00:00You have called me a lot of names, you know, my entire life, but this day forward you will call me doctor.
00:30As I transitioned in medical school, as I came out to people and as I realized, you
00:43know, how healthcare works for the transgender community in India, I realized that there
00:48is such a gaping hole.
00:50We really don't get the healthcare that we deserve, be it with gender affirming surgery,
00:55gender affirming therapy of any kind, including psychological counseling, including dermatological
01:01services, you know, and including a lot more specialized sort of healthcare.
01:07We don't get even the bare minimum.
01:09I realized that I would like to help and ensure that that, you know, lacuna is filled.
01:20When did you realize that you were heterosexual or when did you realize that you were cisgender
01:25or not transgender?
01:26The best thing that we can do is ask society instead, that when did you know that it was
01:32okay to make a child feel like they were a circus animal instead of asking us, when did
01:38you know you were different?
01:39We should be asking people around, we should be asking teachers and parents, and when did
01:45you know it was okay to treat a child like they were so different?
01:52When I was about three or four years old, I was very comfortable calling myself a girl.
01:58I was very comfortable experimenting with stereotypically feminine gender roles.
02:04My mom would dress me up in her jewelry, in her makeup, and I loved it.
02:12I think everybody around me realized that I was in fact more comfortable, you know,
02:18identifying and expressing myself as a girl.
02:22And that was a social emergency, you know, that people were like, okay, what do we do
02:27about this now?
02:30And that's when I started getting teased, bullied for it.
02:34You know, this neighbor would come and tell me that I should not be this shame to my family
02:40and to my parents.
02:41So it wasn't some intrinsic visceral epiphany that we have that, okay, you know, we are
02:46not like everybody else.
02:48It is when people come to us and discriminate against us that we realize that we don't belong.
02:58When I was about 10 years old, I saw a psychiatrist who was not trained to handle this because
03:03my parents had taken me to her actually.
03:06And she told me that something was wrong with me because I was not spending enough time
03:12with a masculine influence in my life.
03:14I was behaving in a very feminine way.
03:17So it was quite disheartening to hear that from a doctor.
03:22And even from the best of doctors, you hear similar things.
03:26So I would really like to change that for, you know, the generations to come.
03:31I want no transgender person to go through that ever.
03:48I was assigned male at birth, but my gender identity was always female.
03:54I always identified as a girl.
03:56So, you know, that mismatch between assigned gender and identified gender can be called
04:01gender incongruence.
04:02And that gender incongruence gives a lot of discomfort to a lot of people, physical, emotional,
04:08psychological, and for many others, the discomfort is not very severe.
04:13So depending on how severe the discomfort is, you know, there are a variety of options
04:19that a transgender person has in order to feel comfortable with their identity.
04:24And that may include legal changes, social changes, medical and surgical changes, or
04:29sometimes next to no changes at all.
04:32It really depends from person to person.
04:35Because I was an easy target for them, because I was very different from all of the other
04:48boys, right?
04:49It was so easy for them to pick on me, to beat me up, to sexually harass, to molest,
04:55and basically do whatever they wanted.
04:58And there were people in school, there were teachers in school that played along and just
05:03pretended like nothing was happening.
05:05There were people in the apartment complex.
05:07It was just happening from every direction.
05:10There were teachers who would throw me out of class for dressing a certain way.
05:13There were friends that thought I was just asking for attention.
05:17And there were a lot of trolls online, you know, so there was a lot of bullying and harassment
05:22that came my way because I was different.
05:34It took a long time to sort of make my peace with the fact that if I were to come out of
05:39the closet, if I were to live my life in an authentic kind of way, then there will always
05:44be people who will say things.
05:46And I have to sort of be strong there and, you know, empower both myself and the entire
05:53community.
05:54Once you get to a certain point in your life where you are completely sure of who you are,
05:59where you will not take nonsense from people, people really are intimidated by that, you know.
06:06And I enjoy that.
06:08I really enjoy that people are now scared to say things because I do experience that.
06:14Because of my social media following, because of who I've become and who I am becoming,
06:20people do think twice before they say something or before they do something.
06:25That's a huge step forward in my life.
06:28You have called me a lot of names, you know, my entire life.
06:31But this day forward, you will call me doctor.
06:34And that is the day that I kept working towards.
06:37And I'm so glad that it's finally happened.
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