Inclusion Of ‘the Third Gender’ In Educational Organizations

Power is everywhere and comes from everything, says Foucault (1998). He may be implying that everyone has the ability to wield their power when and how they want. When one has a position of authority, one might expect their subordinates to do what they are told and even force them to do so (Foucault, 1998). In order to exert power over those under them, elected officials, corporate CEOs, and educators all make their own rules. Disparities of race, class, and gender are produced when persons in positions of power misuse their authority. As a result, the educational system has been biased in favour of those who wield the greatest power. Following the ratification of the constitution in 2013, the Supreme Court of Pakistan decided that transgender people in Pakistan had the same rights as all other citizens of the country under the country s constitution of 2013 (Nazir and Yasir, 2016). The court directed both the federal and provincial governments to give them rights in all fields of life including education, employment and inheritance (Nazir and Yasir, 2016). There are still educational disparities for transgender and non-binary students, despite the fact that these regulations are intended for that purpose.

This paper will concentrate on transgender persons who were born without a defined gender, and how this impacts their educational and career opportunities. The manifesto will also investigate Pakistan`s third-gender power structure and the injustices experienced by the country s transgender population. The fact that power traverses and generates things, that it induces pleasure, that it produces knowledge, that it produces discourse, is, as Foucault puts it, what makes power hold good, what makes authority acceptable (Foucault, 1998). Who has authority over these individuals will also be studied, as well as how they are utilising their power - whether it is utilised constructively or negatively misused, and if it aligns with or contradicts what Foucault argues. Foucault, having stated that the way in which power is exercised and functions in a society like ours is little understood (1988), goes on to say: the questions Who exercises power? How? On whom? are certainly the questions that people feel most strongly about. In order to address the concerns presented throughout the paper, some proposals and practical solutions will be given at the study s conclusion.

Tabassum and Jamil say in their research titled, Plight of Marginalized: Educational Issues of Transgender Community in Pakistan that Gender is one of the simplest elements that make up human personality. In fact, gender is very basic to the identity that people assume a sense of being male or female with absolute certainty of the anatomical sex (Tabassum and Jamil, 2014). Contrary to common assumption, one s gender identity and physical sex are two independent entities that develop at unique periods and in different areas of the body (Vitale, 1997). The vast majority of the world is aware of the two genders: male and female, but they are unaware that there are individuals who are born without a designated gender and who identify as non-binary, transgender, gender queer, agender, bigender, and other similar words. Individuals gender identities are classified into one of many categories, each of which is unique. Khusra, Khawaja-Sarah, Hijra, and other derogatory terms are used to describe them in Pakistan, and some of these terms are quite demeaning.

Hermaphrodite has been used to describe people born with both male and female genitalia from the beginning of recorded history. People with physical traits that differ from those considered normal for men and women, such as those stated above, are called intersex or to have Differences in Sex Development (DSD) (Schiappa, 2021). The number of persons born with both male and female genitalia is unknown since there is no appropriate record of them, as stated by Schiappa (2021). As a result, no one knows how many people may fall into this group globally. The study by Ainsworth (2018) states that Eric Vilain, a clinician and former director of the Centre for Gender-Based Biology at the University of California, Los Angeles, for example, points out that the most inclusive definitions point to the figure of one in every hundred people having some form of DSD (Ainsworth, 2018).

A regular sight on the streets of Pakistan is a transgender person knocking on car doors begging for money. Because they have been unjustly and disparagingly viewed by society since they were little children, these people have been forced to live in secluded colonies (Nazir and Yasir, 2016). Parents with non-binary children may hear comments like the child is two in one, it is a he/she, or the parents aren`t capable of producing a whole boy/girl when others hear about the child s gender identity (Nazir and Yasir, 2016). For this reason, parents give their child up to an old transgender person known as a guru, depriving the child of an ordinary life, a normal education, and the opportunity to pursue a respectable job. They are exposed to discrimination both at home and in their communities. For the sake of the transgender children s well-being, their family do not allow them to interact with the outside world or send them to school. In the event that some parents are successful in enrolling their non-binary child into school, the bullying and taunts they get from their peers and teachers most often lead to their child dropping out of school altogether. These children, as they grow older, could be unable to get decent jobs as a consequence (Nazir and Yasir, 2016).

According to a survey of the non-binary community conducted in 2016, researchers Nazir and Yasir (2016) revealed that 79 percent of Pakistan`s non-binary population was illiterate. Although the non-binary population was recorded as being about ten thousand only, in the census of 2017, the transgender rights groups say there could be well over three hundred thousand in the country and some studies say there could be close to four hundred thousand non-binary people in the country. The sample size for this research was limited owing to the fact that members of the transgender community are continuously changing their locations in order to avoid being recognised and harassed by relatives and people who knew them.

According to the findings, transgender students have a high dropout rate in school, with the primary reasons being gender discrimination the students were not allowed to choose their gender at school they were unable to determine which restrooms to use and were ridiculed and bullied as a result and they were unable to communicate effectively with their peers. At schools where such children were present, there was a significant lot of verbal and sexual abuse, the most heinous of which was that the teachers and students would sexually attack such children. According to Foucault [Power] needs to be considered as a productive network which runs through the whole social body, much more than as a negative instance whose function is repression (1998). This does not seem to be applied in the educational organisations of Pakistan. In the past, teachers and students have used physical violence against non-binary pupils who have been labelled as misfits of society and they were informed that they had no place in the educational environment. Furthermore, since these children received little to no financial aid from their families, they were compelled to beg for money and take on professions that they would most likely not have chosen, such as dancing and prostitution, in order to earn money and survive. According to the findings of the study, 77 percent of transgender persons in Abbottabad and Peshawar were illiterate, with just 23 percent having had any kind of education during their formative years. (Nazir and Yasir, 2016).

It is necessary to understand what the Pakistani government is doing today and what it has done in the past in order to answer the concerns of who has power over these people and how they are utilising that power . It is also important to consider if there are any plans to address this social injustice with non-binary people in the near future, in order for them to be able to live a normal life like other human beings and get an education on par with everyone else.

In 2009, the chief justice of Pakistan made an order to provide the transgender community with their own identity as citizens of Pakistan, rather than considering them as outcasts of society. This was stated by Bindiya Rana who is a transgender woman running a non-government organisation (NGO) by the name of Gender interactive Alliance in Karachi (Ashraf, 2010). In 2013, the supreme court of Pakistan recognised the transgenders to be equal citizens of Pakistani society and ordered equal rights in education, employment and inheritance (Nazir and Yasir, 2016). In 2018, Pakistan s parliament allowed the third gender their rights to vote and choose their gender on official documents and the first church was started by a Christian transgender group in Karachi, Pakistan in 2020 (Transgender Pakistanis Find Solace in a Church of Their Own, 2020). In March 2021, Rani Khan a transgender woman set up a Madrassa (a school for Islamic religious studies) with her own savings and no help from the government ( A Transgender Islamic School in Pakistan Breaks Barriers, 2021).

Finally, in July 2021, the first government run school for transgender students was opened in Multan and eighteen students were enrolled in it when it was opened ranging from grades 1 through 12. This was a big achievement for the Pakistani transgender community because it gave the transgender students a comfortable environment and a safe place to study. This was a space where they felt safe and secure. They felt like they belonged there because they were not in a gender majority environment who would bully or harass them, or call them a misfit in the society. They were not considered as outcasts in this school because they were all transgender pupils in the school. In a video compiled by Chaudhary, a senior official in the school education department, Government of the Punjab (GOP), one of the transgender students named Baby Doll expresses her thoughts and says that I feel really comfortable because there are people from our community here. In other school s boys used to tease us and misbehave. She went on to say that the students never recognised that they too were their classmates and she said that even the behaviour of our teachers and other staff in the other schools was upsetting. We realised after coming to this school that a good decision has been made for us (Chaudhary, 2021).

Another transgender student named Hania Henny said that educated people do not misbehave, but those who are illiterate make nasty comments and harass us. She then talks about the new school that was opened specially for their community and how it helped them by saying The staff is extremely polite in the school. The difference between life at school and outside is that we feel relaxed here (Chaudhary, 2021).

Henny emphasizes the critical nature of education in her reply. She throws light on the disparity between educated and illiterate individuals, as well as their behaviour in the presence of transgender persons. Education does not change the world. Education changes people. People change the world. Freire (2018) asserts. This is one of the most critical elements to examine if societal injustice against the non-binary minority is to be ended. It is consequently critical for the government, with the authority to do so, to establish gender studies as a mandatory subject at various levels of education. This teaches children about the third gender and how to appreciate them, since they are also human and deserve the same respect as everyone else. Children should be educated from an early age that non-binary persons are valued members of our community, not misfits or outcasts.

Secondly, the societal attitude toward non-binary persons in Pakistan has to shift dramatically, and people need to begin embracing these individuals as genuine human beings rather than as sex objects. Government protection should be provided since just creating regulations and not enforcing them or acting on them does not improve the situation.

Thirdly, Pakistan s government should prohibit the disownment of babies born without a defined gender. Strict action should be taken against parents who reject their children and against those who make disparaging remarks about the children and their parents. Strict penalties must be imposed on such people, and children must be informed in schools about transgender legislation and human rights in general, because there is a good chance that individuals are unaware of their country s human rights laws, let alone transgender rights.

Fourthly, one-on-one counselling sessions for the transgender community should be considered, since many suicides occur as a result of these individuals being bullied to the point of giving up on their life at a very early age. These sessions would assist in reducing their anxiety of disclosing their actual identity in public and pursuing further education (Ali, Imran and Naqvi, 2021). Additionally, more schools dedicated to transgenders should be opened in Pakistan because students have stated that they feel safer in a dedicated school therefore, this should be considered, and the government should invest in the education system for the transgender community in order to provide them with the rights guaranteed by law.

Finally, it is critical that everyone respects those who are not stereotypically male or female. Transgender persons are human beings who deserve the same level of respect as everyone else. As Sadhguru (2015) puts it, As long as we are divided in the name of religion, race, caste, gender and nationality, there can be no true success for humanity. It is thus important to respect others and treat them as human beings in order to try and resolve the social injustice towards non-binary people excluded from the education system of Pakistan.