The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Focus on need for bringing the transgendered to mainstream

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Sep 28, 2007
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Focus on need for bringing the transgendered to mainstream

Staff Reporter

Meet organised by FICCI Ladies Organisation

CHENNAI: Led by Member of Parliament Kanimozhi, speakers at a seminar here on Thursday underscored the need for initiatives for brining the transgendered to the mainstream. Society’s discomfort with difference was the main reason driving the discrimination against the transgendered, Ms. Kanimozhi told the seminar organised by FICCI (Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry) Ladies Organisation (FLO). The inclusion of the transgendered to the mainstream was the theme of the seminar.

Society did not have the right to decide that members of the transgendered community should only take up professions such as hairstyling and offer training courses in those vocations alone, she added.

‘Punished by parents’

Bharatanatyam dancer Narthaki Nataraj said that the transgendered are punished by their parents and by various sections for their gender identity crisis.

Asha Bharati of Tamilnadu Aravaanigal Association said that ancient Tamil literature referred to the outcome of the gender identity crises as a physical aberration similar to disability. The transgendered in those days were free to take up professions of their choice and were even advisors to kings.

Act flayed

Over time the situation changed and now Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code that prohibits ‘unnatural sex’ meant that the transgendered could not register their marriages. The Section was a colonial leftover that was not in use even in Britain, she said.

Sex education

She urged the inclusion of sex education in the curriculum of schools and medical colleges.

Ma Foi Management Consultants managing director K. Pandiarajan said that creativity and teaching of the arts were pursuits in which the transgendered have traditionally excelled.

Several multi-national companies have framed equal opportunity policies, vowing to not discriminate against those who have chosen another gender.

Neurologist Pritika Chary said that crises in gender identity could emerge by birth or by upbringing, besides a host of other factors.

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