What happened?

A young boy with non-binary nature is bullied day in and day out by boys in his home town, school, college and professional environment. He chooses not to continue his professional career- engineering, and opts for a traditionally associated profession of a khawaja sara dancer. A couple of weeks ago he came into spot light where he admitted that he gave up his professional career because he could not bear the word hijra- a derogatory term for non-binaries by hooters. On Facebook he is known as Dolphin Ayan Edwardian. (a former student of Edward college Peshawar)

Who to blame?

 Such cases are not new to our society; we witness such happenings now and then.  And it’s not only with people suffering from gender expression issues. Professionals, certain female and common people also suffer this fate.
          Such belittling social response chase them, until they face some ill-fated event, say tragedy. Once someone gets labeled, it bars him/her from expressing theirselves naturally. Such label induces a certain type of conscience with in them and that conscience directs and dictates every new step which they try to make in life.
          A person who is accused for corruption, a male or female who is accused of adultery gets the label of corrupt and sinner respectively and due to lack of social wisdom people constantly  associate these allegations with them and they -the accused-  carry it around their necks for a long time in life. These allegations, either true or false, become the source of their recognition in the society. They try to avoid the places where they think they may face these allegations again. Their sins or misdeeds become their identity and thus restricts their right for living a free social life.
          The same happened to Dolphin Ayan, whose impediment was the word hijra, and this word closed the gate of entire world for him and pushed him to an undesired and socially under privileged world of transgender dancers. According to Dolphin Ayan, the word hijra is with him since his start of social life. To avoid such hurls he gave up his professional career as an engineer and rather choose the path where he was welcomed.
         Who knows how much good he could have done for his people if he had lived professionally in his field, who knows how many people suffer the same fate where they can’t join the world because there exists ‘words’ that ridicule them, paralyze them and stop them from living a free life.

          This phenomenon is highly entrenched within our society and it serves as a rift in our social progression. It has measureless vicious implications and effects on the lives of people individually and collectively. We cut off our chances of socio-scientific and socio-political progress by eliminating and alienating people from common sphere of workable environment. Many people can’t start a business due to social-response-pressure; they think they would get ridiculed or people would laugh at them. Still in most rural societies of our country most people don’t allow female to work because of social-response-pressure. Likewise, in our domestic social life people who once fail in business are not welcomed and often discouraged to give it another try. Children who score lesser grades in school exams are stigmatized as lofer and na-laiek. Woman who can’t give birth to a baby often remains silent in house affairs because she may get the taunt of being infertile. All this hesitation in letting people to live as they want has a common undercurrent, especially, in choice of profession and academia and that is the idea of social response and the fear of getting a label.  

           As a nation and society, we need to enlighten our minds and make ourselves more accommodating and welcoming in nature.

          Dolphin Ayan – real name Mahin Muhammad- is a living and fresh victim of the ill-fated conservative phenomenon. He has the right to live his life freely as we all enjoy. We must not categorize him a child of a lesser god. Many women and unconfident people in our country share the same fate.

          The link contains an interview of  Dolphin Ayan.