Amir Qureshi
What we must all understand is that just like other physical or psychological variations among people, it is highly natural to have sexual and gender variation
A victim namely Gul Panra was attacked and burned alive last week, on a cold Saturday night in district Batkhela of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Many are familiar with the name ‘Gul Panra’ as she is one of a famous Pashto singer having millions of followers and fans throughout Pakistan. One might question why no news coverage was given to the Saturday’s night acid attack. Answer to which is that the victim namely Gul panra was a transgender, and not the famous female singer, both having a same name but different gender identities, holding different values in society. Transgender Gul Panra, the victim, received third degree burns on major parts of her body as a result of the acid attack and was taken to Hayatabad Medical Complex burns center in a serious condition. Another gul panra, a transgender by the same name, was shot dead in Peshawar city last year by unknown assailants.
These aren’t just two isolated cases of trans-targeted attacks in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, but there actually exists a long chain of incidents where individuals belonging to the transgender community were victimized, traumatized, injured, harrased, rapped and killed. Dozens of such cases were reported in KP during the year 2021 where both the state and society failed to protect this community from such brutal attacks. Ironically, last month a DSP of Capital City police entered and interrupted a press conference organized by Trans community against the alleged harrasment and victimisation of transgenders by officials. Similar attacks on transgender communities have also been reported in Punjab where recently in the month of April, a Trans individual was burned to death in the capital of Punjab. According to a survey of Pakistan’s Transgender Association, at least 70 transgender persons have been killed in recent years in KP and Punjab.
On one front the transgender community is under physical attack while on the other front it is under an ideological attack, facing a great identity crises since decades. Till recently, transgenders were deprived of getting a valid CNIC because of unknown parentage and were forced to declare themselves either as a male or a female. Talking about identity crisis, many people don’t even have a clear knowledge regarding different sexual variations and gender identities with which an individual might be born. The term Sex refers to a set of biological or physical characteristics of a person. Male and female are considered to be the two major sexes among humans. Intersex, sometimes known as the Third gender, are such people who have both male and female sexual characters including genetic and physical attributes. There are millions of people throughout the world who cannot fit in the restricted Male-Female categorization, as they are biologically neither male nor female.
Contrarily, the term gender refers to social role, behavior or a psychological perception of a person regarding himself. Gender cannot be restricted to male-female categorization, as a person having physical attributes of one sex may perceive and consider himself to be a part of another, known as transgenders, as their physical attributes are different than their psychological or social character. Thus a transgender person may be born as a male, female or as an intersex. Biologically speaking, it isn’t a personal choice of any person to choose his sexual variation or gender identity, as it is inherent in every individual since his birth. What we must all understand is that just like other physical or psychological variations among people, it is highly natural to have sexual and gender variation, as it is nature itself creating this diversity. Thus the society as a whole must accept this community as a natural part of itself having equal social, civil and political rights, and immediately put a stop to the inhumane treatment of these equal but genetically different individuals.
The writer is Peshawar based Lawyer
