My SRHR Dream for India

    As a queer individual assigned female at birth (AFAB), SRHR is a topic that’s close to my heart but at the same time, I also understand how broad of an umbrella it is. That’s why I concentrate on areas where my expertise is the largest. This is something I hope others too follow because misinformation and misconceptions is an extremely problematic and widespread issue in India, with dire consequences, some of which are unintended, when it comes to SRHR. 

1. Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) 

    The aforementioned issues, I believe, are exacerbated by the lack of CSE in India, with the extremely limitedly available sex education being skipped or limited to students AFAB, effectively increasing the taboo, stigma, shame and making the shroud of secrecy even darker. Thus, at the root, making CSE, with a shared risk and pleasure-based focus, rather than singularly the former, mandatory in educational institutions from elementary schools is essential. 

    Having a pleasure-based focus is essential, in addition to the risks, because we, as a society, need to acknowledge the fact that people engage in sex and explore their sexuality for their pleasure and happiness, be it sexual or otherwise. Like in any other journey of self-discovery, this exploration comes with its risks. So, addressing only the risks without the pleasure that pioneered it would be like treating the symptoms of a disease without even giving regard to the causative factor of the disease, not that pleasure is a disease though. Bringing pleasure into the sphere of vision is also going to create visibility and validation for people who differ from the conventional understanding of intercourse/coitus, thus effectively addressing a lot of mental health and relationship issues due to initiation of conscious and purposeful communication. From the perspective of a person who engages in kink and with ‘pain’ for a fetish, I can guarantee that basic scientific awareness of pleasure and the knowledge that it can mean different things to different people provides a depth to the concept of ‘Consent’ and understanding of ‘Bodily Autonomy’. 

    I’d also like to propose building a general awareness of Puberty Blockers and Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT), addressing both its risks and benefits, to give children and people the assurance and awareness that it’s possible and okay to be different. 

        2. Medical Industry 

We all know that the medical industry is a tight nut to crack. But it being what it is doesn’t invalidate my experiences of bodyshaming and being given partial to no information. And these aren’t singular incidents because, as an SRHR Activist and a friend to numerous marginalized folks, I have heard stories of numerous lived experiences of public bodyshaming, unnecessary surgeries, withholding of information, and disaffirmation, bordering harassment.  

Though a lot of these issues can be tackled by CSE, more complicated issues call for updating the outdated, defective and insufficient medical syllabus. Among these ‘complicated issues’, one in my expertise to address is the SRHR of Intersex people. 

To understand this completely, we need to understand that, unlike popular belief, people can be intersex not just due to ambiguous genitals but also due to hormonal and/or genetic variations, which amounts to more than 45 ways of being intersex. Leaving the unnecessary surgeries done on the first group of healthy infants, other groups wouldn’t even know that they’re intersex until they’re into their puberty or never. This means that a lot of us could be intersex and never even know it. While one of the reasons for this being the lack of research done into the SRHR of intersex people due supposedly few people being born as such, it’s also to be acknowledged that most of us live our lives without doing karyotypic testing. I’m not advocating for it since it’s an expensive procedure. But I’m advocating for the possibility of a person being intersex to be considered, atleast when they encounter failure even after numerous rounds of IVF or when they have other reproductive issues which are unexplained or not explained enough by modern medicine or often ignored by the medical community.  

Ofcourse, I can’t give citations to medical journals to attest to all these arguments since no research have been done into these issues, which brings us back to the problem in question that needs to be addressed. Even after research are done into these matters, I might be wrong about some of these since I’m not a medical professional. But talking to the President Elect, Dr. Jaydeep Tank, of FOGSI, I atleast know that my concerns are valid and would like them addressed. 

Electric Vehicles - Problem or Solution

    If the problem is carbon emissions due to heavy use of fossil fuels, electric vehicles is the solution, at least until we find a better alternative. But considering how complex problems like climate change and electricity sourcing are, a linear approach couldn’t even begin to identify all the causes of these problems and that’s why, electric vehicles are only a short-term solution. In the long-term, we would need to get into the scientific basics and numbers to be certain about what to change, increase and decrease and to identify grassroots challenges and roadblocks with various stakeholders. Talking about stakeholders, the recent announcement of an increase in costs related to diesel vehicles can be considered as a strategy to increase the consumption of electric vehicles and eventually market it as a short-term solution to reduce the carbon emission, until a better solution is figured out. Though this is just the situation in India, it’ll inevitably cause effects in other countries like climate change and international motor trends always have. Thus, it would call for joint international discussions to ensure that the worse-effected states don’t end up facing their worst and vice versa. 

    As for reductionism and holism, I believe both approaches would be required to effectively implement electric vehicles as a solution because the problem of carbon emissions is too huge and too intricate when added with the chemistry and physics of electric vehicles to be understood by an absolute layman, especially when the kinds of electric vehicles could be extremely varied. As for holism, I think it’s a more addressable issue considering how many governments do not want to or only want to support the buying and selling of electric vehicles in certain amounts to maintain the financial support from certain corporate giants in the motor vehicle industry. Breaking down such systemic issues could also bring to light how some states might have preferences for certain kinds of electric vehicles using certain kinds of technologies to generate, borrow, and/or store that current, which might or might not be a problem accordingly. Depending on these results, it would give insights into systemic patterns which need or need not be broken down in various scenarios. 

    Coming to synthesis and analysis, some of the aforementioned issues pop-up once again. Depending on the type of materials/technology used in electric vehicles and the strategies adopted for its marketing and the sustaining of that market value and the related challenges that might come up, electric vehicles can be a problem or solution. When it comes to analyzing its effects, it’s evident that electric vehicles reduce carbon emissions but there might be other unintended effects that positively or negatively affect other factors. Again, extensive scientific data would be required to determine whether electric vehicles stands a chance as a long-term solution. What is evident is, in the long-term, this is an area that needs a lot of innovation and interventions and insights on how the antique collection and remodeling industry will affect the efforts to advance towards combating climate change, which would need strict regulation to keep an eye on the industry. 

A Leftover Puzzle Piece’s Turning Point

My School

             “Okay, Reshma, you’re in this group”, my teacher? told me. The last student in the class too was segregated into one of the three groups like a leftover puzzle piece. 

               And for me, being the 'leftover puzzle piece’, even though I was more talented and capable than most of my classmates, was an everyday affair. But was I used to it? Not at all. 

Each time the group leaders reach the end of the selection process for group members, I’m left out like an unwanted leftover with other students who aren’t good at studying or leadership that our teachers and school wanted. Even after all those students are picked into groups, I still stand there waiting for someone to pick me like a homeless kitten or abandoned infant, witnessing the group leaders fighting and discussing between themselves so that they don’t have to have me in their group. Finally, because our teacher doesn’t want to waste any more time on this charade, I get put into some random group with the least number of members whose leader accepts me reluctantly with an expression full of detest.

Even after decades of being the leftover piece, I kept whispering, “Please pick me, please...I’m capable enough, aren’t I? I’ll do well, so please pick me” like a prayer in my heart. 

This prayer was never granted, be it in English class with my favourite teacher or the PE class, my least favourite, even after almost a decade of whispering.

I was a 9th grader at Indian School, Al-Ain, the only school I had and would ever study in, in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). At this point of my life, being a UAE born Indian in a mostly Malayalee community in UAE, I was atleast not treated like a tiger cub in a zoo like I would be later in my life. 

All through my school life, the place where I was expected to have most of my social interaction, I was rather treated like a blindspot in the vision of my classmates, as if I was covered by an invisibility cloak. With no one to talk to and share my loneliness with, I grew more and more lonely over the years, with more of those years to survive ahead of me.

“But why? Why me? Why…I don’t want to live like this anymore.” 

Years and years of this inexplicably unanswered question revolving in my head kept calling for me to end it all with a slit of a knife to my wrist. As I was spiralling through this void of urges, I was suddenly given a decree that my family was to move closer to my father’s workplace in Buraimi, Oman. 

Was this good news for me? No, all I had was in me was dread for the new because I had never experienced a better alternative.

“It would just be some new people to ignore me,” was my only thought when I stepped foot into my new school bus which would take me from Buraimi to my school in Al-Ain. 

Two bus stops later, a tall senior girl, who I didn’t know would be the first turning point in my life, entered the bus. Those vibrant eyes of hers shot to a seemingly timid new face in a seat that would usually remain empty in the bus. 

“Did our eyes meet just now or did I imagine it?” was the beginning of the line of thoughts running through my head when I heard someone from 5-6 seats behind me inviting me to share her seat. Neither me nor that senior knew that this interaction would be the trigger to healing almost a decade worth of scars while leaving a scar, possibly bigger than all those, at the time.

A few weeks of getting to know each other in those cold foggy mornings was followed by visiting and spending time in each other's houses, sparking in me a one-sided dependance and feelings for that tall senior. 

To me, it was the first to find solace in a fellow human being. 

Months later, after some bright, fun and delicious Onam and Christmas celebrations in each other’s abodes, the tall senior reported at the last minute, “I’m leaving for India and probably won’t come back for years.” 

These fell like words of condemnation on me, who was imagining more years of solace and happiness to come. Moreover, in those final moments together, my tears were invalidated by the same person I considered my solace.

As fate would have it, I never got the time to face and deal with my feelings. I once again had to move and that too, back to Al-Ain. Though with a reflection of escapism, I was grateful for the distraction which changed me like never before. The few months after the senior leaving, when I couldn't attend school due to legal and documentary reasons at the Buraimi checkpost, I had become more confident, taller and skinnier from that chubby timid little girl, thanks to puberty. 

When I finally went to school after two months of being unable to attend it, I could notice how the stares of my classmates had changed. The dark laser of disgust like looking at something untouchable had become slightly less potent, coloured with wonder for the superficial outer changes, exacerbated by a faint touch of confidence granted to me by that short period of solace. 

All it brought to my heart was one question, “why?”, while being apprehensive of that unfamiliar change.

I definitely knew that I’m different even from back then. But what was that difference? I had no answer to that and it would take longer and meeting more people and another turning point for me to figure it out. 

P.S. “It’s immensely important for schools and the society to help us discover our differences and encourage us to embrace it like it’s a given which was unfortunately never done, leaving me with decades of trauma, scars and resentment.” The lessons from those years might be the seeds that sprouted such thoughts in me while writing this personal story of mine. But struggles are always going to follow us through our lives and I think it would have been easier for me to survive if I had read the next few words by Roseanna Bisch back then, “Tears are a sign that something in you is healing. Don’t let anybody tell you otherwise.”

Inclusion Elevates All

 “Don’t tolerate me as different. Accept me as part of the spectrum of normalcy.”

- Ann Northrop 

Be it that our skin is fair or dark or hair is short or long or are attracted to males or females, at the end of the day, it does not change the fact that we all are Homo sapiens, or to say, human beings. Literally meaning that nobody is an outsider or a misfit. It is just made to seem so. Accordingly, marginalizing and/or ostracizing of a certain group of people just because they are too different does not make any sense. Rather, the truth is that we all are different in one way or the other. It simply depends on how we slice the pie. 

Now if one gets the smaller end of the pie, that still does not mean that the pie could be complete without that piece, however small it is. So, no matter however the bigger chunk tries to obliterate the smaller segments, the smaller bits have the right to exist happily and peacefully with utmost dignity. This is rightly expressed by the honourable Judge D. Gregory Geary through his words in the Orberti v. Board of Education case, “Inclusion is a right, not a privilege for a select few.” Nonetheless, ‘better’ for the smaller piece would mean better for the bigger one too. That is why, appreciating and acknowledging the intersectionality of the dignity of various lumps of people, like in a Venn diagram, provide an insight into how inexorably interlinked we all are and how the support and love of one could serve as their life’s building block for another. 

Nevertheless, the road to dignity is a long way ahead and should start by valuing oneself and accepting the fact that if someone does not accept you as you are, then it is because they do not deserve you which is their loss. Once you learn to value yourself, then it is about the rights you are rightfully entitled to. Though the road to obtaining these rights might be full of uncertainties, that does not mean that you got to beg for mere crumbs because that will only get you even lesser than those crumbs. Rather, through this journey, another integral mission of life needs to be undertaken. 

It is often not realized how unlearning is as much a mission of life as learning. Unlearning is a crucial tool to be efficiently used to achieve the dignity one deserves by eradicating the age-old beliefs, people are conditioned to put their confidence into, stemming out of and fuelling patriarchy, misogyny, bigotry, etc., with no definable scientific basis. Unlearning and relearning can be achieved by sharing personal experiences, rather than facts and figures, as the heart is the road to the mind. These values were effectively portrayed in the struggle against Proposition 8 in California, USA in 2008 for marriage equality. 

Then again, this road from someone’s heart to their mind might be full of hurdles and blocks and getting hurt sometimes becomes inevitable. Even then, those tears, trickling over the traces left by those personal stories, are a sign that something inside is healing and never should it be let for anyone to plant the idea that it is a sign of weakness. In lieu of this, healing can also emanate from talking out one's grievances. Having someone who merely stays beside and listens wholeheartedly without offering any unwarranted advice can be the greatest boon through that journey of personal storytelling. 

Thus, happiness is something of our own making but at the same time, it cannot be a lone deed. It is the result of coming together of like-minded people who understand that nothing in this world can be ascertained for sure and that conversely, we all live in a vibrant spectrum, striving towards the same goal. In that journey, many small pieces of the pie collaborate to build a far happier and more inclusive world for the posterity while hoping to share a part of that happiness before we leave. And this is the only way we can get the pendulum of progress moving forward again.