Gender Binary

Pakistani media currently is in a phase of transmission to become more vocal and liberal about a lot of social issues. One of these issues is the taboo of speaking about the transgenders. Transgenders are accepted and given rights as a third sex by the Supreme Court of Pakistan but the society is still not ready to give them their basic human rights. In all of this progress the media also has a lot of responsibility in spreading the word. But unfortunately we do not see much content on this issue. In recent years there are just a few projects on this taboo topic when the media played its role. The film “Bol” was released in 2011. The film portrays a poor family having a lot of daughters in want of a son. But they got an intersex kid. The family was in shock and due to the society pressure they were ashamed of the transgender kid and tried to hide this reality. But ultimately the truth came out and the family could not bear the insult and the father killed his child. Another example we see in a show named, “Khuda mera bhi hai”. In that show a couple had a transgender kid, and due to the fear of society the family forced the mother to leave her child with the transgender community. But somehow the mother takes a stand for her child and keeps him with them. The whole show was based on the struggle that how our society is still not ready to accept such intersex people. These great projects are just a start and an encouragement to bring more content like this to our media.