MANORAMA HORTUS

How does it feel to rear a child as an LGBTQIA+ parent

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

"Our children are studying in queer-phobic places; they are exposed to queer-phobic content on an everyday basis. And my child looks at me and tells me, 'I'm not LGBT', and I am like 'How do you know? How can you say that? And why are you so proud about not being LGBT?'" Harithakam says with a guffaw.

She was in conversation with Akkai Padmashali, one of the country's foremost transgender activists, on 'Being an LGBTQIA+ Parent' at Manorama Hortus in Kozhikode on Saturday.
Akkai suggested that this othering was the result of the domination of heteronormative thinking in the country. "When I adopted a child, it was a baby of one month. Many neighbours, relatives, and friends were curious to know the baby's sex. I asked how it mattered. I told my baby's sex is 'baby'. But they insisted on knowing whether my baby was a boy or a girl," said Akkai.

Scarred as she was by her childhood trauma, Akkai is repulsed by the heteronormative idea of establishing a child's gender at birth. "My parents judged me as a boy based on society's held notions. If you are born with a penis, you are a male child. If with a vagina, you are a female child. 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 mother of non-judgmental attitude and let my child decide, at whatever age my baby chooses, to identify as a boy or a girl or a gender non-conformist," she said.

Akkai is the first transgender person in the country to secure a driving license stating her gender as female. She is also the first transgender person in Karnataka to register her marriage in Karnataka.

Being a non-judgmental mother, however, is not easy. Akkai speaks of 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 Avin's father's details. We want Avin's father's caste. 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 is frustrated that the school authorities were not satisfied with the fundamental details, the only details that matter. "I am the adopted mother, and I am a transgender woman. Now that my child has accepted me as its mother and, as a mother, I have accepted my child, what business does anybody else have to seek other details," she said.

Akkai urged both the Union government and states to draft a policy that would root out discrimination against children of sexual minorities. "They should be given separate attention. It is easy to go to school, but it has to be made sure that the teachers, the educational institutions, and the neighbourhoods that we are part of are provided with a public/social education about these children and their background," she said.

"I can fight to an extent. Eventually, my government has to take over," she said. "Who knows, my child would become the President or Prime Minister. This policy that I spoke of should be drafted keeping in mind this broader vision for tomorrow's world," she said. Akkai Padmashali's autobiography 'A Challenge to Sympathy' is now taught in 18 universities in Karnataka.

Gargi Harithakam, too, urged governments to "understand different sorts of historical oppressions that happened in the society and make policies which accommodate people from different historically oppressed communities".

Even if these policies come into existence, Akkai is aware of the dangers that wait to pounce on children of sexual minorities. "Tomorrow, even if 10 families accept us, there would be an eleventh family that would tell my baby that you are the daughter or son of a transgender and use a pejorative to insult us. What would my baby then think? How will my baby combat that trauma," she said.