This IDAHOBIT, as a queer teacher, I hope for a day when we can be out there and free and happy, on our own terms, without much to fear for.
IDAHOBIT – The International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, and Transphobia was on May 17. As serendipity would have it, a group of students from the school where I worked earlier, recently texted me about how they encouraged the boys of their school to sport mehndi and nail polish. They even got them to cook, while some of the girls enrolled in robotics for their school fest. Some of their seniors whom I had taught global perspectives discussed different communities around the globe who bent binary gender norms. I was in hosepipe mode, touched beyond the ability to articulate my feelings. This is my journey to earn acceptance.
In the year 2021, I was assigned the role of a Humanities and Global Perspective Teacher in a renowned International school in my city. I was offered the role keeping in mind my Masters’ degree in PR, a paper Presentation in Epistemology – Theory of knowledge and the role of AI in Education, and my 4-year experience of working with an NGO started for the indigenous Hijra-Aravani community.
I was – still am – someone with a lot of facial hair and peach fuzz, a trait proudly attributed to congenitally high androgen levels. It never felt daunting, but enhanced my gender euphoria, much to the chagrin of every conservative person around. My gait, demeanor and pretty much every other trait, added layers to my masculinity.
Also read: The Metrics for Prachi Nigam’s Success: Cis-Normative Beauty of Stigma-Busting Brain?
What acted as a speed-breaker to my blissfully happy non-binary life was the day a student blatantly asked me why “I had the same facial hair men have”. I had myriad ways to handle this situation, realistically speaking. I could divert the topic, I could just smile, or I could just say “it’s just the way it is” and sound apologetic about something I look at with great deal of self-esteem. It could also have irked me on a particularly dysphoric day, and gotten me riled up. I realized, that ALL my responses in that moment would reflect not just my personality, but form a lasting opinion that would be cemented in the child’s mind. About the LGBTQ community. About every queer person out there. This was an opportunity in my life to instill kindness in the child’s mind towards LGBTQ people.
This was during the same time as when the “MAGA boys” and their queerphobic content was gaining traction among children of around this particular student’s age. MAGA to the politically unacquainted is an acronym of “Make America Great Again”. It refers to mostly-white, conservative American men who believe cis het white men made America great thanks to their “non-woke” ideology (read as “regressive”) and want those dark ages to return.
Many “motivation” pages have also been doing the rounds on Instagram, and they engage solely with discourse thar belittles trans*, intersex and non-binary people. It wasn’t long before such conversation entered the classroom. On one hand, the boys who engaged with such content had begun equating trans people to right-wingers and paid internet trolls who proclaimed that they identified as wolves. On the other, my facial hair – followed by my mannerisms and gait were being pointed out as unexpectedly “masculine”. I had to intervene. This was my only chance to educate these students on the need for diversity.
I started looking for ways to teach children about LGBTQ people and their rights from a human-rights lens. ONE question that would link the two parallel quandaries I faced – my “masculine” features vs the growing queerphobia in kids, was all that was needed, and bam! It was to debunk the idea of a binary gender. It started with educating kids that people assigned female with XY chromosomes and male-assigned folks with XX exist, thereby making them aware of alternate X & Y Chromosomal variations in humans – XXY, XYY and many more. It was encouraging to see the surprise and enlightenment they displayed, and merely reinforced the fact that humans are taught bigotry, not born bigoted. There definitely exists inherent inclusion in children which has to be fostered and the need for diversity in society needs to be be informed and queer-affirmative. It was wholesome when the kid who asked me about my facial hair drew me a card with a sorry on it and said it’s “valid for me to be me”. The rest of the room seemed to blur as my eyes welled up.
I soon followed this lesson with another on the existence of indigenous trans* and gender variant communities around the world, using a lesson plan that was Google-maps enabled, curated by pbs.org, with each community marked on a location that is hyperlinked to details about that community. We then went on to discuss the impact of both colonization and the orthodoxy displayed by caste-privileged people, that led to the creation and maintenance of the Criminal Tribes Act, which was passed by the British in 1971. The Hijra community in particular was targeted under the Act. This was also an excellent moment to educate them about cis heteronormative caste patriarchy, and why casteism and queerphobia work together. Queerness has the potential to dismantle caste hierarchy, provided that privileged queer people and allies are sensitized about caste.
This act passed by the British created the category of “eunuch” to refer to the many, often unrelated gender non-conforming communities in India, including hijras, khwajasarais, and kothis, and many of them are seen as suspicious due to their gender non-conformity by the law.
The Indian phenomenon was paralleled to similar colonial and post-colonial situations around the globe, in a poignant, heart-wrenching documentary by the BBC titled “Gender identity: How colonialism killed my culture’s gender fluidity”. It included voices of Francis Geronimo, a two-spirit individual, Leher, a trans woman from the Hijra community who uses the label “third gender” and Kai, who identifies as a “Brotherboy” from Sydney, who collectively described the historical massacre carried out by imperialists on indigenous gender variant communities.
I would up the lesson by showing the students two objects – a blue house T-shirt and a blue crayon, which largely fell on the “blue spectrum”, albeit possessing different wavelengths. This was used as an analogy to grasp that cis women and trans women are both women, but they experience womanhood differently in some ways. Trans women and Non-Binary trans femme people may also experience their femme identities differently. The words “man” and “woman” are themselves social constructs, which the first bipedal homosapiens are unlikely to have used.
The children were asked to recall how many primary, secondary and tertiary colours exist. They chimed in “three! three! six!”, in that order. They were further probed if those were the only colours on the planet. They gave me a long stare. Voila!! I had delicately managed to pull off a holistic session on empathy and respect for the need of diversity. This was done without sounding dogmatic, as right-aligned people fear, but by encouraging the children’s curiosity about the world around them.
Sadly, there were loopholes and challenges. Now the catch here is, the school was in a conservative locality of my city. To them, even the well-intentioned act of teaching children to treat LGBTQ people with dignity was the beginning of a slippery water slide that would lead to queer children, according to them, which was ridiculous. Nevertheless, this was a long-overdue challenge that had to be met. Down the lane, it would probably help with ensuring someone’s psychological safety in knowing that their queerness is not an abnormality, but a way of the world. We needed kindness in children sure, but we need them in adults as well.
On the national level, queer sensitization efforts are already facing both tacit and blatant resistance. The same year, a teacher sensitization manual prepared by a trans activist in India for gender variant LGBTQ children that was presented to the Central Secondary Education Board had been widely criticized by the conservative masses and had to be revoked. This manual had been created for merely helping students survive because it included details on gender neutral restrooms and ways to help students explore their gender and navigate gender dysphoria. It became national news and the said trans person was also doxed.
This irrational transphobia has been relentless and seems to have percolated all parts of our society, including my own environs. I would overhear large groups of parents in whatsapp groups of my apartment or known circles. murmur in hushed undertones, referring to trans activists using dehumanizing pronouns like “it”. It was humiliating. The heart yearned for just some warmth among the next gen, nothing more or less.
The following year, Arvey Malhotra, a 15-year-old childended his life because of the relentless bullying he faced in his school, Delhi Public School Faridabad. A queer-sensitization was long overdue to reinforce kindness among children and their parents. While his mother bravely fights tooth and nail to deliver her child justice, both she and other such affirming parents realize that this is a systemic issue.
Unfortunately, the next manual was presented to teachers by a cisgender heterosexual representative of the current government named Jyotsna Tiwari. Luckily that manual was pulled down owing to queer outrage. It reduced trans individuals to caricatures, only meant to be found in public spaces as people begging for alms or blessing new borns. It was condescending. And on the other hand, we were encouraging the idea of trans folx in all parts of society, even as doctors and lawyers. What an irony!
While this manual was struck down, a similar such manual was created and adopted in ANOTHER right-wing school that I worked at. It was worse than the cancelled NCERT Manual. It did not have a word on gender dysphoria or mental health support. It had no roadmap of any action plan. The word “kind” was mentioned two dozen times without a quantifiable example of what “kind” meant. I was also asked not to name any oppressor community, be it in the systems of colonization or casteism, which was ridiculous. Marginalization doesn’t happen in the passive voice. There exist extremists who subject us to it, systemically. I was also asked to rewrite my work in the passive voice and make queerphobia sound more like an allegation than an everyday lived experience.
Also read: Why the Transgender Children Inclusion Guide was Pulled Down by NCERT
Let’s just say, the end wasn’t as rosy, and I changed jobs to teach my core subject – English. I now work with adults, training them to write exams like GRE and IELTS that help them go abroad. I wondered how I would ever spread awareness and empathy in children towards the LGBTQ community – as a queer student and a victim of sexual abuse and bullying at school, myself. The last thing I wanted to ever see is a reflection of my own trauma in front of me. I fought it out alone perhaps so that my students wouldn’t have to.
One fine day, a student reached out to me out of the blue to tell me that she wished a trans woman for woman’s day. I teared up instantly, in the middle of a staff meeting. Imagine how good the woman would have felt to be acknowledged. They further went to the extent of educating a teacher who said all males have XX chromosomes and all females have XY chromosomes, and told her that a small percentage of people exist outside these binaries. This was ALL I wanted!! A world that wasn’t divided into two rigid boxes – blue and pink – but had possibilities for more. Where children could be who they wanted, without being shamed for it.
The good thing that happened to me was that I learnt to value minor changes. Children – and adults – grow at their own individual pace. We’ve just got to trust the process and enjoy the journey more than the destination sometimes. It is very unfortunate to have to do it on the terms and conditions of fragile cis het ego. LGBTQ people who aim to have even the most basic, informed conversation on queerness have a lot to lose – including their lives. Hurting cis het sentiments is the lowest end of the totem-pole, the higher ends include an organized witch hunt against us.
I follow a leader named Dr. Ambedkar. He taught millions of people around the world that “Lost rights are never regained by appeals to the conscience of the usurpers, but by relentless struggle…”. As someone with immense self-esteem in me, I refuse to settle for scraps of tokenism that I sordidly call “sloppy-seconds” tongue in cheek. I will speak up, take space and vocalize my anguish at how dispensable queer lives are looked at, and I already do so actively – at events, at pride, in blogs and in protests. I want to instill values of inclusion, diversity and equity in children at all costs regardless of what it takes. I want them to respect all forms of life around them.
Also read: A Conversation on Trans Dalit Assertion between Manu and Mya Mehmi
This is too obvious to even be said, but for the last time, We DO NOT want cis het kids to be queer – as ridiculous and impossible as we know it is. We wanted queer kids to study and graduate high school ALIVE. This IDAHOBIT, as a queer teacher, I hope for a day that we can be out there and free and happy, on our own terms and conditions, without much to fear for.
