It’s hard to live as an LGBTQIA+ person, and even harder to exist as an LGBTQIA+ parent.
An LGBTQIA+ (gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, queer/questioning, asexual) parent might find the situation so strangely oppressive that it might even seem amusing. “As parents, it is very difficult for us to make our children understand that there are queer people in society,” said Gargi Harithakam, a transgender activist and writer.

“Our kids are studying in queer-phobic places; they’re exposed to queer-phobic content every day. And my kid looks at me and says, ‘I’m not LGBT,’ and I’m like, ‘How are you?’ You know? How can you say that? And why are you so proud of not being LGBT?’” Harithakam says with a laugh.

She was in conversation with Akkai Padmashali, one of the country’s most prominent transgender activists, on ‘Being an LGBTQIA+ Parent’ at Manorama Hortus in Kozhikode on Saturday.
Akkai suggested that this otherness was a result of the dominance of heteronormative thought in the country. “When I adopted a child, it was a one-month-old baby. Many neighbors, relatives and friends were curious about the sex of the baby. I asked why it mattered. I replied that the “My baby’s gender was ‘baby’. But they insisted on whether my baby was a boy or a girl,” Akkai said.

Marked as she was by the trauma of her childhood, Akkai is repelled by the heteronormative idea of ​​establishing a child’s sex at birth. “My parents judged me as a boy based on societal assumptions. If you are born with a penis, you are a male child. If you have a vagina, you are a girl. If you are born with both male and female organs, you are called an intersex child,” she said. “I don’t want to be like my parents. I want to be a non-judgmental mother and let my child decide, at whatever age they choose, whether to identify as a boy, a girl, or a gender nonconformist. kind,” she said.

Akkai is the first transgender person in the country to obtain a driver’s license listing their gender as female. She is also the first transgender person from Karnataka to register her marriage in Karnataka.

However, being a non-judgmental mother isn’t easy. Akkai recounts how, when her adopted child was taken to school, the school authorities insisted on knowing the identity of the father. “Who is Avin’s father? I told them I don’t have the details of Avin’s father. We want the caste of Avin’s father. I said I don’t have the caste of Avin’s father. We want to know who Avin’s original father is. I said I don’t know who Avin’s original father is,” Akkai said.

She’s frustrated that school officials haven’t been satisfied with the basic details, the only details that matter. “I am the adoptive mother and I am a transgender woman. Now that my child has accepted me as a mother and as a mother I have accepted my child, what has anyone else to look for other details,” she said. .

Akkai urged the Union government and states to come up with a policy that would eliminate discrimination against children from sexual minorities. “They need to be given special attention. It is easy to go to school, but we need to make sure that teachers, educational institutions and the neighborhoods we are part of benefit from public/social education about these children and their backgrounds,” she said.

“I can fight to a point. Eventually my government will have to take over,” she said. “Who knows, my child will become president or prime minister. This policy that I have spoken about must be made keeping in mind this broader vision of the world of tomorrow,” she said. Akkai Padmashali’s autobiography ‘A Challenge to Sympathy’ is now taught in 18 universities in Karnataka.

Gargi Harithakam also urged governments to “understand the different types of historical oppressions that have occurred in society and develop policies that accommodate people from different historically oppressed communities.”

Even as these policies see the light of day, Akkai is aware of the dangers facing children from sexual minorities. “Tomorrow, even if 10 families accept us, there would be an eleventh family who would tell my baby that you are the daughter or son of a transgender person and use a pejorative to insult us. What would my baby think then? How would my will baby fight this trauma,” she said.