It all seemed so perfect when learning was all about rote and I was a prey to endosmosis. With all the trash fed in my head I had led my life being a judgmental person till a year back. This symphony of words can be read as a song reflecting my individual story of change which we need to see in thousands of lives like me.

‘’Shh! Sex workers are not dignified, let us not discuss about them openly’’.

‘’LGBT is a stupid societal and a mental disorder, they might not be animals, but they don’t deserve rights like other human beings at least.’’

‘’Legalization of LGBT is a shame in the name of religion, their heads should be chopped off’’.

These are some of the most common arguments which I have heard since the age of understanding, since, the time I knew the meaning of the terms like prostitution, LGBT, BDSM, etc. However, I will make a confession, though I never agreed to the above statements but I did not oppose them either. It was a part of my development in the respective environment where such issues have always been a topic of shame. As a result, I myself have never been very comfortable during the discussions regarding alternate sexual identities. Till there came a turning point, a bend where all the threads inside my brain got broken and my perfect picture of the world was not so perfect anymore. Now was the time to learn and learn with an open mind. My experience during some seminars at a college event named Gender Mela, made me question all these assumptions in my mind. When I physically had the ‘unaccepted’ genders in front me and fortunately could hear that side of the stories for the first time, I underwent one of the biggest transformation inside me.

The space, where we feel heterosexuals are normal and other genders are not, is not a space but a dark box with a pervasive mentality. Heterosexuality is in no sense normal, it is just in greater number. Interestingly, there is a story behind this greater number too. The society has made identification of varied sexuality such a taboo that a major portion of people under that category do not feel free and comfortable in sharing their identity openly, and thus, they are assumed to be so called ‘straight’. Though, this article is in no sense against heterosexuals, it is just to point a finger towards the dead thinking of those who feel superior being an oppressor and in their refusal to understand.

The change which I have gone through made me a lot more accepting and non-judgmental. Learning that nothing is normal but is just common and practiced widely, is a reflection of growth. Such developments would lead to a world much better in real sense, where there would be no discrimination. Everyone with a patch of orthodox should try becoming more realistic and connect with the victims of their allegations physically. No one has thorns, no one would kill. It just requires a step forward to know the story yourself. A little change in my cognito gave birth to a big heart with compliance, and doing so did not make me feel like an alien, I bet it won’t make you feel so too!