Irha Parishei; Pakistani Trans-woman Combats Society for a Better Life
As she approached me tall and petite, dressed in a pair of jeans and a navy blue hoodie, I couldn’t help but marvel at her sharp jawline and high cheekbones made prominent by silver highlighter and pink blush. Behind the warm and charming demeanor, Irha Parishei, a trans-woman in her early twenties has a story of a stupendous struggle. She is an undergraduate student at the software engineering program at National University of Science and Technology. Her brilliance at academics has always been admirable.
Criticism for transgender and intersex people and for those who are different starts from the time they learn to walk and talk. They get scolded and beaten up for reasons that they should not be and actions that they don’t have a control on.
“As a child born with this, I didn’t know of the differences between a man and a woman. What a man is supposed to do and what a woman is supposed to do. It was an excruciatingly confusing time for me.”
Frustration is evident from her disposition as she tells how her mother was stern towards her even when her father understood and accepted her. It all boils down to the matter of when people cannot understand the difference between different aspects of LGBTQI people, she explains. Lack of awareness results in people putting all of them into one big mixing pot making it even harder for the families to accept.
“For most part parents think we are acting a certain way on purpose. They don’t think that the child has no control over it.” Individual identity being defaced is a pressing problem.
Irha recollects on her early teen years that people around you like your peers and relatives start mocking you. It is depressing and completely not understandable to a child and questions start arising in your mind that why is this happening to me? I am not doing it deliberately. What should I do?
“In the beginning I tried to kill my femininity and looked for the ways that would help. People suggested to me different ways that I could. I started to learn to drive a bike, hanging out with guys and stuff like that.” She reminisces.
Irha opted to go to boarding school because she thought there’d be plenty of guys to learn and adopt masculine behavior from. She regards it as the worst part of my life because being trans-gender, she was the only feminine thing over there so she could easily become a victim of abuse of all kinds. “Even though none of them were successful, there were more than three hundred times if I count the time of these unpleasant events”, she shudders as she recollects. “You start blaming yourself that it’s only happening to me somehow it is all my fault.”
Even though she didn’t share any interests with her peers at boarding school and couldn’t open up to make any friends, Irha is thankful anyway because that is the time she got close to her Lord.” I used to cry and pray a lot that please God make me a normal boy, I can’t deal with this.” She goes on “When we were all in 8th grade, we were all hitting puberty but for me it was happening in a very opposite and confusing direction for me. In situations like this you are likely to fall into deep depression and became suicidal.”
Heavy framed glasses perched on the bridge of her nose in almost a signature-like manner as she tells about her family. Her father teaches mathematics and physics. She has a brother and a sister. “They were not okay with me being like this initially but I think they are now gradually getting used to it. We don’t talk about this much. I have a connection with my family but it is a very partial connection. I cannot ask them for girly clothing, they don’t allow me to wear it but everything takes time.”
Irha did a documentary with UN Women and a public service message with the trend #ChangeTheClap. She is a contender for the Goodwill Ambassador for UN and has signed with various magazines and brands as a model. Most notable of them is a modeling gig with Generations. “I’d like to be a professional model, business woman and an entrepreneur”, ambition lights up her eyes as she says this.
What makes Irha different from all the others like her is her resolve and conviction but more importantly she describes her self-confidence as her chief strength. “I don’t have self-pity. In our society trans-genders and intersex community specially indulges in self-pity.” She never followed the Khwaja sira Gurru Chaila system.
In our society this is an issue with us that we sympathize people who are at an apparent disadvantage, not even trans, someone who is short or dark. We treat them with special sensitivity. It makes them feel inferior and deprived, this thought process strengthens overtime that they cannot do anything. They don’t know how to stand up for themselves. They rely on others to speak for them. “I don’t want them to sympathize with me. I want you to treat me like a normal woman and above that, a human, an equal. I am of the view that we shouldn’t sympathize with the disabled, it shatters their confidence in themselves.”
She plans to have her gender change operation in the next few years by earning for it herself and taking loans from NGOs that help people like Irha out. When asked about the biggest challenge that she faced, she heaved a sigh and said, “The biggest challenge in all of this is self-actualization. If you don’t accept yourself, no one will accept you. If no one is there for you, be there for yourself. Who I am, is my choice. I am enough for myself.”
