Strength TogetHER 6-Session5

7th November,2020

" IT TAKES COURAGE TO GROW UP AND BE WHO YOU REALLY ARE "

We themed our fifth session of strength TogetHER 6 as "KNOW YOUR RAINBOW" and discussed fair and vague topics like sexual orientation and gender identity. We were comforted under the safe mentorship of Miss Swastika Dangal , who is an undergraduate student at Kathmandu School of Law. She has worked in her own project "Women's Right Starts At Home" and is currently working on a project " Let's TALK ; Let's get embarrassed" which is about providing sex education to teenagers.

 Moving forward, we let the speakers who'd to share their stories proceed with the session:

A girl who was on a tripp with our first speaker confessed about her gender identity when they were drunk. She shared her next story about a time when they were travelling by train and explained how her friends (mostly boys) ran seeing a group of trans people who were on their block clapping hands . She said that those trans people were nice to the girls and gave them blessings .

Hearing the gossips through the relatives about how two older women in their family always had a close bond before and lived together afterwards , our second speaker wanted to educate those relatives on how it's bad to disrespect those people but later she couldn't speak more because of their stubborn nature and also because they were elders.

Having a friend who became closly attached to our third speaker , later came out to be a lesbian and this was the fact that our speaker didn't take seriously.Later they lost contact and all of a sudden that friend of her's came in relationship with a girl . Her school mates treated that couple too differently but our speaker always thought it was normal due to her influence of social media and knowledge about the LGBTQ+ community .

Our fourth speaker shared her own story about how she came out to be a lesbian and how she wasn't treated different by her college mates. She said that her former school mates had made a fuss and also she's afraid about how her family members would react and that's why she hasn't come out as a lesbian to her parents. However her cousins' support really is giving her a lot of confidence which has now made her vocal and bold.

Hearing her friends tease one of her friend using homophobic words, our last speaker really felt bad and asked them not to in a silent and simple manner.Later that friend of her's(who used to be teased ) actually confessed and came out to be homosexual.But still those freinds didn't stop teasing him using homophic words .She said that she fought real bad with those people and tried to educate them more about the LGBTQ+ community. Eventually, that incident led her and her team to conduct a program during her school assembly educating the whole school. 

A smooth silence we could feel around us after hearing all those stories. Our moderator calmly handled the session and informed and educated us enough about the Rainbow pride. Some of the terms we got know know were:

What is LGBTIQADP++?

L- Lesbian; girls who are both emotionally and sexually attracted to girls. 

G- Gay; boys who are both emotionally and sexually attracted to boys.

B- Bisexual; boys or girls who are attracted to both boys and girls. 

T- Transgender; a person who identifies themselves with an opposite gender from what they are identified at the birth. For example, someone may be born as a female but later identifies themselves as male are transgender men. Transgender women are those who are born as male but later identifies as a female. The expression “man in the body of woman” or “woman in the body of man" can be rightly used for them. It is a gender identity more than a sexual orientation. 

In Nepal and India, transgenders are called “hijada". They are called “maibabu" in Newari language and “tulukmuluk" in Tamang language.

I- Intersex; whose sex cannot be identifies as male or female. 

Q- Queer; it is an umbrella term for all non-binary genders. If a person does not want to specifically be open about their sexual identities, they introduce themselves as queer.

A- Asexual; they are emotionally attached to others but not sexually attracted to anyone. They could also be neither emotionally nor sexually attracted to others.

D- Demi-sexual; they are sexually attracted to people only after knowing them for a long time and after forming an emotional bond with them.

P- Pan-sexual; they can be attracted to anyone without limitation to sexual orientations or gender identity. 

The ++ indicates that there are more forms of gender identities.

We also discussed about IDENTITY , ATTRACTION , SEX , and EXPRESSION.

After giving us this beautiful concept , we even listened to a gender identity song by the Son of Abish. You may watch it here : https://youtu.be/QKk5883doWA

This session really educated all of us even more and made us realize that respecting people is very important. After a lot of discussion , we reached the following conclusions:

LGBT people need to be respected and accepted as any other person living on this earth.

We can't always know what someone's pronouns are just by looking at them. Asking and correctly using someone's pronouns is one of the most basic ways to show our respect for their gender identity.

The education that actively promotes respect and encourages LGBT acceptance must be allowed and supported by school,which is a second home for children all around the world.

By the end of this session which had the participation of almost 25 girls , we all felt that warmth right after the goosebumps we had got during the whole session. After all, it's really not that hard to respect people's choices. We all are in this together to make this world a better place to live in. With that proud attitude , we captured our moment and polished off one of the most enlightening sessions.

Seeing this family grow and strengthen day by day , seeing those buds bloom into beautiful flowers , hearing them open themselves among us , really fills my eyes with tears (diamond tears). I'm really overwhelmed with gratitude for the entire team's love and support in this journey of making ourselves a better person. 

KUDOS TO LOKOPAKAR. Love is all we need. OUT and PROUD !!

 Written by- Binisha Bhattarai ( Cohort Coordinator)