Nada Chaiyajit

Athit Perawongmetha/Reuters

Nada Chaiyajit, a 37-year-old Thai transgender activist, poses during an interview with the Thomson Reuters Foundation at a hotel in Bangkok, Thailand, on Nov. 28, 2016. Two months after Chaiyajit completed her undergraduate studies, school officials told her 12 classmates -- all men -- that their graduation certificates were ready. But the University of Phayao in northern Thailand would not issue her documents because she submitted a photo in which she presents as a woman, even though her identity card says she is male. "They asked me, 'Can you take a new photo -- can you tie up your hair and wear a tie to make yourself look like a man?' I said no," she said. "If I tie my hair back and wear a tie, then it doesn't belong to me. This belongs to me," she said, gesturing at her body and holding up the contentious portrait of herself in a black and lavender graduation gown. She refused to dress as a man or to petition to dress as a woman on grounds of gender identity disorder, as many Thai transgender students have done. Instead, in a landmark case, she petitioned her school to issue her documents according to the gender identity she has chosen, on the basis of her rights rather than mental illness.