Western culture likes binaries: life feels less threatening when we can separate good and evil into tidy heaps, when we split off the mind from the body, when men are masculine and women are feminine. Threats to gender are threats to the social order. If rules are not maintained, everything seems to be up for grabs, and Joan of Arc must go to the stake. If we countenance people who want to chop off their penises and breasts, then what chance do we have of preserving the integrity of our own bodies? —Andrew Solomon, Far From the TreeWhen Sreekutty was riding her bike to our meeting, another woman flagged her down and asked if she could be dropped at her office en route.Sreekutty gladly agreed. During the ride, they both chatted a bit and, on reaching her office, the woman thanked Sreekutty and went off to start her day. This anecdote is so quotidian that it does not deserve recounting, except it does, because the woman, whom Sreekutty soon discovered was married, knew Sreekutty was a transgender woman when she stopped her, and she did not hesitate before proceeding with her request.Though Sreekutty was dressed more in conformity to the gender assigned to her at birth than the one she now identifies with — a light pink t-shirt with trousers and sandals — the woman addressed her as ‘chechi’, a Malayalam term for older sister used to address unrelated older women in general, and said she knew Sreekutty as a trans woman from television and newspaper images of transgender rallies, in which Sreekutty participated wearing a sari. The gravity of this occurrence becomes all the more apparent when you realise it happened in Thiruvananthapuram, the capital of Kerala , a southern state not nearly as accepting of transgender people (TGs) as its neighbour Tamil Nadu.



Social Stigmas

A 36-year-old who was born male, Sreekutty started experiencing gender dysphoria, a condition in which there is conflict between the gender assigned at birth and the gender the person identifies with, when she was in eighth grade, and it was around that time she found herself attracted to boys. Sreekutty was traumatised but little knew what she could do. “When I was in junior college in Thiruvananthapuram, because I was feminine, 10-12 boys took me to an isolated spot and made fun of me and assaulted me by kissing and pinching me.”

Sreekutty did not have a much better experience in Abu Dhabi where she went after earning a diploma in hotel management. She was found in bed with a man and was sacked though she says she was doing nothing sexual with the man. “Now everyone knows who I am. I am not hiding my identity,” says Sreekutty.



However, she wishes she could wear women’s clothes all the time. “That is not very easy here. There is no acceptance unlike in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh where TGs are treated better.”

Sreekutty can at least take solace from the fact she does not have to hide her true self from anyone unlike Lalitha (name changed on request), who was also born male but considers herself a woman. She was forced into marriage with a woman and ended up having two kids.She has been in a relationship with a man for 10 years and is in the process of divorcing her wife, but her children still do not know the reason for the separation. “We are women and we think like women. The only thing we don’t have is a vagina.” Both Sreekutty and Lalitha, who work with TGs as activists, believe their lives will improve with Kerala’s new transgender policy The state government unveiled the policy on November 12, at an international conference of gender equality in Thiruvananthapuram.While Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and West Bengal have transgender welfare boards, they do not have a comprehensive rights-based approach to protection of transgender people’s rights, which is what this policy aims at.The policy includes the right to equality, right to freedom of expression, right to dignity and a life without violence, and the right to equal voice and participation in development.Work on the policy began before the Supreme Court in April 2014 upheld the rights of the transgender community to self-identify their gender, and also gave legal recognition to the ‘third gender’ for those who do not identify as either male or female. The court also said TGs should be treated as socially and educationally backward classes and given reservation in jobs and educational institutions, similar to scheduled castes, scheduled tribes and other backward classes.

Akkai Padmashali, a Bengaluru-based activist who was born male but now identifies as a woman and who recently won Karnataka’s second highest civilian award for social service, says the term ‘third gender’ is problematic because of the hierarchy implied by the number. “If transgender people are the third gender, who is first and who is second?” Padmashali put a sordid past — physical abuse, suicidal thoughts at age 12, and four years of sex work — behind her to emerge as a champion of transgender rights. But the majority still do not have a shot at a life of dignity.

Transgender is an umbrella term used to describe those whose gender identity does not conform to their biological sex (see Know Your Trans Terms). A trans woman may identify as female or as a trans woman or just as a transgender person. Ditto trans men. Then there are those who are genderqueer, who identify as neither male nor female, and there are some who are gender fluid, who embrace different identities at different times, as male or female or a combination of both or neither. There is also a category called intersex, who are people born with ambiguous genital organs.According to the 2011 Census, which was the first to document the transgender population separately, there were 4.88 lakh TGs in India (see India’s Transgender Community at a Glance), a conservative estimate given that many TGs do not reveal their affirmed gender for fear of ostracisation and retribution. For instance, a survey of over 4,000 TGs in Kerala which preceded the policy pegged, using a statistical method called snowballing, the transgender population in Kerala at 25,000 while the Census put it at 3,902.Moreover, another estimate puts the number of hijras (the local word for TGs who follow an ancient tradition and make a living by dancing and singing at ceremonies, and collecting alms) alone in India at one million, or ten lakh. A study by the government and the United Nations Development Programme found that 62% of the trans women in 17 states were engaged in sex work.And the survey in Kerala paints an equally grim picture, with more than half of transgender kids dropping out of school before 10th grade and three-fourths keeping their gender identity a secret at work for fear of losing their job.Anil Arjunan, Kerala coordinator for Sangama, a non-governmental organisation instrumental in the framing of the policy, says the policy was drafted after workshops with leaders of the transgender community who later met the 4,000 TGs across the state and asked them about 100 questions. “Most of them are make-up artists or are dancers. There are no other jobs available to TGs,” says Arjunan, who says there is no cultural space for TGs in Kerala. “You will find Malayali hijras in Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh, but not in Kerala.”

Devika J, associate professor at the Centre for Development Studies in Thiruvananthapuram, points to how gods or celestial beings are not bound by the definitions of gender which apply to humans. She alludes to the legend of the deity Ayyappa of the famous Sabarimala temple in Kerala, who, according to legend, was born to Shiva and Mohini, a female avatar of Vishnu.

There are other stories which talk of a gender other than male and female in Hindu mythology. The origin of inviting hijras on auspicious occasions lies in the Ramayana; when Ram is banished from Ayodhya for 14 years, he asks the ‘men and women’ following him to go back to Ayodhya and when he returns from his exile, the hijras in the crowd, being neither men nor women, have not left the spot where he delivered his speech.Impressed by their devotion, Ram gives them the power to offer blessings on occasions like marriage and childbirth which, along with inaugural ceremonies, continue to be a source of income for hijras in most parts of the country. However, the preference for binaries in gender in western culture which Andrew Solomon talks about in his path-breaking book Far From the Tree is the modern-day norm in India and most other parts of the world as well.Ranjita Sinha, secretary of the Association of Transgender/Hijra in Bengal, says there are a lot of hijras who do not want to be known by that term. West Bengal has over 30,000 TGs, the fifth highest in the country and earlier this year set up a transgender welfare board.Sinha, while appreciating the creation of the board, is worried about the agenda for the board being set by politicians instead of the community itself. “The board comes under the women and child welfare ministry but the issues faced by TGs are not the same as women and children.”She adds that the board has not made much progress in the eight months of its existence. Tamil Nadu started off on a better note when it set up its welfare board in 2007 under the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam government though it initially focused on aravanis, the Tamil term for hijras.The board offered free sex reassignment surgeries for trans women in government hospitals in Chennai and a pension of Rs 1,000 to trans women above the age of 40. But Kalki Subramaniam, a trans woman activist, believes a lot more could be done. “There is no long-term vision. The board gives ID cards but you can’t open a bank account with it or apply for a passport with it.” Karnataka, which is another state with a lot of transgender activism, is likely to make public its transgender policy soon.Though the Kerala government has not set aside substantial financial resources for the implementation of the policy, VN Jithendran, director of the department of social justice, says the scholarship scheme announced for trans students in schools and colleges will not have a ceiling on the number of students who can avail it. The first steps for the government are sensitising the people about TGs. “We are developing handbooks and modules for different sections of the population: teachers, police officers and health professionals,” notes Jithendran.The policy also aims to make laws against gender-based violence TGfriendly, and make TGs eligible for government schemes. A fund is also proposed to be set up for sex reassignment surgeries in government hospitals. The surgeries for trans women include castration, vaginoplasty, breast augmentation and a tracheal shave to reduce the Adam’s apple, among others, and for trans men include the removal of breasts, uterus, vagina, ovaries and fallopian tubes, and if necessary, penis construction. The surgeries for trans men are more complicated and more expensive than for trans women, both of whom also undergo hormonal therapy.

Moreover, trans men are harder to find than trans women. For instance, 99% of the TGs surveyed in Kerala were trans women. Sonu Niranjan, a natal female from Thiruvananthapuram who is now a man living in Bengaluru, chalks it up to a patriarchal society where women are in a position of disadvantage. “There is not much power to a female so it becomes harder for her to choose who she wants to be,” says Niranjan.



Kerala’s policy might help more like Niranjan transition, but there are those who question whether the policy will have teeth in the absence of a law. Jithendran rules out a law at the state level and hopes the Rights of Transgender Persons Bill, 2014, which was passed in the Rajya Sabha in April this year, will soon be approved by the Lok Sabha too.

Even if that bill is passed, the spectre of ambiguous Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, which criminalises penile-non-vaginal sex between consenting adults, hangs over transgender and gay rights. Rose Venkatesan, who in 2008 became India’s first trans TV host with a talk show on a Tamil channel, says it is very hard to differentiate between how the government perceives TGs and how it perceives gay people.“Hand in hand with the inclusion of transgender people in society goes gay rights recognition. But that part of the overall movement was blockaded by the Supreme Court verdict in 2013 (which upheld the constitutionality of Section 377)”.Danish Sheikh of the Alternative Law Forum says the Kerala government could add an explanation to Section 377 stating that consensual sex between consenting adults does not amount to ‘carnal intercourse against the order of nature’. Whether or not the Kerala policy is followed by a law, it is an important step in giving TGs their due. But for people like Sreekutty, this is certainly not enough: “No matter how much the government does, society should accept us. Without that, the policy means nothing.”As an academic notes in the article, we seem to have no problem with gender identities beyond male and female in our mythology and in fact celebrate them in some of our deities. But in our society, we shun and humiliate those who do not subscribe to the binary definition of gender or want to transition from one to another. It is about time we realised that gender identity is a spectrum along which one can choose to be on any point, and that it is an affront to one’s personal liberty to not let them do that.Kerala is the first state to respond to the Supreme Court verdict in April 2014 recognising the rights of transgender persons, by introducing a comprehensive policy which does not stop at just handouts to the community and commits to protecting their freedom. Other states, including relatively progressive ones like Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, would do well to follow suit.