The former POTUS is traveling in India. At a Town Hall in Delhi he was addressed by a transgender activist, Dr. Akkai Padmashali
Mr President I am a transgender woman. I was a sex worker, I was a beggar, I was rejected by all the sections of society. I am a black beauty and I love you. I have so many issues to bring before you as a social activist.
Elaborating on the alienation faced by the LGBTQ community in India she asked him how they should raise their voice when the state terror is against the minority when they are dominated by the patriarchal power and are stigmatised because of it.
I am a criminal before the section 377 which criminalises you because you are transgender, lesbian, gay, bisexual. How do I raise my voice against this?
--Dr. Padmashali
She also asked him how the LGBTQ community should go about their movement since all they wanted was love and acceptance.
It begins with what you just did to find your voice, to be able to articulate your views and your experience and tell your story. And that is true of any group that is marginalised, syigmatised.
Finding a voice and being able to tell a story that somehow you are different are broken down because people start recognising their own experience in you. they recognise your humanity.
The black person feels like I feel or that woman is experiencing something that I should be able to understand or the person that has been considered an inferior caste have the same kind of hopes and dreams that I have.
--President Obama