“Woman in a Male Body”
Biologically, I was a boy, but not mentally, said Sabina, a transwoman from Bangladesh. I've enjoyed playing with dolls ever since I was a kid. I have a strange internal feeling. My friends told me, "You are not like us; you are different," when I went to school, and they refused to sit next to me. They began referring to me as Hijra (transgender). Nobody, not even my family, wanted to treat me normally. People in our neighborhood started to make our lives very challenging. I made the decision to depart from my family as a result. I didn't want to make my family suffer because of me. Seven years have passed since I last saw my family.
The most wonderful sensation in the world is love. Everybody is entitled to love in their life. However, in a transgender person's life, they cannot receive love from anyone, including their family, society, and other people they care about. They seek to love their entire lives.
Because they do not have the gender identity accepted by society and/or the government, transgender people in Bangladesh are brutally treated. Although the Bangladeshi government has acknowledged the transgender community as the "third gender," this change has not yet been reflected in national identification documents. In Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan, transgender people are referred to as "Hijra."
According to the study, there are anywhere from 15,000 to 0.5 million Hijra (transgender) people living throughout the nation. Most often, they share slums with the Hijra (transgender) community because landlords raise rent prices for third-gender renters.
In our culture, some hold third-gender people as bad luck, while others view them as possessing spiritual strength. Many people believe that since the Hijra has been delayed, Allah will answer their prayers more quickly, and their blessings may be favorable for newlyweds or new babies. However, they never receive the same treatment as other citizens anywhere they go.
They are forced to choose unusual livelihoods like sex work, bullying, and begging because they are cut off from family, friends, and society. The situation would change if they received acceptance from both their family and the wider community. My visual narrative illustrates the transgender community's lifestyle, which is kept secret from the wider world.
