Bruce Jenner’s journey from an Olympic icon to Caitlyn Jenner, world’s first openly transgender woman has been accepted with open arms. Her new Twitter handle, @Caitlyn_Jenner, she amassed over one million Twitter followers in just over four hours, setting a new Guinness World Record and surpassing United States President Barack Obama. Four days later Jenner was up to 2.37 million followers, with another 1.5 million followers on Instagram. But closer home in India are our athletes getting the same consideration?
We do not have to go far to see how discriminatory gender treatment has wrecked the career and life of our own Olympic player, Santhi Soundararajan. In 2006, her privates were examined, and her gender questioned. She was labeled as a man and stripped of the 800m silver at the Asian Games. Nobody in India stood up for her human dignity or against the country’s shame in the international forum.
While accepting the Arthur Ashe Courage award and the ESPYs, Jenner was upfront and shared, “They (transgender) are being bullied, beaten up, murdered, and are committing suicide.”
Being the daughter of a daily construction worker, Santhi now survives on a frugal Rs.200 a day, the wage of a woman labourer in Tamil Nadu. The sports authorities offer jobs to her periodically, only to throw her out at the end of the contracts. For 10 years, she has been trying desperately to secure a permanent sports job, and requesting for the allocation of prize money.
“I did not get the kind of support Caster Semenya did,” says Santhi. In 2009, Caster Semenya also failed a gender test. The winner of 800m gold at the world championships in Berlin in August, 2009, she was banned for eleven months. Her country endorsed her. With campaigns backing Semenya, the International Association of Athletics Federation not only cleared her name, they even agreed to let her keep her 800 metre world title, the medal and the prize money. She was the flag-bearer of South Africa in the London Olympics 2012.
Unfortunately, this is a story which is in stark contrast to that of Santhi’s. The question Santhi is asking is Who is the world to assign her a gender? She has lived as a woman, she wants to be recognised as one. Who are we to deny that?
More On >> Work & Life
