Today (31) is the International Transgender Day of Visibility, a day designed to celebrate the transgender community and bring awareness to the different issues the community faces (transgender persons being those who have a gender identity or gender expression that differs from the sex that they were assigned at birth).
To celebrate this year’s Transgender Day of Visibility, National Transgender Network (NTN), together with HumanSense and the Pragna Collective, have collaborated to launch PonNaha, a campaign that focuses on changing the casual acceptance and usage of the word “ponnaya” – a word that is most often used to insult and demean members of the transgender community as well as other non-conforming gender identities.
What’s in a word?
The PonNaha campaign, which is being launched today, focuses on shifting attitudes through language, namely what language not to use.
The word – or rather, slur – ponnaya is fairly well known in the Sri Lankan linguistic context. Essentially, it insults anyone who is non-conforming to the ideals of masculinity or heterosexuality, or who shows feminine gender expression when they shouldn’t. Every queer-identifying Sri Lankan, as well as many “straight” Sri Lankans, have been called a ponnaya at least once, and have likely used the word against someone else at least once too.
The transgender community, in particular, often finds themselves at the brunt of the word ponnaya, which is used to strip transgender persons of their dignity and devalue them, both as individuals and as a community.
Pragna Collective Founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Sriyal Nilanka spoke with The Morning Brunch on the origins of the word ponnaya, sharing that it draws its roots from the old Malay language slur ponnan – the direct translation of which was impotent and which later came to be used to refer to an effeminate man.
This form of the word later made its way into the Tamil language (to become penan) and then into the Sinhala language, again, as a derogatory slur akin to “faggot”, a way to insult those who are gender-diverse, transgender persons and those who are non-conforming, and especially those who show feminine gender-expression.
“Ponnaya has also made its way into Sri Lanka’s political lexicon where it is associated with power,” Sriyal explained, adding: “And in this context, power refers to heteropatriarchal ideology and standards – and people who don’t meet this standard are referred to as ponnaya. In politics, it is used without sexual and gender connotations while at the same time having sexual and gender connotations.”
The story behind PonNaha
“PonNaha takes the opportunity to talk about how everybody needs to be treated equally with respect,” explained NTN Executive Director Bhoomi Harendran, adding: “We all need respect and dignity to live, and the campaign shows how valuable the transgender community is in society.”
The desire to create a communication campaign for the community came to Bhoomi a few years ago after attending an international conference focusing on transgender issues that discussed awareness and how to campaign for it, the campaigns done in other countries, the success of those campaigns, and the impact they have had. “Deep down, I kept thinking, ‘why not in Sri Lanka?’ – we also have issues to take to society and make them aware of,” Bhoomi shared, adding: “And the first thing that came to mind was ponnaya, the word that is so often used against the transgender community.”
She discussed this with Sriyal who introduced her to Ruchi Sharma, the Founder and Chief Creative Officer of HumanSense, an independent collective of creative and strategic solutions, rooted in the vision to impact social change. “I was completely taken by Bhoomi’s passion for the community and was also surprised that there was no integrated awareness campaign that had been done before. In South Asian countries like India and Pakistan for example, there has been amazing work done for the community to help awareness, and a lot has been done around the DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) space; here was an opportunity to really tap into it in Sri Lanka,” Ruchi shared.
The PonNaha campaign
Ruchi spearheaded the creative collaboration that transpired through the partnership of NTN, Pragna Collective, and HumanSense. Through this collaboration, the hard-hitting campaign #PonNaha was born. “In the process of the campaign, we took great care to be inclusive and accommodate our individual rhythms. The soundtrack was created in all the three languages spoken in the country – Sinhala, Tamil, and English. It was written, sung, and performed by the community and allies and produced by a staunch supporter, RedFox Productions. Deepthi Peiris, a strong ally, and the incredible team at Origin Films came on board to direct and produce the music video for us,” Ruchi shared.
“We wanted to do a social campaign to help create an inclusive environment and society which also gives the transgender community the space to be part of that society,” Bhoomi explained, adding: “The campaign is called PonNaha and directly says that ponnaya is not a cool word to say or use, especially against a member of the transgender community. The transgender community is always very vulnerable to facing discrimination and violation and ponnaya is a word that is commonly used to pull them down and to destroy and damage their respect. As an organisation, NTN wanted to take this opportunity to reach out to society and say every human being deserves to be respected and live a life of dignity.”
Speaking on the larger vision of the campaign, Bhoomi explained, that as with all awareness campaigns about sexual and gender minorities, at its core, PonNaha is about inclusivity. “We want to reach out to society and say that we are all Sri Lankans, we are all part of this country. We also want to create discussions about awareness and talk about diversity in different areas, from education to occupation to families to service-providing areas. There are many different gender identities – male, female, transgender, non-binary, genderfluid, and so on – and many people are not aware of these identities and what they mean. We need to stand up and talk about acceptance in each and every area.”
Bhoomi continued: “This powerful piece of communication would not have been possible without the generous, pro bono time and talent of all the people mentioned in the video’s credit roll, and those that helped from the sidelines. We are so grateful to have such strong allies, and we hope that after watching this video, we will be able to encourage more allies into our mission. We want to influence people to be more accepting, loving, and kind to all humans, because that is what our beautiful motherland is capable of,” Bhoomi concluded with an intense glimmer of hope in her eyes.
An inspiring journey from start to finish
The Morning Brunch also spoke with two members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex (LGBTQI+) community who took part in the PonNaha music video for their perspective on the campaign as members of the community.
Benny shared that for them, it was a huge relief to meet and see that there was a huge LBGTQI+ community in Sri Lanka. “I didn’t know it existed till I came and saw the huge participation towards this amazing thing we were doing. It gave me relief to see that I’m not the only person in this struggle and that there were people I could relate to and talk to about my problems and share my thoughts and feelings with.”
LGBTQI+ performer GaaPink who also starred in the PonNaha video spoke about the privilege of being able to be a part of a campaign of this nature, saying: “I was really privileged to be a part of this campaign. Within the community, the struggle is real and we’re all going through a lot of hard things at the moment. The campaign was a huge relief for me and I was super excited to be a part of it. The campaign is absolutely a legendary thing – it’s the very first time something like this has happened in Sri Lanka, and I think the visibility of the community and its representation across all areas is very lacking when it comes to Sri Lanka. People need to have an understanding and accept and give space to people and the community and give them the recognition they’re looking for, and this video is going to make a change for sure.”
Watch the music video ‘PonNaha – Don’t call me names!’ on the NTN Sri Lanka YouTube page.