View : An indic perspective to transgenderism & homosexuality
Ardhanarishwara : A combined form of the Hindu God Shiva & Goddess Parvati (Image Credit : Isha Foundation).
(From my Tumblr : “Indian Polymath”)
What qualifies a person’s association with a gender : Male 👨 or Female 👧 ? Could gender be associated , only with the biological body one has inherited ? Can a person choose a gender, because he/she doesn’t identifies with the biological body, that he/she has inherited, any longer ?
The above mentioned questions are generally asked to both conservative & liberal speakers in the western world & in the spirit of the freedom of expression & rational thought , I believe these are valid questions.
Western conservatives, mostly believe that homosexuality and transgenderism is non-existent, because of their view that gender inherited from human body after birth is sacrosanct & any deviation from the birth-assigned gender will be sacrilege , whereas western liberals mostly believe that people should choose their own gender, as a fundamental right, without providing any reason on why it should be the case.
Western conservatives, mostly believe that homosexuality and transgenderism is non-existent, because of their view that gender inherited from human body after birth is sacrosanct & any deviation from the birth-assigned gender will be sacrilege , whereas western liberals mostly believe that people should choose their own gender, as a fundamental right, without providing any reason on why it should be the case.
But , why is it the case that, there’s soo much of contention on the subject of transgender rights in the western world ? There’s no simple answer to that, but one of the reasons might be the large influence of monotruism on the western culture , which is a derived extension of western monotheism & I am not saying that monotheism is good or bad.
But, there is an answer to this contentious debate in the western world : Indic polytruism.
In Indic civilization , the physical body is always thought to be a temporary state , whereas the atman (soul) is eternal & the eternal time scale , could be scaled only by atman & not the body you have inherited.
So , what’s the alternative to view to the western viewpoint of gender ?
Try to understand gender in terms of masculinity & femininity , as human characteristics , rather than the birth ordained gender . Masculinity & femininity are the two sides of the same coin & one cannot exist without the other : There is no masculinity without femininity & there is no femininity without masculinity.
Every human being who has ever taken birth on this planet , has both masculinity and femininity , in some proportion. People , who identify themselves as "Males" have more masculine characteristics than feminine characteristics & people who identify themselves as "Females" have more feminine characteristics than masculine characteristics , but both tend to have some proportion of the other.
Even the staunchest hyper-masculine men , have some feminine characteristics & even the most hyper-feminine women have some masculine characters.
So , it’s all about proportion of masculinity & femininity , which doesn’t makes the idea of transgenderism & homosexuality , contentious , as a person can have a male body , with overwhelming feminine characteristics , leading to one’s identification as a male & also , a person can have a female body , with overwhelming female characteristics , leading to one’s identification as a female & this idea has been part of the Indic civilization for thousands of years.
Infact , in Hinduism , one of the most revered divine form is Ardhanarishwara (अर्धनारीश्वर) , which is a combined form of the male God Shiva (the God of the gods , the destroyer of the evil & one of the holy Trinity of Hindu Gods) & the female Goddess, Parvati (an avatar of the supreme Goddess , Adi Parashakti) & there is a also a very interesting story , behind why Shiva & Parvati , took this form :-
https://isha.sadhguru.org/in/en/wisdom/article/ardhanarishvara
