Human Rights watch
Hijras in Bangladesh: A story untold
Tarek Mahmud
It is rather difficult to grasp the fact that somebody, who is even one of your close acquaintances, has "turned into" a "hijra", let alone your dearest ones. Yet unwilling to believe the story, you move into inquiring the rumor and, with horror, you find the acceptability of the story and the person is now hundreds of miles away from you both physically and mentally. This might be taken as the ideal presumption of what happens to the nearer ones of a member of the transgender society.
There has been a vague perception working among the people of the society that the transsexuals are exclusively some sort of bizarre life form, with deformed reproduction organ that made them evils of the civilization. We watch their outrageous activities with bitter sensation and feel a sense of hatred whenever they stroll around us. We hate the way they live their livelihood, the way they respond to our stares towards them, the way they curse people. To the end, we simple wish they would not come into existence.
The transgender people are living all around us like living enigma. They simply exist, yet we refuse to take it as a truth. They have their time of happiness, they have their moment of sadness, they become aggrieved, and they become contended. They have a unique story of them to be told.
Transgender or Transsexual?
It has been a difficult task to term the transgender, as the word "Transgender" covers a large terrain which includes variety of people disbelieving their birth assigned sex; the term also covers their behavior, their attitudes and tendencies towards the typical society and life. The term transgender is not to be meant to use to imply any specific sexual orientation; rather it indicates ones own self identification as a man or woman or neither by disapproving ones birth assigned sex (which takes place by recognizing the reproduction organ of the newborn at the time of birth). So as to say, the transgender people could be known to us as straight (heterosexual), gay or lesbian (homosexual), bisexual, asexual or disapproving the social dimension of the gender providing that it is inadequate to express their status. So the word "transgender" offers a socio-physical definition which is less precise from the point of physiology and more extensive to its social context.
On the other hand, the word “transsexual” provides a narrower definition which stays within the physical boundary and which implies the mental reluctance of anybody to conform to his or her birth assigned sex. Transsexuals are not necessarily impotent or deformed in the sense of reproduction. They simply cherish the dream to live in a way as their opposite sex lives. So, in a society like ours, where the definition of gender is confined with the limit of male and female, transsexual people are strained to stay within the specific terminology. The greater the desire becomes, the stronger the claws of social norms get. Some of these hapless people are strangled to live a socially acceptable "normal" life by adapting with the norms; others join the tiny army of nemesis against our social definition of "human being".
The transsexuals in Bangladesh
The transsexuals in Bangladesh are particularly males those are called as "Hijra". Usually they bear the characteristics of a normal male having functional genitalia, beard, mustache and other physical indicators to be called as a man. Some Hijras may undergo hormone replacement therapy where release of testosterone has been blocked by incorporating estrogen promote sex reassignment surgery which includes amputating the male genitalia and artificial installation of female genitalia, though the procedure is expensive enough and considered as further social stigma for a transgender in Bangladesh. This part of the society live mostly in urban area as living through various professions is quite easier than that of in rural area. The Hijras are living in a group, relationships within which are based on the enormous amount of sympathy they share with their fellow Hijras. They lead a life that knows no bounds of misery and humiliation.
The agony starts from the beginning of a transsexual's shelter of affection- home. During the early childhood, the transsexual boy finds her attracted to girl objects as ornaments, toys, feminine garments, and starts developing a habit to play with girls or behaving in a womanish way. This generates a fear of possible stigmatization of being called as the parents of an effeminate boy among his parents, and subsequently the parents start imposing rigor behavior norms on her and direct her to carry on a normal male life that is self conflicting for a transsexual.
Another phase of humiliation starts at the moment when a transsexual enrolls herself in any educational institute to achieve education which will assist her to attain any respectable job. The peers usually bully her and refuse to connect her with their collective activities like study, sports or cultural activity. The teachers, being annoyed by his “mile nature”, start looking down upon the young student and provide her with discriminatory supervision. Even the teachers happened to discourage her by ridiculing her before fellow classmates. Ultimately, the boy loses the urge to study and thus ends up being an illiterate one.
When a transsexual reaches up his youth, it becomes even harder for her to survive the pejorative sexist attitude of the society towards her. The family pressurizes her to give up the “habit” of living life like a woman. Many transsexuals are compelled to live a double life of which, the living with other transsexuals is more comfortable than to live around parents and other social beings. The young transsexual is now in a grave necessity to decide whether he should continue living in this synthetic duel life and keep on struggling to bear a self-disapproving life or he should unite with other transsexuals which will definitely give her some peace of mind. It is the most crucial and irreversible decision which the transsexual youth has to make all by herself.
Even in workplace, the transsexuals often get undermined, underpaid and needless to say, humiliated. The employers are hesitant to deploy transsexuals at work area because of their becoming the center of attraction in a negative way. The transsexuals have frequently been molested by their fellow workmates and in some cases by their employers as well. This abandonment and dishonor from every sphere of life make the transsexuals intense haters of the society.
The transsexuals in Bangladesh live in a group constituted of other transsexuals and led by a senior transsexual leader usually called as guru. The commonest profession of them is to collect Tola (daily or weekly subscription from different small shop and markets) which they procure by scaring the people to humiliate and embarrass by using slang and abusive language. Some of them are affiliated with some NGOs which provide socio-economic, legal and medical assistance to the transsexual community. Being incapable to earn livelihood through any decent means, some transsexuals are compelled to sell sex to live.
Even after death, the corpse of a transsexual is still an object of detestation. Scarcely a transsexual gets the acknowledgment of his family as he had to get segregated from his family on any point of his life. So, there is this faintest chance that the dead body will have been shown due respect by his family or the community. Even, the religious chief of the particular religion might to conduct the rituals of his funeral. They end of life can never be more painful than this.
Development in transsexual issue
There have been a number of efforts to uplift the social, economic, Medicare and legal conditions of the transsexuals both internationally and nationally. Number of initiatives have been taken to amass the member if this community in a calculable size and provide them with some core amenities like as food, cloth, shelter, job etc.
On 26th March, 2007, a group of human rights experts arranged a meeting in Yogyakarta, Indonesia and after intense discussion and careful consideration over the existing facts and achievable objectives, they inaugurated the Yogyakarta Principles on the application of Human Rights Law in Relation to Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity. These Principles are projected as a relevant and comprehensive set of directives for the compulsion of states to respect, protect and comply with the human rights of all persons irrespective of their sexual orientation or gender identity. Since its inception, the principles have been accumulating much appeal from various states and they can play a very significant role in advocating for the transsexuals. Besides this, various countries are drawing individual and collective initiatives throughout the whole world to support the transgender community.
In Bangladesh, a presence of reluctance is perceived from the part of the government to assist the transsexual people. Some NGOs (Non Government Organization) namely the Family Health International and Badhon Hijra Sangstha are working in collaboration with CARE, Marie Stops Healthcare and other organizations to facilitate the transsexuals with healthcare supports.
The transsexual community in Bangladesh is an outcast part of the society. The moment has arrived while helping the transsexual people with common and fundamental facilities; we must change our rejecting attitude towards this hapless community.
The writer is an academician and human rights campaigner.
