Gender Identity and Human Rights

Gender Identity and Human Rights

Identity, Transgender & Human Rights

Identity - Types

Identity is one of the needs of an individual. Identity is a very important for an individual and as human beings we try to get our identity in one way or the other. Identity can be physical, psychological, social, economical, cultural, legal, etc.

Individuals try to get their physical identity through their dress, appearance and body build; psychological identity is through their behavior, attitude, and emotions. Social identity is through their family, peer groups, community, and various organizations. Economical identity is based on the income and expenditure of an individual. Cultural identity is through the religion and tradition practices. Legal identity is one an individual gets through the law.

The identity that an individual gets by birth is gender identity which is always a bipolar concept that restricts us only to Boy/Men and Girl/ Women. We don’t think of a role which is mix of the above two genders, referred as ‘transgender’. This particular group of the society is placed in the lower strata and the identity of them is violated.

Understanding Transgender

Transgender, Aravani(Tamil), Kojja(Telugu); are different words coined to refer transgenders in various languages. Transgender is an umbrella term applied to a variety of individuals, behaviours, and groups involving tendencies to diverge from the normative gender roles. Transgenders are people who identify with or express a gender identity that differs from the one which corresponds to their sex at birth. In other words, a transgender person does not match his/her gender identity with the anatomical sex with which they were born. Transgender are of two types based on the transference namely; Male to Female (MTF) and Female to Male (FTM). The worse thing is FTM transgenders are invisible in our Indian society because of the stigma and discrimination over female bodies. FTM transgenders cannot even attempt...

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