the want of validation with respect and dignity. Unfortunately this is such a trap that neither being in box faithfully nor shifting from one to another or remaining in a self defined or undefined sphere of gender helps or is inclusive. There is a continuous experience of discrimination, lack of recognition, no dignity of self’s identity along with individual’s and human rights violations. Sex is also not binary. It is multiple. Gender is also not binary it is multiple. The experience is rich and the journey in both sex and gender is the individual’s right.
Most of the social movements for rights have mostly worked within this hetero-patriarchal convenient reproductive paradigm of understanding sex and gender. There is no distinction between sex and gender to understand the body and its rights and the choice of the individual to exercise the right. The asserting of right of a person’s body and the associated self’s dignity as a choice will open up larger debates around many issues including sex as work or as an institution of exploitation. It is about a personal choice over the body and the life around the gender expressions. Yes at one level one cannot totally separate the historical link between sex and gender. The complex angle contributing to these issues of sex and gender is sexuality. That too is not binary. That too has multiple expressions. It furthers the rich layers of the ‘self’.
Many people have experienced this discrimination, humiliation, no rights, unwanted sympathy, and painful exclusions, of being out of the common, etc. This process becomes doubly difficult for the female born population who are marginalized based on sex and gender. They do not even have the back up of cultural or traditional or evidently visible divine interventions (like that of godly traditions that support trans people).
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