Explaining how difficult the society makes it in accepting individuals like Asghar who ought to be treated like special people who feel differently.
“If everyone in this world were all good at the same things and felt the same way or looked and acted the same, life would be uninspiring and quite frankly, very monotonous,” remarked Asghar Khan, a 24-year-old transgender person who left his home in Sheikhupura a few years ago to move to Bari Imam in Islamabad in pursuit of discovering himself.
Asghar grew up with four other siblings and attended school like regular children. “When I was still in my early teens I discovered that I felt trapped inside someone else’s body,” he expressed. I got in touch with some transgender friends in Islamabad and moved here since my parents, like most parents in Pakistan, were not accepting of how I felt, he added.
Asghar does miss his family back home but feels that moving out was essential for him to be able to evolve and grow as an individual.
He yearned to set an example for others in his community and therefore didn’t follow the path most transgender people in the country end up following due to lack of opportunities arising out of discrimination and taboo against them. “Even though I felt like a girl, I didn’t want to dress like one, dance at parties or beg on the streets,” he explained.
Being passionate about education, Asghar decided to get enrolled in his bachelor’s in history and politics at Allama Iqbal Open University. After his classes in the evenings, he teaches mathematics to secondary level students.
Asghar also has a diploma in make-up and hairstyling and wants to continue earning a decent livelihood and live respectably by teaching school children in the morning and doing make-up and hairstyling on the side.
Talking about transforming their bodies through surgery or by taking hormones, Asghar said “Physically becoming the opposite gender can be a complicated and an expensive process; hence we should accept the way we are and live our lives accordingly.”
Explaining how difficult the society makes it in accepting individuals like Asghar who ought to be treated like special people who feel differently. “We were born like this, it’s something beyond our control and after all we’re all different from each other in one way or the other,” he expressed.
Leading by example, Asghar wants to pursue his master in Islamic studies in order to learn more about the rights of transgender people in Islam.
Published in The Express Tribune, April 2nd, 2015.
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