Former President Barack Obama has given a transgender activist in India an inspiring message of hope, after she asked him how she could find acceptance for her gender identity.
Last week, Obama hosted a town hall-style meeting in New Delhi, India, part of an Obama Foundation talk about activism and being an active citizen.
Akkai Padmashali asked Obama how she could find acceptance after facing discrimination and stigma.
“I was a sex worker, I was a beggar, I was rejected by all sections of society,” she said, before asking Obama, “How can I speak up in front of a society when I am a criminal under Section 377, which criminalizes you as a transgender, gay, lesbian, or bisexual? How do I raise [my] voice against this?”
Obama responded by telling Padmashali that she had already taken the first step by speaking out about it.
“It begins with what you just did,” Obama said, “which is to find your voice and to be able to articulate your views and your experiences and tell your story. And that’s true of any group that is marginalized, stigmatized. Finding that voice and being able to tell a story so that the perceptions that somehow you are different are broken down, because people start recognizing their own experiences in you — they see your humanity.”
Obama told Padmashali that by sharing her experiences, Padmashali could motivate others to do the same.
“Once that voice is there, hopefully others join you. And so now you have networks and organizations and allies,” Obama said.
He noted that it can be easy to become discouraged by incremental change, but that activists should take “some measure of hope” by looking at the advancement of LGBTQ rights in the United States and other countries.
“When I was in college, this would be back in the early ’80s, it was just beginning for persons who were openly gay or lesbian to have student organizations,” he said. “The laws on the books were still discriminatory across many states in the United States. Now there is just an open acknowledgement, even among many conservative parties, that we should not be discriminating agaisnt persons because of sexual orientation.
“And that happened, with respect to human history, amazingly quickly,” he continued. “In the span of 20 years basically. Now, in the span of one person’s lifetime, that can seem painfully long, but it requires a steady education of the public, and then a political strategy that puts pressure on elected officials. And that’s going to take some time.”
Padmashali, whose organization Ondede focuses on awareness of LGBTQ rights and people, told India’s The News Minute prior to the event that she wanted to use her opportunity to focus on the LGBTQ community.
She also noted the difference between Obama’s presidency and that of his successor, who has made attacking LGBTQ rights a core part of his first year in office.
“In the present situation in India and the United States, we don’t see an enabled environment where people have the right to expression, right to identity, right to privacy, all the fundamental, civil and human rights guaranteed to us,” she said. “We are not following that now.”
Maybe not exactly like Thirty, a feature loosely assembled from episodes of the eponymous VOD series created by Dontá Morrison and co-written with director Anthony Bawn. But films that likewise feature a gay Black couple as the center of the story, or of a circle of friends, come few and far between.
Undeniably the stories are out there, as is the audience, yet, as one Thirty character laments of the media landscape, "white boys get all the airtime."
Thirty lends its air time to the epic trials and tribulations of longtime couple Khalil (Bobby Musique Cooks), a Hollywood stylist, and Tyrin (Brandon Moten), an ad agency owner, and their young and restless friends, most of whom are Black and queer.
On April 19, the Biden administration issued new rules outlining schools' obligations under Title IX, the federal law prohibiting sex-based discrimination -- including explicit protections for LGBTQ students.
The new rules, which take effect August 1, expand Title IX's protections against sex-based discrimination in educational programs that receive federal funding by prohibiting discrimination and harassment based on sexual orientation and gender identity in federally-funded educational programs.
That explicit expansion of the law seeks to align Title IX guidance with the principles undergirding a landmark 2020 Supreme Court decision finding that the Civil Rights Act protects LGBTQ workers from workplace discrimination, and that instances of anti-LGBTQ discrimination are inherently a form of sex-based discrimination.
Ohio Republican Attorney General Dave Yost is appealing a judge's decision to block the state from enforcing its ban on gender-affirming care for minors and a ban prohibiting transgender athletes from competing on female-designated sports teams.
Yost filed an emergency motion with the Ohio Supreme Court asking it to overturn a temporary restraining order issued by Franklin County Court of Common Pleas Judge Michael Holbrook, which blocked the law's provisions from taking effect for two weeks.
Holbrook, a Republican appointee, found that two transgender minors and their parents, who sued to challenge the law in court last month, were likely to suffer "immediate" harm, in the form of reduced access to health care providers willing to treat their gender dysphoria, if the law -- which imposes penalties on doctors who prescribe gender-affirming treatments -- were to take effect.
These are challenging times for news organizations. And yet it’s crucial we stay active and provide vital resources and information to both our local readers and the world. So won’t you please take a moment and consider supporting Metro Weekly with a membership? For as little as $5 a month, you can help ensure Metro Weekly magazine and MetroWeekly.com remain free, viable resources as we provide the best, most diverse, culturally-resonant LGBTQ coverage in both the D.C. region and around the world. Memberships come with exclusive perks and discounts, your own personal digital delivery of each week’s magazine (and an archive), access to our Member's Lounge when it launches this fall, and exclusive members-only items like Metro Weekly Membership Mugs and Tote Bags! Check out all our membership levels here and please join us today!