CHALLENGING THE ODDS

Joya Sikder has led a life full of challenges, discrimination, and sorrow. Yet, she fights everyday. She fights not only for her own rights, but for the rights of those who have faced similar problems throughout their lives. Joya Sikder is a transgender woman. Joya is proud of who she is. 
"Even though physically I am a man, I have always felt like a woman. My characteristics, my choices, my behaviour, pretty much everything about me except for my physical self implicates that I am, in fact, a woman. I trust my feelings. And I always embraced it." Joya has spent most of her life facing rejection and discrimination. Not only has she faced this from friends and family, but she had had to face it from the whole community and country. Being a transgender person is known as social stigma, something one should be ashamed of, and those who are transgender people have always been looked down upon in our society. But Joya and the organisation she has founded and is the president of, Shomporker Naya Shetu, established in 2010, has been tirelessly fighting these negative perceptions against transgender people to ensure a good future for all those who have faced a troublesome life due to this so called 'problem'. 
Shomporker Naya Shetu is known mostly for holding certain workshops and seminars, where they discuss the importance of having the rights they deserve, no matter the gender, sexuality, race or religion. They mainly focus on the discrimination and violence that transgender people usually have to face, and they work on eradicating transphobia and homophobia.  They have also hosted a play with Bengal Foundation, called Tarok, which is about the sufferings and hurdles faced by a transgender person, despite their desire to lead a normal life.
Through these workshops and seminars, they find cases of victims facing such issues in their homes and outside. After thoroughly studying their cases, they move to the next step of saving a life- counselling. "It is very difficult most time to get through to the families. They blame us for wanting to change their children, but sometimes we get the opportunity to make a difference," she says, "Around 10 families have changed their minds about being discriminative towards those who are different, unique, through these sessions. We have gone to their homes and explained to their families, shown them that we are, in fact, one of them. Just different, like everyone is, in our own ways."