My community and I have spent years fighting for transgender rights. The work’s been undone over one Tuesday evening
One hopes that better sense prevails, and that the Bill is fought and opposed in the Rajya Sabha. But most of all, I hope for a world where human identity isn’t a matter of scrutiny, isn’t a hot-button issue to be discussed
Written by Teya
When we first came to Delhi, I couldn’t have been older than 17. Freshly out of the closet and still coming to terms with my identity as a transgender woman, I sought out community within the city’s bustling queer academic circuit. We were still labouring under the oppressive and draconian Section 377, and through protests, roundtables, marches, and meetings, I found camaraderie, friendship, and mentorship. I found myself engaged in the work of advocacy and activism quite organically — it was a way, I suppose, for a lonely child to feel less alone. As the years have gone by, the city’s LGBTQIA+ community has seen many a day of celebration and has rejoiced in hard-won victories. The landmark NALSA judgment of 2014, followed by the Transgender (Protection of Rights) Act of 2019, have been in particular high points for members of the transgender community. I was one among many, celebrating these baby steps toward an India that was marching towards progress.
The reprieve granted was the right to self-determination of our gender identities. “Self-determination” seems such an innocuous phrase, almost an obvious statement, for how else does one come to know themselves if not by an innate sense of who they are? This phrase, however, is a luxury often denied to those of us who fall under the umbrella of transgender or gender diverse identities. Trans folks have long been seen as a spectacle when we operate in systems of gender binaries. When we consign ourselves to the worldview that everything (in particular, our bodies and our expressions) falls into two neat, unyielding categories, we erase the beautiful complexities of human nature and our very existence. Gender expression is a spectrum, and historically, across the world, across time and cultures, people have expressed themselves freely in ways that were not bound by narrow margins of masculine and feminine. It is the hangover of India’s long colonisation that we have acquiesced to Western, patriarchal notions of morality and based our governance on the same.
The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Bill is malign governance in action. The very community it seeks to legislate was not consulted. We all sat back and watched, with growing horror and discomfort as our fate was decided in a room where not a single transgender person was present. It is a disquieting feeling to hear your existence debated, and to be presented simultaneously as creatures of myth and legend from ancient Hindu texts and as a motley of fools, opportunists, and misguided children in need of a strong paternal hand. Gender diversity is not some mythic concoction of ages long past, nor is it a notion imported from the West, as our detractors are fond of claiming. There is empirical historical evidence of the existence of gender diverse folks all across history. It is simply a facet of human existence experienced by a certain percentage of the world’s population. This might not be as compelling an argument as the claim of divine heritage or shamanic wisdom, but science is often plain, and there is wonder in that. We have always been here.
The amendments being passed in the Lok Sabha, with a narrow definition of “transgender” (as the recipient of a governmental welfare scheme), undoes all of the hard work we as a society have done in the years following the striking down of Section 377. The Amendment Bill flies in the face of globally accepted science, flouts the evidence-based Standards of Care developed by the World Professional Association for Transgender Care (WPATH), contradicts the principles laid down by the United Nations and the World Health Organisation, and seeks to undermine the delivery of public healthcare as directed by the Trans Act of 2019. These changes will have a ripple effect far beyond the ken of the administrators who so callously passed this amendment. Years of hard work in setting up training and capacity building for care providers, years of social change painfully wrought by activists and educators — all undone over the course of a Tuesday afternoon.
One hopes that better sense prevails, and that the Bill is fought and opposed in the Rajya Sabha. But most of all, I hope for a world where human identity isn’t a matter of scrutiny, isn’t a hot-button issue to be discussed. I hope for a world where we watch all manner of diversity flourish and unshackle ourselves from systems that seek to limit us, and call it governance.
The writer is the creative director of the Association of Transgender Health in India (ATHI), performer, poet, and has worked in advocacy around transgender issues for over a decade
