Hypocrisy

- Ashok Kumar Shah

LGBTQIA+, a very trendy concept, one which opens wide arms for acceptance while it also narrows our mentality to a further pitiful state. With people globally praising themselves over accepting renewed definitions of love and sexuality, on a more day to day scale, we’re still likely to see them, hidden under a mask with a deep-seeded idea of how intimacy is a concept for cis-heterosexual individuals. It’s funny to be surrounded by an array of people, most of them being cis-hetero individuals, few being openly queer and the rest, hiding or avoiding labels, just so they aren’t judged.

All of us have seen instances of words like ‘gay’ or ‘chakka’ being used as an implied insult. We’ve seen two people of the same gender being too affectionate and hanging out and spared no effort to mock them and call them gay. People get mistreated, for the sole reason that they identify as queer, making it seem like it’s a crime to just exist in their own being. Transgender people are often referred to as ‘hijras’ and treated like they’re untouchable.

It’s comical to live in a world where blessings given by a trans person is regarded as a high honour, while being touched is considered dirty and demeaning. Some of them, pre or post transition identify as trans women or trans men. While we pride ourselves to be accepting of them, we bar them from using similar facilities as cis women and men, so much for inclusivity.

Humans consider themselves to be the smartest creatures, conducting research, experiments on unaccounted animal species. We take pride in calling ourselves an ally, carry rainbow flags, and we march the pride parade. But as long as we don’t discard our ancient opinions about something as basic and of our everyday life as love and intimacy, we substitute for garbage on this planet, for, we have collectively failed our fellow kind, humanity.