Transgenders Beg at Karachi’s Traffic Signals Because Society Gave Them No Other Place

 Every few days, the debate resurfaces online. Someone posts a meme. Someone else quotes scripture. Another pulls out a psychology manual. Transgender people become an argument again.

From Karachi, this all feels strangely detached.

Here, transgender people are not a theoretical problem. They are visible in the most literal way possible. At traffic signals. Between lanes of cars. Hands outstretched. Not because it’s tradition. Not because it’s preferred. But because society quietly decided there was no other place for them.

That detail matters more than any comment thread.

In Western debates, the language is abstract. “Biology.” “Ideology.” “Mental illness.” “Culture.” People argue about definitions as if lives hinge on dictionary entries. But when you step outside in Karachi, the outcome of those debates is already written. When employers refuse to hire you, when families disown you, when schools mock you, and when the law offers recognition without protection, survival finds its own path.

Begging is not identity. It’s consequence.

What strikes me most is how easily ridicule replaces responsibility. I’ve seen people laugh at transgender individuals in public spaces. I’ve heard jokes tossed casually, like background noise. No one asks the obvious question. If repression and mockery are meant to preserve social order, why do they produce poverty so reliably?

A society confident in its values doesn’t need to humiliate those who don’t fit neatly within them.

Much of the online argument insists that acknowledging transgender people somehow erases men and women. That recognition threatens family, faith, or moral clarity. But this fear assumes dignity is a limited resource. As if offering one group space somehow shrinks everyone else.

It doesn’t.

What actually happens is quieter and more brutal. When difference is treated as deviance, exclusion becomes policy without ever being written down. Employers look away. Institutions stay silent. The street absorbs the human cost.

Some argue this is about mental health. That transgender identity must be trauma, abuse, confusion. Even if one accepted that framing, it still fails the basic moral test. We do not deny education or employment to people because they struggle. We do not mock depression out of existence. We don’t push people into poverty and call it treatment.

At least, we shouldn’t.

Religion is often brought in as a full stop to the discussion. God created man and woman. End of debate. But faith, when reduced to enforcement alone, loses its ethical spine. Most religious traditions also speak of dignity, mercy, and justice. Those verses rarely trend online. They demand work. Patience. Structural change.

It is easy to police identity. It is harder to build inclusive systems.

Pakistan officially recognizes transgender people. That fact is often cited as proof of progress. But recognition without employment is symbolism without substance. Legal language does not feed families. Social acceptance does not emerge from documents. It grows from everyday practices. Who gets hired. Who gets protected. Who gets left behind.

And right now, too many are left behind in plain sight.

What makes this conversation uncomfortable is that it exposes a shared failure. Not of theology. Not of science. But of imagination. We struggle to imagine difference without hierarchy. We fear that acknowledging someone’s humanity requires surrendering our own beliefs.

It doesn’t.

You can believe in traditional gender roles and still oppose cruelty. You can hold religious convictions and still reject humiliation. You can recognize biological categories without turning difference into punishment.

Societies don’t collapse because they make room for people. They rot when they harden into cruelty and call it order.

Every traffic signal in Karachi tells this story. Not loudly. Not angrily. Just persistently. Red light after red light. A reminder that when all formal doors close, the informal economy of survival opens instead.

The question isn’t whether transgender people fit our definitions.
It’s why so many of them are denied a future that doesn’t involve a moving line of cars.

Until that question is answered honestly, no debate about values is complete.