My analysis is that “E” for Eunuch on passports in no better than the international gold standard for government issued ambiguous ID: for example, a female name and picture, with the designation of M for sex. It still perpetuates the notion that we are a third gender, and singles us out to be discriminated against, no different than creating a category for black people to sit in a different area of the bus, or to drink out of a different fountain. It states our human rights are “third class”, not just third gendered. In many ways this is no different than being forced to wear a pink triangle on our shoulders in the Third Reich, and forcing us to declare that our genders are not to be taken seriously. My own way of proving this, is to state that i myself do not live as a third gender, and that wherever i am forced to declare it, I do so at great peril to my life.

To speak bluntly, if our human rights are to be taken seriously we need to be understood as being no different and equal to everyone else. Thus you don’t hand out third gender, third class status to a biological female who is living as a man, nor more than you would feel the need to print “negro” on someone’s passport.

Non-categorizing ID, on the other hand, as argued by transgender activists such as Leslie Feinberg, on the other hand, also creates problems, because it does nothing to legitimize our genders internationally. For example, if I were arrested in some foreign country, Canada would hopefully maintain my gender status, and i would be sent to the appropriate jail. But if my gender were removed from all goverment ID, than my government would not have to verify my gender, and I would therefore not have a country that would dignify and defend my person. Otherwise mere prejudice and imprisonment in this manner, and I’d probably ask the prison guards to beat me to death… And all I’d need were some border-guards to question my gender, before they locked me up for this to happen in the first place…

Thus I argue that we need to keep our M and F categories, while maintaining a healthy diversity and spectrum of lives within a very loose framework. It is in this manner, that I believe transgender activists and political leaders need to educate themselves.

Additionally, I don’t believe that the international security world is ready to remove the M and F labels on passports in any jurisdiction, and that legally its a mine-field that’s impossible feat in any court of law.

To be sure, the current gold standard for internationally recognized ambiguous ID, today does nothing more than systematically marginalize transgender people’s lives. It not only identifies us as third gender, third class global citizens, but it robs us of our opportunities to seek and find equal employment, housing, education, health care, and shelter whenever we are forced to declare our person legally. It forces us into underground economies, such as prostitution, drug dealing, and construction; as we live lives not much different than illegal refugees – and often with much less support networks.

Transgender people are endemically exposed to criminalization and incarcerations as it is. The younger one transitions the greater the odds for homelessness and criminalization.

Furthermore, surgeries or the lack of them, are currently being used by the global community to legitimize or disqualify transgender minorities human rights. Surgeries which are used to qualify and disqualify other people’s human rights are nothing more than heterosexist and eugenic at best, while most transgender populations never receive them, remain contented without them, and/or have no way of acquiring them. When any society fails to accept another person’s gender, merely because of their surgical status, this is no better than in some Islamic countries, where many woman are subject to female genital mutilation, in order to become privileged as woman socioeconomically.

Transgender people also need to have their human rights intact if they are to ever begin to explore their bodies, genders, and sexualities, adequately before any surgery is acquired. Yet too many of us are forced into acquiring surgeries before we even begin to experience life non-prejudiced, as we are denied too many human rights in the process. We can be completely “passable” (note: passing is a fascist requirement, as it is no different than asking a black person to speak proper English) and our ambiguous ID alone will weed us out.

Transgender human rights is one of the last, unexplored areas of human dignities and freedoms amongst all nations around the globe to be chartered. Too much has to be done and faught for, in order for things to change for the better. It is one of one of the last frontiers in human rights to be pondered, verbalized, and understood.

Anyway, this is a great victory for Pakistani hijras. As citizens of the state, they are entitled to all the same social services that “normal” people are entitled too. It’s just societal prejudice that keeps them from being educated and working in fields other than prostitution.

I also believe that there would possibly be less hijras if Pakistani society accepted the idea of men being attracted to other men while still retaining their masculinity or masculine identification. Of course homosexuality occurs, and certain social classes (ie. not the repressed middle classes) really don’t think much of it as long as it is not found out by others, but the hijra role is still one of the few societally accepted ways of being sexually deviant.