Nineteen year old Shivy who is now back in the US
When 19-year-old Shivy, who has been living in the US all his life, came to India in June with his parents, he thought he was coming to spend some time with his sick grandmother. Little did he know that there was a nightmare in store for him.
Once in India, Shivy’s parents took away his passport, green card and other documents, and enrolled him in a college in Agra to “learn to act like a proper girl”. Shivy was born Shivani Bhat, a female but identifies himself as a male. He told BBC Hindi that his parents brought him here to “fix him”, once they found out he had a girlfriend.
Shivy even alleged in court later that his parents tried to forcibly marry him off to a man. Perhaps his parents thought that once they are in India, there would be nobody to help Shivy or even sympathise with him. They were wrong. India has come a long way since the Supreme Court passed a landmark ruling, recognising the third gender/transgender community.
LGBTQ activists took up Shivy’s cause after he escaped from his parents clutches and approached the court. On Monday this week, the Delhi High Court ordered his parents to stop harassing him, to return his documents and to buy him a plane ticket to return home to the US.
Quashing Shivy’s mother’s argument and that “she may change her mind about her sexual identity later”, the court noted that “everyone has a fundamental right to be recognised in their chosen gender.” The bench also insisted that the parents cough up Shivy’s tuition fees and financial support for Shivy to continue his studies in neurobiology in California and ordered the UP police to provide him protection.
It’s great how things have changed in India, though one can’t help but feel bad for Shivy, who had to seek the court’s help to fight for his personal freedom, from his own parents. Perhaps Shivy’s parents should have read about what another mother with a transgender child did when confronted with the issue.
Paddy McGuire was 5 years old when her mother Lorna realised her youngest son wanted to be a girl. So she gave Paddy her first dress and wrote her a beautiful poem about a caterpillar becoming a butterfly to help herself understand the change.
Initially, like Shivy’s parents, Lorna too thought her son might grow out of it. After all, Paddy was not even 5 years old then.
“She bugged me for two years from the age of three to buy her a dress,” Lorna told Buzzfeed. “As soon as she put the dress on that’s when I knew,” Lorna said. “It was a eureka moment. A light bulb went on. As soon as she had the dress on and I saw her face, tears came down my eyes and I knew. Her face lit up. She was so happy, I’ve never seen her so happy in all my life.”
To make sense of her own feelings and the whole situation, Lorna wrote this poem for her daughter:
Paddy, now eight, always knew that she wanted to be a girl. Lorna also offered advice to other families of transgender children. “Just love your child the same, no matter what, and accept your child,” she said. “They’ll be much happier in the gender they are in their mind than they are in their body.”
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