Gender fluidity and India

 I have been listening, watching a lot of talks around gender fluidity and I feel it's time to pen or blog it down.

So the strange thing I came across when I was graduating in year 2014 and I read a news in newspaper, a female athlete pretended to be a female while it was a male all along.

She is now banned from further participation in sports.

For me it was plain and straight thing to believe that it was such a fraud, she must have just faked it by being a little bit feminine. And I forgot about it. 

Few years later I came across a podcast by Radiolab where I got the name and whole background of the athelete in question. The athelete in question here is an Indian athelete who was Dutee Chand from Odisha.

She was banned based on a test done to confirm the gender of the athletes to avoid cross participation of atheletes among men and woman.

The test however was not a regressive practice of making woman show their private parts to doctors which was a practice during cold war to make sure female team is all female and no fraud, it wasn't even a chromosomes test where your DNA is tested for which chromosomes you have but a testosterone level test. 

A test which determines your supposedly gender based on your testosterone levels.

Being from a Indian village these accusations were confusing to Chand while she herself was raised by her parents to be a woman. 

This further story should be a national news but unfortunately my country thinks only the stuff involving money and religion are worth sharing for. 

Well Chand went to atheletes court and fought this case on basis that the test which determines these things are not accurate and one can not ban her for having higher testosterone levels. The court gave the decision against the ban and lifted the ban from her with a suggestion to federation which banned her to take a look at the methods used for determining gender. 

Why I say it's an important news? 

Because of so many things, one being my controversial opinion that why should there be two different sports category, can a woman not be better than a man at sports? 

Well study suggests there is a significant amount of difference between how a man performs and how a woman perform and that is why these two were differentiated. 

But then what about a world where we are having Transgender, Agender, Bigender would these binary norms survive? 

Will we have a gender neutral point where all our skills will be tested based on our abilities and not capped by these norms? 

Sometimes when I see around and find couples who still have this idea of who their kid is going to be or what kind of things they should do based on their cisgender. I feel the need to provide my point. Yet I am aware of the consequences that my factual points might be insulting or offensive to them. 

When I still see parents providing toys, books, songs based on this one thing which actually vilifies the different options the kids may want to try. 

In a country where same sex couples were illigal and same sex marriage is still considered illigal I wish I could express my opinion to not to put these kids in certain boxes limiting their life experiences.

A country which always had this stigma around gender other than binary genders is on verge of bringing another big change which may one day make same sex marriage legal. 

My generation was aware of the crimes, hate and disgust for this concept and also participated in it. There is a new change on horizon which is going to bring down this entire Charade of pretentious gender norms.

I argue a lot about these male vs female issues with people who are close to me or who are rather interested in listening my view point. I feel gender fluidity is on the verge of being born as a modern world's most beautiful thing.

A world where a person is not limited to certain jobs, roles, place to live or even value for their efforts. 

A world where value is assigned to skill and knowledge and not to the appearances..

A world where everyone has right to love, marry and have kids with whoever they want to. 

Dutee Chand represents that world where she has a place because of her training and skills and one can not ban her simply because she has natural chemical levels higher in her based on decided limits of unproven methods. 

Dutee who then explored her own sexuality and came out as first ever openly lesbian athelete is the epitome of this years of struggle in our country of people who had to keep the fight up to give name to their story.

This should be a news which should reach every person who is in this country so it can be aspiring to everyone to be loving, caring and supporting in a world which denies the basic rights to us.

To Dutee Chand from Odisha...

References: 

https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/dutee