The Kerala Queer Pride is closing in … The transgender movement has gained praise by the media, especially in Kerala. Political parties are in a race to take credit for the rights ‘given’ and government bodies are running around amending clauses to act inclusive. So much love for transgender people is a mystery. This is always good news that people are accepting, but still the police and the public are transphobic. However, it takes time. But the biggest issue is that gender as such is still a mystery to most people. Gender is not binary. Even the transgender movement has been promoted by cisgender (non-trans) people because they think it conforms to their idea of binary gender norms: you are either a transwoman or a transman. And most of our discussions, events and policies are for transwomen. I guess men think of them as another bunch of women to objectify and sell their magazines and TV shows. Transmen are often left out and also deeply invisible. One thing is certain: gender comes in many flavours and there are many different genders out there.
Gender is not binary, as we all know. It is a spectrum. Has anybody thought why there is a Q in the LGBTIQ? Queer stands for genderqueer identities that don’t belong to the binary--people who do not identify as male or female. Mumbai-based artist Durga Gawde puts it beautifully when she says, “Being gender fluid means that I sometimes identify as female, sometimes as male, sometimes as both at the same time and sometimes neither. Like the term, it’s fluid, like water, my gender flows into each other and sometimes there’s more clarity about how I’m identifying in that moment, but most often, it is ambiguous and makes me feel closer to being human than when I used to try and force myself to fit the binary.” Take a look at Asia Kate Dillon or Ruby Rose or Alok Vaid Menon, people who were comfortable enough to discover their gender and talk to people of all these non-binary genders.
Non-binary people may not. In Kerala or India, people don’t get to identify with their bodies or minds as freely as anywhere else in the world. We are nowhere in discussing gender as a myth or spectrum. As a non-binary person, my personal experience might give myself the education by just watching my life and learning from around the world that people are out there and we have pronouns (non-binary people have wide range of pronouns from they/them/theirs to even new ones like zhe, rhe etc. For eg: Kate is a non- binary person. They live in Texas. You use ‘they’ instead of ‘he’ or ‘she’ ).Tilda Swinton, 54, the Academy Award-winning actress, who recently starred in Snowpiercer and The Grand Budapest Hotel, told The WIP that she is “probably” female. “I don’t know if I could ever really say that I was a girl — I was kind of a boy for a long time. I don’t know, who knows? It changes.” We (genderqueer people) have very few local heroes and almost none in Kerala. I hope we could see the discussions happening go beyond the binary and end up in a rainbow land of happy people. I hope we take note of this.
M. K. Balamohan is a gender and queer activist, who teaches both children and adults on gender and queer issues.
