{"id":6788,"date":"2009-12-26T23:20:16","date_gmt":"2009-12-27T04:20:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/horizonsmagazine.com\/blog\/?p=6788"},"modified":"2009-12-26T23:20:16","modified_gmt":"2009-12-27T04:20:16","slug":"pakistan-recognizes-third-gender","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/horizonsmagazine.com\/blog\/pakistan-recognizes-third-gender\/","title":{"rendered":"Pakistan Recognizes Third Gender"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pakistan Recognizes Third Gender<\/a> by Ria Misra:\u00a0 The Supreme Court in Pakistan ordered that the government officially recognize a separate gender for Pakistan’s hijra<\/a> community, which includes transgendered people, transvestites, and eunuchs. The court told the federal government to begin allowing people to identify as hijras when registering for a national identity card.\u00a0 Not having an identity card, or having one with incorrect information, leaves a person vulnerable and easily excluded from society.\u00a0 In India, voters are required to identify their sex both on their voter ID cards and at the polls. The insistence that they identify as male or female effectively barred many transgendered and transvestite people from the polls until late this year, when the government declared that for the purposes of voting it would recognize a third option.\u00a0 In addition, a warning was issued that the hijras’ rights of inheritance would be enforced, and that police harassment would not be permitted, a sign, perhaps, of rulings to come.<\/p>\n

Gosh, even Pakistan is more progressive than we are? A friend asked why I care about this stuff if I’m neither gay nor transgendered – it’s cuz I’m HUMAN.<\/p>\n

If the government is going to make us check a box for gender (or ethnicity), then we need to have relevant choices. The old male\/female only, or black\/white\/asian only choices no longer apply.<\/p>\n

And jeez, how do we keep track of ethnicity these days anyway?\u00a0 In another two generations we’ll all be\u00a0 Winsor & Newton Raw Umber <\/a> anyway.<\/span><\/p>\n

That will make it hard to know who to hate, huh?<\/span><\/p>\n

Bummer.<\/p>\n

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