Transgender and Intersex Individual
In the present day society, many people do not rely on their assigned gender, or sex, at birth to define themselves. Male and female are not the only genders that humanity must embrace. Normal, as the community dictates, is when a relationship is anchored to the idea that it is only between a man and a woman. Normal is when you grow up as what kind of genital you have upon being born. With this kind of conception of normality, exclusion of some members of the society is being prominent for these members do not commit to the ideals of normality in a society.
Through time, people become more expressive and more eager to define themselves as who they are not only physically, but through the emotion that they possess towards their sexuality. Transgender, being defined as people whose identity or gender expression is opposite to that of his/her assigned sex at birth, are people who are in need of more support from the community. Every year, a lot of transgender are murdered and mutilated just because people do not want them to be a part of the society, or even to disappear so that they may not infect the other members of the society with their so-called sickness. As of today, more and more people still consider transgender as a contagious sickness, more so, a plague that can spread and kill thousands of people.
Aside from the wrath of the normality conformists that transgender experience, intersex people also experience this degrading treatment from the society.2 Intersex is a condition wherein the genitals of a person are in between the physical appearance of a male and female; genitals that do not fit the definition of being solely a man or a woman.
Like the oppressed Black women from America, transgender and intersex people seek to uplift their academic credentials and social status so as to be in par with the whites, or as for the transgender and the intersex’s case, the normality. 3
Transgender and intersex people are very much alike with the oppressed people. In order for them to be understood by the norms, they have to constantly educate ignorant people that what are they and what characteristics they have are not sickness. However, up until today, several church groups and high government officials cannot grasp the concept of simply accepting the transsexuals and intersex people. They continuously support and believe their argument biblically that a man is meant to be partnered to a woman and a woman is meant to be partnered with man.
On the other hand, trans (short term for transgender) and intersex people are not only being oppressed but more so, they are being treated as people with sickness. Other people believe that spreading this sickness is just as close to what the plague did to the society during the seventeenth century. By looking at the trans and intersex people as someone who is sick, they cannot fully achieve the normal life that they also deserved as humans.
Michel Foucault believes that the model of disciplinary mechanism is made up of an enclosed, segmented space that is observable at every point. In this space, all the individuals are introduced in a static area wherein the slightest movements are being supervised and observed. All the events in people’s lives are recorded through a continuous writing work which links the periphery and center. In this space, the power is implemented without barriers as mentioned by a constant hierarchical figure. Individuals are being located continuously and thus examined and distributed to the living world.4
In relation to the previous paragraph which is an excerpt from Foucault’s study, it is evident that in almost all parts of the world that being transgender, intersex, or even being gay or lesbian can be contained in a way that these people would not harm or can even infect the other people in the society. With this train of thought, transgender and intersex are should be treated as humans and not as a person who is sick. Treating them as sick by out casting them is evidently being inhumane.
In this case, we, the society, should not try and turn everything around in order for the transgender and the intersex not to be oppressed or disgraced. Trans and intersex people should not, in return, discriminate “normal” people and its governance or its ideologies. Instead, the society must be able to accept the fact that being transgender and being an intersex does not mean that they are less than people. They are people. They rally. They do with all their power to make people understand what and who they are. Once everyone in the society accepts the fact that they can coexist in a harmonious way, without any prejudice that transgender and intersex can ruin the normality of the society, then we can say, as a community that the battle for the acceptance of the transgender and the intersex has finally come to an end.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Collins, Patricia Hill. “The Social Construction of Black Feminist Thought.” Signs 14, no. 4 (1989): 745-773. Accessed November 27, 2014. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3174683.
Foucault, Michel. “Panopticism.” from “Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison.” Race/Ethnicity: Multidisciplinary Global Contexts 2, no. 1 (2008): 1-12. Accessed November 27, 2014. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25594995.
Intersex Society of North America. What is Intersex?. http://www.isna.org/faq/what_is_intersex.
National Center for Transgender Equality. Transgender Terminology. http://transequality.org/Resources/TransTerminology_2014.pdf.
