{"id":5422,"date":"2016-07-21T15:17:42","date_gmt":"2016-07-21T09:32:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pahichan.com\/?p=5422"},"modified":"2016-07-21T15:23:21","modified_gmt":"2016-07-21T09:38:21","slug":"banned-from-school-nearly-forced-into-marriage-how-a-nepali-girl-is-fighting-for-gay-pride","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/banned-from-school-nearly-forced-into-marriage-how-a-nepali-girl-is-fighting-for-gay-pride\/","title":{"rendered":"Banned From School, Nearly Forced into Marriage: How a Nepali Girl Is Fighting for Gay Pride"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yosola Olorunshola\/pahichan –\u00a0<\/strong>\u201cIn Nepali society, women are still taken as second class citizens,\u201d said Apeksha, a 22-year old activist working to promote gender equality and LGBT rights in Nepal. \u201cThat\u2019s why lesbians face double discrimination \u2014 we\u2019re women and LGBT.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Born in a remote Nepali\u00a0village,\u00a0she first realized she was gay when she was\u00a013\u00a0but did not know what her feelings meant.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought I had a kind of disease because I didn\u2019t have any kind of feelings for boys and only liked girls,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Unable to share these\u00a0feelings with anyone in her small community, she was forced to live with her confusion in silence. \u201cI didn\u2019t understand my sexuality. I didn\u2019t know who I was.\u201d<\/p>\n

Things changed when she met a girl at school who had the same feelings as her. Living in a poor, culturally conservative community, where gay, lesbian, and transgender people were\u00a0entirely invisible, they felt compelled to keep their relationship hidden from their families.<\/p>\n

However, when Apeksha was 16 years old, her parents were outraged to discover her identity. They immediately banned her from going to school and tried to force her into an arranged marriage, believing this would cure her of her sexuality.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy parents are uneducated. They\u2019ve never been to school, and they couldn\u2019t believe my sexuality was natural. They thought it was a habitual thing and that when I got married it would stop.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Apechchhya<\/a>When she refused, they began to physically and mentally abuse her. Like too many LGBT individuals around the world<\/a>, Apeksha and her partner attempted suicide because they could not see a future for themselves.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not my choice to marry a boy,\u201d Apeksha said. \u201cIf I don\u2019t live freely, how can I live in this world?\u201d<\/p>\n

Fortunately, they survived and decided to escape. They sought refuge with the Blue Diamond Society<\/a> in Kathmandu, Nepal\u2019s first LGBT rights organization, partly\u00a0funded by US Aid<\/a>. The organization provided Apeksha and her partner with sheltered accommodation in Kathmandu and an interest-free loan to help them lay the foundations for an independent life.<\/p>\n

Since its foundation in 2001, the Blue Diamond Society has led the fight for gay rights in Nepal, campaigning for constitutional change. It\u2019s a little known fact that in 2015, Nepal became one of the first countries in the world to include protections against discrimination, violence and abuse towards LGBT people in its constitution. <\/a>\u00a0Believed to be one of the most progressive countries in Asia when it comes to gay rights<\/a>, Apeksha\u2019s story reveals that these political advances to do not always filter down\u00a0to lived experience.<\/p>\n

Copy :\u00a0www.globalcitizen.org<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yosola Olorunshola\/pahichan –\u00a0\u201cIn Nepali society, women are still taken as second class citizens,\u201d said Apeksha, a 22-year old activist working to promote gender equality and LGBT rights in Nepal. \u201cThat\u2019s why lesbians face double discrimination \u2014 we\u2019re women and LGBT.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":5423,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,621,492,490],"tags":[203,446,445,524,458,1072],"class_list":["post-5422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-human-rights","category-news","category-opinion","category-slider","tag-blue-diamond-society","tag-gay","tag-lesbian","tag-lgbt","tag-transgender","tag-us-aid"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5422"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5422\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5427,"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5422\/revisions\/5427"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pahichan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}