Gender rights activist from Madurai, M. Gopi Shankar, is all set to speak at the week-long WorldPride 2017 festival, an international event, to discuss issues faced by sexual minorities and to push forward their rights, to be held in the last week of June in Madrid in Spain.
Gopi, an openly intersex person, working for the rights of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, intersex, Asexual (LGBTQIA) through his not-for-profit organisation Srishti Madurai, said that he would be one of the two persons from India to speak at the event.
The other person, according to the festival’s website, will be Sridhar Rangayan, who is the founder-director KASHISH Mumbai International Queer Film Festival.
“I was pleasantly surprised when I received a mail few weeks ago from the organisers of the festival, asking me if I could speak at the festival,” said Gopi, who probably became the first openly intersex person to contest an election from the Madurai north Assembly constituency in 2016.
According to him, the WorldPride festival, which takes place every few years in a different country, is the biggest such event in the world and was expected to draw a crowd of more than a million people in the famous gay neighbourhood of Chueca in Madrid.
“Academicians, experts on LGBTQIA issues and rights activists will be speaking at the festival, apart from government functionaries from few European countries. The Madrid Declaration of Human Rights will also be released, which will chalk out the plan for advancement of human rights, particularly that of sexual minorities,” Gopi said.
Claiming that the schedule of the speakers had not been finalised yet, Gopi, who prefers the gender-neutral title ‘Ze’ before his name instead of Mr/Ms or he/she, said that ‘Ze’ would be speaking about the rights of intersex people.
“There is a gross misunderstanding about intersex people and the issues they face, not only in India, but even in western countries. Many confuse intersex with transgenders. However, they are different since intersex are born neither female nor male because of ambiguities in chromosomal patterns or genitals,” Gopi said.
Arguing that misconceptions were also present about portrayal of sexual minorities in religious context, Gopi, who has authored a book titled ‘Maraikapatta Pakkangal’ dealing with references of gender variants in religious texts, claimed that he would also be speaking about religion and sexuality at the festival.
