discovering art
http://aliazmat.org/2009moorat.html (check out his work here)
taimur took me to meet ali azmat, (not the bald ex-junoon singer, given to declaring everything to be a zionist conspiracy) but an artist who showed us his collection and his own work. we chatted and spoke about the inspiration for the moorat series, the work he had done of khwajasirahs in lahore. 
this is my fav one. what a dyke painting.
khawajasirah is the only non-derogatory term given to the trans community in Urdu or Hindi. Other terms are usually hijrah and then khusrah, in order of decreasing respect. in 2009, the Supreme Court ruled an official recognition of a third gender, breaking the gender binary. Following this, the federal government was to begin re-issuing ID cards. “In addition to the order for government recognition, Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry also issued a warning that the hijras’ rights of inheritance, which are often informally ignored, would be enforced, and that police harassment would not be permitted, a sign, perhaps, of rulings to come.”
despite all these legal victories, social acceptability continues to be problematic. many are content and accepting of trans communities, as long as they exist on the margins of society, eking out a livelihood by being part of the entertainment industry, and through street economies. there has been no integration in the workforce that extends beyond, there is almost no class mobility, and there is no meaningful change. this makes it very apparent that legal reforms are useless without adequate social campaigns that would bring about change targeting education, media, places of worship to start with.
furthermore, what is fascinating to me, is the complete absence of FTM trans folks in this narrative. the visible trans communities most often are comprised of MTF identifying folks. is this because of the ways in which high femme drag is glamorized as highly performative? is this because traditional femininity continues to be viewed as beautiful and elaborate?
