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…and the flame shines bright: Sudar Foundation and rights of Aravanis |
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Written by Ponni Arasu
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Wednesday, 31 December 2008 14:29 |
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“Ennai naanaga vazha vidu”
“Let me live as myself”
“Sudar” which literally means flame is a registered trust for more than two years now but has been doing work around the rights of transgender people for more than five years. It is a group of fifteen transgender people (known as hijras in Hindi and aravanis is Tamil) who have come together to form this organisation. This group live as a family and work with each other. Many things make Sudar Foundation different from most other organisations of and/or working on rights of transgender people in India. One such aspect is that as an organisation they did not begin their work with that on HIV/AIDS. While work related to the infection is very important, as Priya Babu, the treasurer of Sudar Foundation says, “All groups of transgender people that are involved in work around social change within the community, almost always work on issues of HIV/AIDS. This puts forward the false image that this is the only issue of the community and contributes to the myth that this community is more susceptible to or spread the infection more than others”. |
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Last Updated on Wednesday, 31 December 2008 14:40 |
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The Art of Naming: Meditations on Queer Activism |
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Written by Akhil Katyal
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Wednesday, 31 December 2008 14:04 |
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…when words found mouths
when tongues wagged their way
into minds,
and each object shrank, suddenly,
to fit its own precise outline.
You could say that was when the trouble started: When things stepped into the cage of a purpose I must have had somewhere in my mind. - Imtiaz Dharker, ‘Words find Mouths’
What is in the name: homosexual? If you say it again and again, homosexual, homosexual, homosexual, it begins to sound like a creepy symptom. It is one of the bad habits of words, to give way on the slightest bit of repetition. The word leaks out of itself on being repeated, becomes what it originally (!) was – the deceived one brought into the menacing contract of meaning making. Repetition is a paradox: it both consolidates and shatters. To repeat something is to validate it, confirm its thereness and give it a nod of approval, like in a chant or in sloganeering. At the same time, repetition, for repetition’s sake has a sincere cheek; it kills the word with a master stroke: pulls it out of contingent frameworks and shows the ghastly madness of the name, like in the babbling of a child. |
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Last Updated on Tuesday, 06 January 2009 15:39 |
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Written by Maryam Arif
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Wednesday, 31 December 2008 12:42 |
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A bisexual friend explained to me once the gender and sexuality spectrum. At the opposite ends lie male and female, homosexual and heterosexual, and there are a whole range of combinations in between. She told me that most people lie somewhere closer to the middle. Surprise! Surprised?
Most societies have norms and cultural practices that discourage the expression of tendencies that stray from the straight path (pun obviously intended). It is just easier to order the world in neat boxes. Shades of grey are trickier, more complicated to make sense of. The answers, for those of us willing to explore, lie in science – social science, or the “soft” sciences as the critics like to say. It is shocking to me that the fact that gender is a social construct is apparently debatable. Equally outrageous are refusals to admit that gender characteristics, attributes and stereotypes are the product of socialization. There are sociological explanations for why female children generally like dolls, and male children planes or cars. The explanation for why boys don’t cry, for example, is to be found not in their genetic code, but their sociological makeup. Likewise, it is not inherent in females to be generally more caring and loving than their male counterparts. This is the expectation society imposes on them and enforces through a system of reward and punishment. |
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Last Updated on Wednesday, 31 December 2008 14:41 |
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Written by Marina Ahmad
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Wednesday, 31 December 2008 12:28 |
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Innocence is such a fragile thing, such a vulnerable one. Innocence can be taken in so many ways, so many subtly evil ways that are not even noticed.
I was thinking about innocence today. How silently it leaves. How faintly it slips away, leaving nothing that reminds you of it but a scar. And I am reminded of the time that I, in one of the most brutal ways possible, lost some of my innocence.
***
I am 12 years old again and I am innocent. As I walk down the narrow market alley with my sister, Mariam, we laugh over a joke.
As I shift the bag of groceries from one hand to another, a large man came up in front of us. Barely paying attention to him, I continue to talk to my sister, and we laugh again. In the narrow alley, my sister squeezes ahead of me and past the man. I follow her; barely aware of what was going to happen.
As I brush past him, I feel a large, thick hand land on the back of my thigh and move up.
Up and around.
I feel so violated.
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Last Updated on Tuesday, 06 January 2009 15:41 |
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