understood in a very binary way a very
binary in a very polarized way that
largely looks at the anatomy of human
beings as male and his female and that
unfortunately is a myth
gender is much more than a person’s
Anatomy it cannot be reduced to what
lies or does not lie between the thighs
of a person it is how a person
identifies himself herself or themselves
it is how a person wishes to be
identified by society this is the
difference and this difference needs to
be separated the difference between
biological sex that people cannot choose
that is assigned to them at birth and
the gender that people are should be
what do transgender people feel about
themselves we just spoke of the gender
binary transgender people are mostly
understood as the third gender which
some of some of us do identify but as I
said earlier gender is a continuum a
spectrum and gender has within itself a
huge diversity so there are some who
identify within the gender binary and
some who do not some who do not wish to
be labeled as anything almost all
transgender people have a condition
for various reasons and for various
unfortunate reasons is was and continues
to be heavily pathologized it was called
gender identity disorder and yet
continues to be called gender I didn’t
identity disorder in the International
classification of diseases that India
follows it is a pity that it’s yet
called gender identity disorder because
it is not a disorder it’s a difference
and just a condition those of us who
clearly identify within the gender
binary and those of us who do not
identify within the gender binary are
all transgender transgender people could
be transgender heterosexual people there
could be transgender people who could be
lesbian male to female transitioning
transitioned on transitioned people who
are heterosexual and who could be
homosexual too so these are two
different things
some where our society of first Kate’s
gender and gender identity with sexual
orientation which are two different
things they may intersect but these are
two different things there’s also a
level of stigmatization of rare
intersections of gender gender identity
and sexual orientation within the
communities there there’s a stereotype
that transgender people are mostly male
to female which we are but we are just
not just male to female as much as there
are male to female transgender people
there are also female to male
transgender people but then when the
society thinks of transgender people
we are almost always thinking of male to
female transgender people and minorities
within minorities get further
marginalized and there are multiple
realizations that operate I come as the
as my friend introduced me from a very
meta lineal setup and why is it
matrilineal because at many levels
culture has subverted patriarchy turned
its over its head in its own ways has
formed communes and hence it’s maitre
lineal as a child I was very clear that
I’m a girl
there was just no confusion in my mind I
took very easily to imitating my mother
and the lady of the women figures around
me mmm and this continued in childhood
my parents didn’t seem to have much of a
problem with it but as I grew older and
came into adolescence and puberty it
became a problem
I also suffered similar similar ways of
harassment or you know domestic
harassment that girls suffer when they
get when they get followed and they
complain about it to their parents many
if not all parents often if not always
say why did you go out so late why were
you wearing these clothes can’t you come
home early so I did and it’s just not
limited to me it’s something that women
suffer it is something that transgender
people suffer to which is a culture of
survivor blaming in school the school
that I went to was a considered a good
school and I was repeatedly and over a
period of three years repeatedly
molested denuded football raped by
seniors in school my school is
considered to be a very privileged
school where we have the children of
Union ministers whose grandfathers are
Union ministers whose fathers are MPs
and I’m talking about the early 90s when
King was not criminalized dragon was
criminalized only when one avarice ooh
the child of a vice chancellor of
animala university was brutally killed
it took his death upon navara Sue’s
death for the state of tamil nadu to
first criminalize dragging and that was
in 1997 I completed my tenth in 1995 so
this violence that I suffered was
between 93 94 and 95 when dragging was
not criminalized in fact teachers and
elders and parents alike I mean parents
perhaps not but teachers and people in
school and sometimes parents who would
stop being a sissy and so on so these
children four of them used to come to
school with security used to treat the
school like their back yard or like
their dorm at the school ran on the
donations of the grandfather the Union
Minister and the father of the MP so the
the school management and teachers were
quite like puppets had no agency to
stand up and call out and when one such
teacher did when he saw that a pellet he
saw a pellet fall into the classroom
which was pelted at one of the girls and
when he opened the peg the pellet made
of paper he saw that it had caricatures
of the girls in denuded girls in sexual
acts and he pulled them up
and correctly pulled him up but then the
very next day this teacher was um foot
balled when when three vans full of
goons came with hockey sticks and played
hockey with him so that was the culture
of impunity and violence and I’m just
reminded of the brilliant lawyer Brenda
Grover who says that we live and we’ve
perpetuated a culture of impunity and a
culture of violence I was told that I
should not complain about this the
choicest of expletives and four-letter
words and cuss words were used to
silence me I was football
I was denuded sodomized
and many things happened and I was told
that if ever I did complain they would
storm into my house and they would do
such terrible things to my mother and
father and slit their throats so as a 12
as a 13 as a 14 as a 15 year old I lived
with this real fear of not not my fear
initially was about this violence
eventually it was not about this
violence because it went on for three
years
eventually it was about me talking about
it to somebody me letting it out to
somebody and my parents were very
middle-class would at best complain to
the principal who would admonish these
children and nothing will change it was
not the era of RTI it was not the era of
social media today we have citizen
journalists doubling up a citizen
journalists thanks to social media
thanks to the internet thanks to camera
phones
I had to internalize all of this and as
a consequence my stomach’s and innards
would zigzag between lucy’s and
constipation and my mother could never
understand why I had why I was either
having lucy’s or having constipation um
from there I withdrew as an adolescent I
understood my lesson out of this was
that the society does not respect women
and these were not boys who were violent
with me right from the beginning they
were they seemed to be okay in the
beginning and some of the sexual
interaction initially was consensual and
please be aware that children have
adolescent sexuality and there’s
something called child psychosexual
development but what I understood out of
it was that it is important for people
to be known as hyper masculine alpha
male insofar as their alpha male insofar
as they considered cisgender they are
yet they will yet be able to navigate
through the society but if they
understood as women they are treated as
sublegal citizens and I went into a
shell
I didn’t express my gender thereafter as
much I accessed employment not as a
transgender person and please be aware
that transgender people barely access
employment people thought I was a
cisgender gay man people thought I
didn’t tell them but people thought and
I didn’t take any trouble to debunk
those myths because I thought my my
access to employment was far more
important than people knowing me as
transgender but some of my confidante
friends knew not everybody knew and then
came the historic and the watershed
moment which was 15 April 2014 when the
apex Court delivered the null sir versus
Union of India judgement delivered by
Justice Radha Krishnan and justice sikri
it said that transgender people have
always had and everybody not just
transgender people have equal rights
under the Constitution which are not for
some for some time but for all forever
it also said it also said any insistence
on sexual reassignment surgery or
hormone replacement therapy or any
medical procedure to recognize
transgender people as transgender is
both immoral and illegal but I think
I’ve had the huge privilege to work
during this time and to interact with
feminists Hedra communities they may not
know the word feminism but they take to
it as equality people talk about cutting
edge HR practices and I saw cutting edge
HR practices at the odd does where he
drew women do sex worker and one such HR
practice is that the client or the man
shall not choose the sex worker the sex
workers shall serve first in first
served that is because when men choose
sex workers they will end up choosing
somebody who’s stereotypically
considered beautiful she was fair who’s
lean who’s voluptuous perhaps and people
who don’t fit into that
definition will not get to make money so
in Hindi I heard one of the senior
Hitler transwomen say by him yahaha kisi
KO roti canai ki r za d hey and this was
a moment of truth where millions of
dollars and billions of dollars were not
invested in packaging common sense like
sorry with all respect but packaging
common sense into some training program
and selling it for expensive
astronomical rates like some
corporations do or many corporations do
i also wish to take this opportunity to
demystify and debunk some myths about
transgender people myth 1 transgender
people are sexual perverts well it is
our skewed understanding of sex and the
lens through which we look differences
that perverts our understanding it
perverts our understanding miss to
transgender people are sex workers and
beggars the third myth they are not
ready we have certain jobs and most of
them all of them are not ready for that
job they need to train themselves and
come up the learning curve and who says
this Wall Street Giants at the peak and
pinnacle of prosperity and profits say
this to communities as transgender
people who are living on poverty and
subsistence wages of begging and sex
work that they up skill and talent
themselves so it is time and the theme
of this event is time it is high time
there is no right time here’s the place
and this is the time next myth
not available where are they we don’t
find them behold job fairs they don’t
come they don’t walk in don’t you see
them at traffic signals
don’t you see them in trains I promise
you that you will find graduates and
post graduates among those standing on
the road all dolled up in makeup and
doing sex work and I don’t say this
because I I do not come from a line of
jurisprudence that criminalize a sex
work I believe that nobody should have
to do sex work and I don’t also think we
stand this transgender community all by
ourselves
we stand wherever we stand at whichever
place we stand because the first and the
generous second generation feminists the
Gloria steinem’s the Umar chakravarthy’s
of JNU the Sharmila Regas all of them
said stand on our shoulders they lent us
their shoulders and the women’s rights
activists lent us their shoulders and we
do not stand all by ourselves entirely
we stand firm on the shoulders lent to
us by women and our women sisters on
that note I exhort each one of you to go
back and to give a fair chance to start
the dialogue I would not just
transgender people to start the dialogue
with different constituencies that have
historically been marginalized be they
women be they transgender people be they
people with disabilities be there people
living with HIV so I exhort you to do
that and remember the only thing that
separates us from the rest of you is just opportunity thank you