BENGALURU: Rishika Anchalia hates filling out forms. “I hate it. I hate it. I hate it,” the 23-year-old digital strategist sounds exasperated over the phone.
Rishika identifies as a genderqueer person and prefers the pronoun “they” to address self. “The medical and government forms have no gender neutral option,” they* say.
Alok Vaid-Menon shares a similar concern. “ I am not interested in filling out other or third gender. I don’t believe I should have to put a gender on a form at all,” says the gender non-conforming writer, entertainer and performance artist.
Alok too prefers the pronoun “they” to address self.
‘Binary Doesn’t Define Me’
Randy Scarhol, very recently started identifying as a gender non-conformist. “I have no particular pronoun that I stick to,” says the 22-year-old. “If it makes it easier for you to use “they”, then I’m okay with that. He is fine too or anything for that matter,” says the architecture student.
“If gender is a binary concept, it fails to define me,” says Angad, who started identifying himself as a gender non-conformist about two years ago, but is alright with the pronoun “he”.
“I think I allowed myself to explore gender and do my research. For a very long time, the stigma of identifying as anything under the trans umbrella kept me from introspecting,” says the 19-year-old.
Angad has never been uncomfortable with male pronouns. “That’s what people use currently to refer to me. I think I’d be just as comfortable with female pronouns, although that isn’t something I’ve experimented with yet,” adds the medical student.
Randy doesn’t like to be labelled by gender. “Because I’ve noticed that people who take gender very seriously stick to it in all shades. And I don’t,” says the Bengalurean.
Routine Harassment
So, how easy or difficult is it being a gender non-conformist?
It makes work very difficult, says Angad. “ I often have to conform to traditionally masculine attire and mannerisms to fit in. As a medical student, a lot of time is spent in the hospital interacting with people from poor/rural/uneducated backgrounds and that automatically means conformity on the part of the treating physician, since anything otherwise isn’t perceived as trustworthy/reliable”.
Angad live in a boys’ hostel. “Things do get awkward when I have make-up on. I live by myself, so no awkward roommate issues”.
Alok says they experience routine harassment and discrimination almost everywhere they go.
“Every aspect of my life has been affected by being gender non-conforming. This is because in our society you are required to be gender conforming to be treated with respect,” they say.
“I feel like I will start going out in non conformist outfits, but not now. Because I don’t feel like I’m ready yet,” adds Randy who just ticks “male” on forms. “I choose to look at it as sex”.
(* ‘They’ has been used as a pronoun to refer to the people we have spoken to and it takes a plural verb)
Love Doesn’t Discriminate
As far as relationships go, Angad has “consciously kept himself from disappointment” by not indulging in any romantic ones. “I know it’s something I’ll have to grow out of. I suppose I’ve never found someone that accepts me entirely for who I am, and unless that happens, I’m happy to wait,” says Angad.
Alok says they form relationships like any other person would.
“However, I don’t discriminate against people on the basis of their gender. I find restricting desire to gender is reductive and unnecessary,” they say.
Will conforming to gender be a thing of the past in a progressive society?
“I don’t think a progressive society will completely be able to wipe out the concept of gender. It shouldn’t either. Because gender does matter to some people so I wouldn’t want that,” says Randy.
“The goal isn’t to make everyone a non conformist. The goal is to let people be who they want to be,” they add.
Complex Desires
Alok hopes for sexual orientations to “go away”.
“By which I mean I hope that we will stop being asked to narrate our desires on the basis of sex/gender. I believe they are far more complex than that,” they say.
Challenging the gender binary doesn’t necessarily involve referring to everyone as “they,” it involves actively refusing dividing society into one of two “male” or “female”, says Alok.
They feel the degendering of society and its institutions could still allow space for positive discrimination as a way to address historic and continued discrimination.
“In fact, we would have to become more precise about the intersections of class, caste, region, religion and gender which together make certain people more vulnerable than others,” says the performer.
“It’s not that moving away from the gender binary prevents us from highlighting sex/gender discrimination, doing this — in fact — makes this endeavour more precise,” adds Alok.