Now that I have actively participated in online and offline discussions in Orinam/MP for nearly six months and worked together with the core team to organize at least a couple of events, I feel I can share my story. This is a brief narrative of the 35 year journey that has led me into LGBTQ activism here in Chennai.

As a child, I felt that the pressure on girls and boys  to participate in different activities, sit separately, and dress differently was an intolerable apartheid, but I could not bring myself to protest against it. I was actually so scared of ragging that I even avoided going to college, but never openly spoke out against bullying. Even while playing with toys as a child, while to most children around me, the only family our toys could have was a Mom and Dad with one or more children, I saw no reason why a family couldn’t be set up differently: two Dads, two Moms, or maybe even Two Moms and a Dad in one family. However, I was afraid to insist that others accept my definition of family even as part of a play activity.

As a teenager, I never liked playing the so-called boys’ games, and was not always allowed to join the girls’ games, so I spent a lot of time with what were then my best friends: shortwave radio and books. Internet access was not affordable for us at that time. I hated television because I found the mainstream programming based on patriarchal norms and heteronormativity intolerable – of course I did not know these words then, but the concepts were all too familiar. While my family members and friends had their own favorite TV shows, I spent most of my time listening to documentaries, including those on gender and sexuality, from Radio Netherlands, BBC, Voice of America, and Radio Canada International. I remember there was a presenter in Radio Netherlands called Maggie – I don’t remember her last name – who did a series of documentaries on commercial sex work, same-sex marriages, etc. She was my favorite media personality (I never had/have a favorite cinema actor) because she, through her radio presentations, affirmed for me that my ideas of life were acceptable. Unfortunately, I was unable to relate or talk to others at school or my neighborhood because their lives revolved around TV, mainstream sports, and political news, and they did not understand the world I inhabited.

As far back as I can remember, I have had the same ideas: that gender should not be imposed on anyone, that people must be free to relate to each other irrespective of gender, and that it is wrong to morally police others. Had someone had asked my opinion on the rights to equality and against discrimination for LGBTQ people, I would have answered similarly even ten or twenty years back, but until recently, I never had the courage to publicly speak out. I felt elated when I read the Delhi High Court judgment in 2009, even though it had no direct personal impact on my life –  I have not explored sexual relationships or even had a crush on a man to date. Back in 2009, I  knew no one I could speak with about queer issues, yet I celebrated the significance of that momentous judgement.

Reflecting on my childhood and early youth, I do not think my being silent on these issues was related to fear of parental disapproval. I have made my own choices through my life, and did not take any advice when it came to deciding what subjects to study in high school. I spent a few years in an Ashram (religious institution) against the advice of my parents and most of my relatives. So, what made me remain closeted about my support for LGBTQ issues? Maybe the general reticence to discuss gender and sexuality topics, and my fear of being bullied, prevented me from publicly stating my stand on these issues.

My status as a silent supporter changed last year.  I attended some Pride events including queer film screenings and and talks organized by Orinam in June 2013. When I met the group, I felt as if I was transported to a different society altogether. For the first time, I found validation in  meeting a group of people who shared similar ideas on the right to choose one’s gender and the right to be with the person you love without being harassed by society. I was like a child, lost in a forest at birth, brought up by some crazy creatures (such craziness is not normally seen in the natural animal kingdom), who had somehow learned to read and had read books about advanced civilizations, heard a few documentaries on radio, but never had a first hand experience of what it means to live in such a civilized city. Now, suddenly I find a group of people living in such a city and willing to offer me a home there. That is what Orinam is to me. It is natural I continue to hang around with my new-found friends through Pride and other events, and through both good and bad times (377 verdict).

Life remains a journey. Until now I was wandering around with  no clue where I was: all I heard was crazy voices whose messages I could not decipher. Now, I feel I am on an automobile with cruise control traveling on a freeway with people who are not only skilful drivers but keep you entertained during the journey.

Finding a supportive community and growing into LGBTQ activism means several things to me.  I now have the courage to state that I am Gender Fluid without fear of being harassed or ridiculed, and with the confidence that I have friends who accept me for who I am and will support my right to live a life that is true to who I am. On occasion, I feel I can experiment with a different style of dress, I can talk or act in an Orinam program to express our views on gender rights, and I publicly share Facebook updates supporting LGBTQ rights. This is possible because I realized that no one can take away our right to choose to live our lives authentically, even if we are considered  a (“minuscule”) minority at this time. We have real (not “so-called”) rights that cannot be taken away by anyone, not even the highest judicial or legislative authority in the country.For those of you who know me or are already active in the community, I just want to say I am extremely happy to be associated with you all and look forward to our victory. One day, I hope, we should be able to achieve equality for all and we won’t have a need to work on LGBTQ rights anymore. I am not that optimistic to think all social problems will go away, but I hope sometime within our lifespan we should be able to create a world where discrimination based on gender and sexuality are extremely rare.

For those on the fence, wondering if you should get actively involved in promoting LGBTQ rights, I am not going to advise you to come out as an activist and join the battle. I am not campaigning to recruit more foot-soldiers for the cause,  but just sharing my perspective and letting you know how happy I am that I can now openly state my stand on the rights of gender and sexual minorities.  I would never criticize someone for not joining the struggle for LGBTQ rights. I understand all of us have different priorities, and actually admire how some of my Orinam friends are able to manage time for community activities in addition to their professional and personal commitments.

If you feel encouraged to share your story of working with Orinam or if you feel like coming and attending the next event just to see if you want to get involved in offline activities, you are welcome to do so.  From my experience I can say that one can find support here, and no one here is going to force anyone to come out or to engage in activism. That is the reason I feel at home with Orinam.

Love,

Vikram (Vic)

Image 1 is from the Prajnya – Orinam event ‘Violence of the Norm‘ held in Dec 2013.
Image 2 is from the Chennai Freethinkers – Orinam event ‘Reason, Prejudice and the case for LGBT rights‘ held in March 2014. Image courtesy Soorya Sriram.

Memory is bizarre. It blocks out traumatic incidents, only to flood us with them when we are least prepared to deal with the deluge. Whenever I read about child sexual abuse in the news, a trigger is pulled. I feel like the memory is lurking around a corner, just waiting to pounce on me. The memory defeats me in one stroke, as the fear I have been struggling with engulfs me.

Part of my hesitation in talking or writing about my experience is the apprehension that straight people may wrongly attribute the origins of my sexuality to that one incident. There have even been instances where queer people have asked me not to mention that incident when I share my experiences growing up as a gay child.

It’s not just straight people who have such notions, actually. Once, I broke down in bed while having sex with my then-lover. I was also obliged to tell him my past, as we both wanted to take the relationship further and wanted no secrets between us. I recounted the sexual abuse that I was subjected to when I was seven, an incident that had left me feeling dirty and guilty, for no fault of mine. I felt relieved after that disclosure. Until the next day, when he casually asked me if I had turned gay because I was abused by my teacher twenty-two years ago. That was the beginning of the end of our relationship.

I did part of my schooling in the most celebrated school in town. Until second grade, I was in the nursery section. All the staff members were women, except for our school head, who was a Catholic priest. I was excited when I graduated to third grade. Third grade was in the main campus, which meant I was no longer in the nursery section. To me, it was a sign of being all grown up. This campus had all-male staff, except for a couple of aayahs (maids).

As I look back on third grade, many incidents stand out in sharp relief.

I was slapped hard on the face by the headmaster, for running on the school grounds during interval.

I fought with a fellow classmate who stole my stamp collection, and, as a result, my parents were summoned to the school.

I heard the term ‘chicken pox’ for the first time and I wondered why someone had to take a leave of absence because they had had a box full of chicken.

I was asked to write extra assignments in Tamil to improve my handwriting.

I was hit by a thick cane, for the first time, by my math teacher because I did not pay attention in class. He happened to be a neighbour, and the news went directly to my parents from him.

I became the boy who did not pay attention in the classroom.

I also took drawing classes on weekends. These classes were held in a house across from our school, in a lane barely 100 meters away. Our drawing master from school came there to teach us, a handful of children.

The house belonged to Mr. N, who was also my science teacher. Mr. N was in his mid-fifties, and came across as a man who loved children. Young parents saw him as a father figure. He had a granddaughter who was my age.

He would pull boys towards him by holding their penises. Yes, our little penises. I was always scared to go near him because it hurt when he did that. He would also make a few of us stay back in our classroom during intervals and lunch break. He would unzip his pants and we had to pull down ours. Suffice it to say our penises would not be the focus of his attention then.

I grew to dread those weekend drawing classes. I would stand outside his house until our drawing master entered, and would run out as soon as the class was dismissed. My parents stopped sending me to drawing class after my master complained that I wasn’t paying attention.

My parents were concerned over my falling grades. They cut down on my playtime, and increased my after-school study hours at home.

I did not have Mr. N as a teacher after third grade, nor did I have any more encounters with him.  I not discuss my abuse with anyone, until I got to seventh grade. At that point, we had moved to a new house, and a boy from the neighbourhood happened to be a schoolmate. We had common friends and teachers. It turns out we had also had Mr. N in common.

And that too: our secret, our shame.

I never spoke about it to anyone else until eighteen years later, when I opened up to my ex-boyfriend.

The man who abused me and many other children at school, year after year, is no longer alive.

My fragmented memories, and the fear I live with, remain my only witnesses.

Orinam credits:

Images have been taken from the following sites, linked below for trackback:

• Image 1 source: Happy Families blog, see here
• Image 2 source: Glogster.com, see here

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In this heart-warming video, students of IIT-Bombay speak about their first love, including the kind that dares speak its name.

Says Aditya Shankar from  Saathi, the campus LGBT group, “…the video was made for sensitising IIT-Bombay freshmen on sexual orientation. The languages chosen reflect the undergraduate demographic composition. But the video was specifically made so that it doesn’t become very specific to IIT-B as was the video last year in which I came out of the closet.”

Kudos to SAATHI for this effort! Click below to watch the video:

So, some people know my story. I came out publicly in December 2013, and I’ve often mentioned several times that I came out to my dad even before I came out on Facebook. I get asked how Appa (my dad) took it, all the time. I was sharing this story personally with someone I know over chat, and she suggested I might as well share it with a wider audience.Here’s what happened.

It was 2011, my third year of college. I wasn’t struggling with my identity or anything, but I was going through a phase where I felt I was not being loved. I felt depressed to the point of being suicidal almost every week, and I had come out to a couple of friends in college by then. Every time I felt incredibly depressed, I used coming out as a vent to talk about my issues with someone. And it helped me feel better.

At one point, I decided someone from my family should know. It was going to be my mom, sister or my dad. One of them, first. I wasn’t sure about telling my sister then, because she was in college, and my friends suggested it might be too young for her to know about my sexuality then. I also ruled out telling my mom because, at that point, I didn’t want her to be sad about her son being gay. I was already depressed, and wouldn’t have been able to take it if she had struggled to come to terms with it too.

It had to be dad for a couple of reasons. My dad was a very well-read man. He had never been to college, but he spent most of his nights devouring books. I’d sleep off at 10 PM, but he’d stay up till midnight reading everyday. We’ve never watched cricket together, we’ve never gone to movies together, but he’s always talked about history (Soviet Russia!), about people we now consider icons and the like. I just believed dad would understand sexuality better than my mom, hoping he’d have read about it somewhere. While there was a good enough chance that he may have never heard about queer people, my gut feeling was that he’d come to terms with it pretty quickly because he’d surely read enough about people and cultures across the world, and as he’d always taken a specific interest in reading up on these topics.

Although I tend to narrate my coming out experience as something that happened over a couple of minutes, I remember asking dad directly how liberal he thought he was, a few months earlier. He laughed, trying to understand why I was asking that question when we were bored out for two hours waiting to meet the doctor on a random day. I went on to ask him some really irrelevant questions to get an idea of how accepting he would be of my orientation, and I vaguely remember he passed the test, though I don’t exactly remember what I asked him to find that out.

So one day in August, I called up dad and told him I was coming over for the weekend, and that I wanted to talk to him about something important. He asked me for details, I said I wanted to talk in person over the weekend, and asked him to make sure he was available. I went home that weekend, but couldn’t muster the courage to come out. I postponed telling him.

One or two or three weeks later, I went home again. Sunday morning, we were watching TV, and my mom came over and asked me what it was that I wanted to talk to dad about. I shrugged it, off saying there was nothing important, and told her I almost forgot what I wanted to discuss. It was hard for me to lie and hide things from my mom, but I really wanted to tell dad first.

A little later, dad came over and asked me the same question. My grand plan for coming out was to slyly ask him to take me shopping for shoes, but instead take him somewhere else once we’d left home and tell him everything he needed to know.

A few minutes later, I was on his bike and I told him I really didn’t care about shoes, and that I just wanted to talk in some secluded location where no one could hear us. In retrospect, I find it funny that I was so scared about some random stranger finding out I was gay when I was talking to my dad, but three years ago, I was definitely afraid.

So, he took me to a park. And I had my Kindle with me. I had bought it a few months earlier, specifically to read the It Gets Better book. It had stories of LGBTQ people from across the world, and I was scared to read the hard copy in hostel, so I actually ordered the Kindle just so that I could read the book without anyone knowing it. When I was with dad, I had also loaded the Kindle with PDFs of web pages converted from Orinam.net that had resources for friends and parents.

So we sat in the park. I made sure no one was around, and proceeded to tell him. It was all the more tough for me because I had to come out in Tamil. So far, when I talked to friends in college about sexuality, it was very convenient for me because I could get away with saying I’m gay, and I’m attracted to men and a trillion other things in English. How do you actually tell your dad that, in Tamil? Not to sound elitist – just that I haven’t had enough conversations about sexuality in Tamil, and I haven’t read as much about sexuality in Tamil although I’d have liked to.

But I was prepared, though. I had also gobbled up substantial information in Tamil (from places like Orinam.net) and I knew same sex attraction was ஒருபாலீர்ப்பு. I knew the right terms, and I proceeded to tell him my பாலீர்ப்பு was different. I told him எனக்கு பொண்ணுங்க மேல ஒன்னுமே தோணாது “I have no feelings towards women”. To be honest – I was pretty nervous. I did not shiver – but I was definitely sweating. His face turned weird. I told him some of my friends knew and they had always listened to me and stood by me every time I was depressed. I told him there’s no concrete research to prove why people are gay – it could be genetic, it could be environmental. This triggered him to tell me “medical treatment எடுத்துக்கலாம்” (“take medical treatment”) in the belief it would make me straight. I told him this in return: அவ்வளோ easy நீயும் என்னை மாதிரி மாறிடலாமே (” if it were so easy, you could become gay”). And then we talked for about half an hour, and I pushed him to read resources for LGBT parents on my Kindle. He said he was not in a position to read those right then, and that he was happy I read so much.

We didn’t talk much once we came home and I was leaving back to college at night. He just told me to stay safe. Only a day had passed, and he was coming to terms with what I told him and I could totally understand. It was a bit too much to get him to understand everything quickly (my friends were pretty quick), but I was sure we would get there. The next time I came home and I raised a topic that was close to these issues, I always spotted a tinge of sadness in his face. It has been three years now, and things have changed drastically. A couple of months ago, I saw him sharing pro-gay stuff on Facebook. He knew I attended the Pride March, he knew I went to the Chennai International Queer Film Festival, and he’s getting very comfortable about talking about my sexuality with me.

When I was depressed, I went for a counselling session and was told that I had done the right thing by disclosing my orientation to my parents in college, and I’m so glad I did it then. I can see things falling in place right now: I’m getting out of my bouts of loneliness and depression, attending queer events, and generally feeling a lot better in comparison to that day three years ago when I struggled to tell my dad everything he needed to know about me.

Editors’ Note: Some of us Orinam volunteers first met Soorya Sriram at a panel discussion on LGBT issues organised by Nirmukta/Chennai Freethinkers in February 2014. We subsequently read the essays* co-authored by Geetha TG and Soorya on misogyny, male privilege and transphobia, on the Gender Awareness Promoters tumblr blog. More recently, in June, we ran into him and his parents at Chennai’s Rainbow Pride march. Unable to contain our curiosity any longer, we asked him how he, an ostensibly straight cis Madrasi male, grew to become a supporter of women’s and lesbian, gay bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights. Here is his response.

My answer is not really straightforward. I must reflect on key events in my life to attempt to answer this question.

Born into a family that belonged to an ‘upper caste’ as defined by Hindu beliefs, I grew up with the privilege accorded to a heterosexual gender-normative middle-class male. Though our family has seen significant financial turmoil, we never really struggled for food or shelter. As a child, I did not perceive the existence of oppression in my circles, nor did my family tell me anything about it. Why would they? We never saw any of it.

I was sent to good schools and grew up listening to stories of people from difficult backgrounds who had made it big through sheer hard work. All the students I hung out with belonged to a similar social stratum. I assumed my bubble mirrored all of society. At that stage, I did not know much about the evils such caste and poverty that plagued our society. The notion that everyone had the same opportunities and it was up to people to utilise the same and get rich or gain power was constantly reinforced in me. I started passing judgments on people with whom I had no immediate contact with at a rather early age. When I saw homeless and/or elderly people seeking alms on the street, I did not see people who had been socially marginalised. I deemed them lazy and judged them for having being reckless in spending in their younger years, thereby having brought their current state of poverty on themselves. In effect I was a complete believer of the ‘Just World Theory’, where one assumed that everything was fair, and to complain was an act of cowardice.

My first realization that people weren’t neatly divided into the man-woman binary was as a young boy traveling in a local train. I saw a group of transwomen (I know this in retrospect, not then) seeking money from the public, performing their signature claps. Curious, I asked my mother who they were. She answered, out of ignorance – or because she didn’t know how to explain to a child – that they were people who had two hearts. Relentlessly, I sought details and asked her how two hearts would fit into the circulatory system. Questions like these, whether to my mother, or to teachers while discussing sexual reproduction in biology class, were met with discomfort, awkward pauses, shifty answers and attempts to change the topic. I internalized this discomfort as transphobia.

When a classmate, a boy with stereotypically feminine traits, was bullied and excluded by his peers from discussion and socialization, I was among those who joined in the jeering.

My pursuit to learn the Vedas sent me on a fundamentalist spree for a short while.

I may, perhaps, have remained that way throughout my life.

In my late teens, my world, as I had imagined it, broke down. Though I held that people had equal opportunities, the statistics said otherwise. Certain communities had more people in the upper economic strata and some were over-represented in the poorer sections. Inequalities were also evident along gender lines in politics, workforce, social participation etc. In trying to reconcile these facts with with my belief system, I was faced with the following choices:

1. Assume women, gender minorities, sexual minorities etc. were inherently inferior.
2. Accept I was wrong in my assertion that life is fair to all.

I knew that the first possibility wasn’t true, leaving behind the alternative. This was the defining moment when my belief system broke down. I stopped assuming fairness and looked at the world again. Like NEO in matrix, I suddenly saw a whole new layer hovering around our lives. I noticed my relatives advising their daughters not to laughout loud or tell them not to go out after it was dark. I had never heard anyone tell me any of this. I began questioning the male privilege I had taken for granted.

Following much introspection and re-examination of my religious beliefs, I moved out of my safe zone and embraced atheism. I ended up being severely ostracised by peers for an episode in which my actions were deemed contrary to the strongly religious-cultural ethos at my school. No one spoke to me, and my classmates actively avoided me. Two years passed thus, leaving deep and long-lasting marks on my sense of self. During this period of extended social rejection, realisation hit me hard. What I was experiencing then must have been exactly what my supposedly feminine male classmate must have felt all these years. The reasons were different, but the exclusion, and resultant pain must have felt similar. And what I felt was temporary: he must have been experiencing this for a long time. The day after I had this realisation, I walked over to him next in the class, said “I am sorry”, and walked away without explaining why I apologised.

While I was able to emerge from that phase of being secluded and return to my more social self, the realisation that there are people marginalised overtly and covertly – sometimes for their entire lives – remained with me. I started speaking with classmates whom the class mocked often, and trying to learn about why they were excluded. This continued into college.

Unfortunately, this behaviour on my part was driven by a misplaced sense of sympathy. I assumed that it was noble to devote my time for the betterment of others. But as time went by, I realised the folly of a sympathy- rather than empathy- driven approach. Time and again I caught myself believing in nonsense and spewing nonsense, but it only amplified my drive to be a better human being. I kept pushing aggressively and started systematically studying.

In 2011, while in my third year of college, I met some people at Nirmukta, an organisation dedicated to promoting secular humanism and free thought. Interacting both online and offline with this community guided me on the principles of structured logical thought and laid the foundations of humanism for everyone to adhere to. Nirmukta members were patient enough engage with me and my still-evolving convictions, and helped me organise my thoughts in a coherent logical manner.

I read about and grew aware of the injustice meted out to caste minorities and noticed my own relatives engaging in caste-based discrimination. I read about the difficulties and struggles of people with physical and mental disabilities. I observed the difficulties faced by women every single day of their lives, a reality of subjugation, harassment and violence. The prejudice faced by gender minorities and people of different sexual orientations. With the single key of empathy, I learned to love of people regardless of any minor unimportant difference between us.

Subsequently, the biggest challenge crept in. I felt it was no longer adequate to simply believe in these ideas and confront my prejudices. It was necessary for the people I love too to stop inadvertently cause mental harm to others. Within the circle of loved ones, the closest were my immediate family. Coming out to them as an atheist and ally of LGBT people appeared an insurmountable goal. I wasn’t really sure about what my parents believed in. I knew a large number of my relatives were right-wing fundamentalists, but I wasn’t sure how open my parents were to receiving alternate points of view, some challenging their most fundamental assumptions.

Summoning the courage, one day in December 2013, I initiated a discussion at home by expressing my anguish over the Supreme Court verdict upholding Sec 377. Curious, my parents asked what it was. Apparently they really hadn’t thought about any of this. What became a Sunday afternoon of intense discussion, soon became a regular affair at home with everyone discussing the problems faced by sexual minorities and women. I realized that their reservations around LGBT issues were overridden by the humanistic values they held.

A few months later, when I announced that I planned to participate in Chennai Rainbow Pride March, they immediately asked if they could join too!

We still do have animated discussions on feminism and LGBTQI rights, and I know that while my parents still have questions, they are most definitely not fundamentalist in their view.

Back to the original question, what prompts me to speak up and intervene when I see discrimination?

Answer: Why wouldn’t I? It is a shame that inequality and injustice persists. Replace the words ‘women’, ‘caste minorities’ and ‘LGBTQI’ with ‘human’. Rephrase terms ‘women’s rights’ and ‘LGBT rights’ with ‘human rights’ and the answer becomes self-evident.

I guess the answer is best summed up by what Desmond Tutu said “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse, and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.”

* Geetha TG and Soorya Sriram. What’s going on with men? 

Geetha TG and Soorya Sriram. Transgender Woes.

Geetha TG and Soorya Sriram. A No is a ‘No’ – Not ‘Yes’, Not ‘Maybe’.

Over the last few months, I’ve been thinking seriously about surgery. Here’s the thing – I haven’t even begun hormones, so considering, or even thinking about surgery  at this point, isn’t exactly productive or useful. But then, I suppose many trans people have to think of it at some point, and I have too.

I have always been afraid of needles, stitches, surgery and knives. Even as a kid. My clumsy flat-foot+awkward height made me fall quite often, needing stitches at least once in three months. Never have I had them. Just can’t. I’d ask the doctor to just put a bandaid or something, and I’d go home clutching wads of cotton to help stem the blood.

So. Surgery = big fear.

Secondly, unlike a lot of other transwomen, I do not have a particularly hateful relationship with my penis. I’ve been ashamed of it, yes. I’ve considered alternate realities where I was me, without the penis. I’ve fantasized a lot of having a vagina and being able to “receive sex”, as one transwoman I spoke to put it.

TMI maybe, but my penis is really really small. I’ve never had a bulge, despite the tightest trousers I’ve worn. I know some people hate that term, but as the porn-industry puts it, I think of my penis as a large clit.

Thirdly, right now my orientation is pretty queer. In that, as a woman, I like and am attracted to other women (cis, trans, gender-fluid or sexually fluid – all equally). And therefore, I’m not particularly sure that I would need a vagina to please my eventual partner (obviously a big assumption.) Also, while I admit I have zero experience in this matter, receiving anal stimulation/anal sex is about as erotic and fulfilling to me as receiving vaginal sex.

Plus, sex toys = amazing.

This year has been brilliant for me. I’ve come out to a lot of my friends, have managed to overcome some serious depression, and have found some amount of peace. This has helped me learn, explore and define my gender and politics a lot. I think I am gender fluid. I am transgender. I would like a female body (as that would give me greater personal happiness) but this does not require me to undergo any sexual reassignment/gender-affirming surgery.

In the back of all this is also one teen-early adulthood desire to be a trans-porn actress. Right.

Given all this, I think surgery may not be what I most desire. Hormones, absolutely. Every day I have to shave, every day I am perceived as a man is hurtful. Every day I look at myself and see a man in the mirror is debilitating.

I cannot wait to be seen as a woman.

However, I do think there is value in surgery for aesthetic reasons. For one, there are a bunch of scars on my face which I don’t like at all. I would like to lose them. There are also varicose veins and badly healed burns on my leg – the veins probably a result of Klinefelter’s syndrome, the burns because of a road accident – that I’d rather not have at all. So cosmetic surgery = yay.

I don’t think I want breast implants. For one – I already have a bit of boobage. Secondly, delicious estradiol/ estrogen is going to give me sufficient growth, I think. But, if I – at a future point – decide I need larger breasts, I have no compunctions getting implants.

I think my, um, balls are ugly. They perhaps give me the most pain, and are quite hard to tuck away. So for that, and that reason alone, will I consider having surgery. It’s more a question of aesthetics and comfort than sex/gender confirmation.

I think I wouldn’t mind having both a “penis/clit” and a vagina.

Does this make me less of a woman? Does this make my experiences as a trans person less authentic?

I don’t give a f*ck.

I know I have said this before, but coming out IS a continuous, never ending process. Every day, you’re coming out to someone, and to something. Sometimes, you’re just coming out to yourself; over and over again. I guess it’s time for the final plunge.

I’ve reached that stage where the heart does want what the heart wants, and the brain is tired of explaining. I’m at a stage where it has become too hard to explain; where I’m tired at the thought of even having to explain. I do understand your concerns, but the choice between life and death is simple. It’s life. It gets slightly more complicated when you need to kill a part of yourself in the hope to live a little, and that is where I am stuck. Sex change isn’t about the biology alone. It’s about everything that biology makes happen. Unfortunately, in our patriarchal society, we’ve grown conditioned with genders, and a million things revolve around it. If I were born as a girl, my life would have been fundamentally different right now. Good or bad? I can’t say. But different, yes. Frankly, I will never be able to explain this decision, and honestly I shouldn’t have to.

How I wish this was just about boobs and a vagina. How I wish this was just a six hour long ordeal in the hospital and a few months* on hormone replacement. How I wish I had the choice, the liberty to be, to just be. How I wish that my decisions did not have to be governed by society’s estimate of what’s a safe risk and how I wish I had the courage and the capability to do this a lot earlier in life. How I wish I did not have to reassure myself, and then many others, of the path I’m taking. The fact is that if I need to explain so much to everyone of what I intend to do with my body, it’s not only for their concern of me going on the wrong track but also for their concern of losing ‘Mayank’; a male entity in their life, and they would have absolutely no idea about how to deal with this. While I would transition biologically into something I have always wanted to be, people around me would not transition into having this new person in their life. Maya will have to rise from the ashes of Mayank, and that is a sad reality. Transition has a huge cost, and I’m not half as concerned about the financial costs of this decision. Transition comes at the risk of losing everyone and everything.

The other thing I’m warned about is falling into a debt trap. Here is my answer to it: I can be rich and successful at 30 but I can’t be a young girl at that age. The average age for gender reassignment is mid-life and I don’t want to spend the most beautiful years of my life in the state I am in right now: half alive and half dead. It might seem like a big deal, but it is a big deal for you. For me, it seems the most natural and obvious thing to be doing even if it means risking everything I currently have, for frankly, the dream to transition is all that keeps me going every day. If I kill that dream for another few years there will be no light I’d like to see. Justice delayed is justice denied, they say. This is justice for me. If I emerge victorious by the end of this battle I would have known my purpose of life and known I fulfilled it and if I’m able to inspire someone else, I would be happy that I even existed.

There is, however, a different kind of sadness that makes my chest heavy. The sadness of letting Mayank go. I’m not quite sure about how things will change, but things will change somewhat. It will be the end of an era and the beginning of something unknown. As of tonight, I have no plans at all on how to do it. I’ve thought about fundraising for it in part, and setting that as precedence for other trans people as a possible way to walk the road towards freedom. I’ve thought about the hassles of taking a predatory loan, and the vicious cycle of debt. I’m not sure how this is going to happen, but there are two things I am most certainly sure about.

One, I am not going to be ashamed of my male identity, it is and always will be an integral part of my lessons in growing up and two, I will be absolutely public about my battle against gender norms. It stopped being just about me a long time back and we’ve established that safely.

I remember when I came out, and everyone was extremely supportive. It started to change when I started talking about sex change, and when I wore a saree and posted a picture of me in that saree on social media. That changed quite a few minds. The unimaginable felt more real, and it felt more natural. It was as if, the saree was meant for me, and I was meant for it. It was the perfect amalgamation of my heart’s desires with what my body partially reflected. I was not even one bit scared or apprehensive about it. I was not even one bit concerned about what people on the streets would think. Not knowing the local language does surely help ignore anything. But I walked in pride and I knew that. I walked on the streets of an alien city knowing that isolation and separation from familiarity gave me an unprecedented space for walking with utmost freedom and confidence for I did not have to fear judgment or anticipate questions. I did not for perhaps the first time in my life have to think about what people will say, people I care about. The only thing that I had to worry about was if I pulled off that saree with the grace it deserve, and oh well, that waist did justice to it.

In my observations and limited understanding of life, I’ve come to value this infinite sense of freedom and self-reliance far more than any comfort that materialism can possibly offer. Surely a Mercedes makes it easier to complain about the grief of not being content with life, but nothing beats the empowerment that self-reliance bestows on you. I understand this is a crazy idea, but all great things started with a crazy idea. It’s now or never really for me. I’ve swum too close to the shore to succumb to a whirlwind of sadness in a violent ocean of melancholy. I refuse to give up or give in. In either case, there will be an end of me. I’d rather give my true self a real chance than live with the guilt of not having even tried.

Sex change, two words for you, story of my life. Whether it’s a happy ending or just an ending, I would have lived a life through it, even if I fail miserably; I would have lived for once. The brevity of this attempt will not matter, nor would the result for the joy of a true and genuine attempt at reaching the shore of that deserted island to start fresh from would offer me the solace that no amount of artificial comfort ever can. This is my farewell to 23 years of being, trying to be, pretending to be and for days to come, trying to give being a chance. It’s not easy saying goodbye to two decades of memories, some you remember and some remain forever. There are people, events and places that travel with you irrespective of the realms you transcend and that will always stay with me.

For now, if you ask me, how is this going to happen and when is this going to happen? Let’s just pretend I have a plan.

Image source: Eanil.com

This article is only a personal reflection on some of my life experiences. I do not claim to be a philosopher or a sociologist who can answer all questions about how the society should deal with gender categories. Nevertheless, I venture to state it is commonsense that we need to look beyond the binary. I feel fortunate to be associated with support groups and organizations like Orinam and Nirangal that welcome all gender and sexual minorities without trying to label individuals.

We live in a society in which men and women are not yet treated equally in all situations. In most jurisdictions, we still need to implement affirmative action so women will have the same rights as men. It is not practical to disregard gender altogether. At the same time, I feel as a society, we need to recognize that not everyone fits into this binary model. Further, it is important for everyone to have the freedom to choose activities that interest them and express themselves in various social situations without undue constraints because of the gender assigned to them.

How are we going to do that? How are we going to ensure that everyone has the same rights but still protect women from harassment by men? We might not have answers to everything, but at the minimum, I think, we should be asking the right questions. As Maggie says in ‘The Opposite Sex … Is Neither!’, “a civilization is more well-known by the questions it asks than by the answers it comes up with” (re-quoted by Kate Bornstein). I would like to contribute my small bit to the advancement of our civilization by raising a few questions on gender and presenting my experiences here.

The day I was born everyone around me was happy and in a mood of celebration. In retrospect, I feel they were unduly concerned about certain aspects of my body which I don’t feel should determine how I live my life. Let me make it clear: it is not just my parents or family members who had the question “is it a boy or girl.” This is still the first question people ask while talking about a newborn in our society. I don’t find asking or answering this question a problem by itself, but I feel strange about the emotions and feelings that are commonly associated with this question. The first thing a mother or father asks is “do I have a boy or girl?” Even those parents who proudly say they will be equally happy with a boy or a girl will not readily accept that their child is not identified as either boy or girl at birth. Fortunately or unfortunately, the doctor decided that I was “male”. There was no ambiguity about my biological sex. So, people around me assumed that I would grow up to be a good “man”.

Some people are born with body parts they don’t feel comfortable with, but my concern is a bit different. Right from the earliest days in my life that I am able to remember, I never understood why so many things we are supposed to do in life are based on having or not having certain body parts. While it may be required to record what type of genitalia is present at birth—because it is not the same for every child—I don’t see any reason why a child should be dressed in a certain manner or given only certain types of toys to play with based on that. After all none of the toys meant for a child is not supposed to be operated using those very same body parts. Why then do we even distinguish between boys’ toys and girls’ toys?

What if there was a society which felt the blood group is very important and said all babies who have blood of type A must be made to wear red clothes and those who have type B should be made to wear blue clothes, and so on? You would think that is absurd, but I can argue that in various situations it would be more meaningful to differentiate people by blood group rather than by the genitalia. In most social and work situations, there is no legitimate reason for the other person to be concerned about your gender. For example, a person working in a bank is not expected to do anything as part of their professional work using the body parts based on which a gender is assigned to them. However, if someone in the bank meets with an accident, it would be more useful to know what type of blood they have and not what type of genitalia they have. So, why not name people in such a way that we know their blood group—and not their gender—by just hearing their name? Blood group is of course a hypothetical example. People have been treated differentially because of the circumstances they were born in—race, skin color and caste (specifically in India). We now agree that such differentiation is unethical, but as a society we have not done much introspection about the impact of assigning a gender to a child.

In one of the earliest observations a teacher has written in my school report, there is a remark which reads “does not mingle with other boys.” I do not have the opportunity to interview that teacher now. But from the language used, I can only guess that they decided I am a “boy” and I was supposed to mingle with other “boys”. My failure to do so was something unusual. I remember that I used to like many games and activities that were typically reserved for “girls” and did not feel comfortable being forced to participate only in “boys’” activities. I did not want to become a girl either. I could not understand why a child has to be a “boy” or a “girl”. I just wanted to be an “awesome child”: not an “awesome boy”, not an “awesome girl”. Society would not accept that and this created a lot of practical problems. I was lucky to be in a coeducational school. I am fortunate to have liberal-thinking parents, although they find my non-conformance to social norms like gender a challenge at times. While in school, even though boys and girls were generally seated separately, on occasion, I was allowed to join a group of girls for studies or other activities. Even then, certain boys would try to create problems for me because they felt I was trying to impress the girls, while I was just trying to explore our shared interests.

My biggest challenge was with sports. Boys and girls were separated for physical education instruction .Unlike girls, boys were expected to participate in aggressive and physically-demanding sports. Boys may—in a certain sense—have greater physical strength than girls, but there is no rationale why I should have been expected to participate in more aggressive sports just because I was assigned male. I could not join the girls as it might make them uncomfortable and teachers definitely felt it was inappropriate. But “boys” like me who did not exhibit such brute force during physical training were branded as “weak” and “girly” which was not only demotivating then but, in retrospect, must’ve also been insulting to girls as such. The strange thing is that certain boys would do anything and everything to avoid being told they are girly, and the teachers felt this was a good way of motivating them to do well in sports. Though I was not particularly keen on identifying as a girl, I cherished being different from the other boys. So, I started to deliberately act like I was physically weak. Consequently, I never took part in competitive sports in school. As an aside, it has taken me a long time to realize the importance of physical activity. I have tried the gym, and I now swim regularly to keep myself healthy.

While I was studying in high school, I woke up one day listening to the news on the radio. It was about the end of apartheid in South Africa. I was excited to hear the voice of Nelson Mandela. I was happy to hear that the nation had decided that they would no longer have separate bridges and public parks for blacks and whites. A few days later in our history class we studied about how Ambedkar struggled to end discrimination based on caste in India. While I was still feeling elated about the achievement of human equality in various societies, my school suddenly announced that boys and girls were to use different staircases from that day on. This was shocking to me. There was no reason why they should have come up with this new policy. Some teachers felt such segregation was required to improve the morality of the students. There were two staircases to access the classrooms in the second floor and they were at two ends of the building. The policy of segregation meant that on most occasions both girls and boys would have to walk much longer to reach their classrooms. Some people protested against it because it caused a lot of inconvenience, but I felt the imposition of this policy was a violation of my rights at a much deeper level: they infringed on my freedom to use a staircase because of how they perceived my gender. Students were using staircases only to climb up or come down the building. Even if there were any isolated cases of misbehavior they should have been dealt with on a case-by-case basis. I felt it was not only stupid but also inhuman for my school administrators to impose such a policy of segregation. Nevertheless I was a mute spectator at that time to this victory of Victorian morals over both common sense and basic rights.

Now I feel I must speak up against such irrational and inhuman practices. In a sense, I am still learning to be more assertive. More recently, when I was working in a corporate environment, I was given feedback that I should try to be like the other “men” so everyone could feel comfortable. While I was not assertive enough to protest against it, I just ignored the feedback. I was lucky that they did not bring up this issue again during the course of my work in that organization although I continued to be myself. I am not sure if I responded to it in the best possible manner, but at least I did not allow others to dictate how I should express myself.

I have been much happier during the last few years primarily because I got involved in the LGBTQI movement. I now interact with people who have similar interests. However, not everyone working for the welfare of gender and sexual minorities understands or accepts fluidity. Sometimes I happen to meet people who want to put me into a category like gay or trans. There is a clear binary into which the world wants to fit people like me. For example, even our languages don’t have a common third-person singular pronoun that is not gendered.

I am just a person. Why do others need to categorize me as either “he” or “she”? I feel gender is fluid: it can change based on time or situation. While I understand that for some of my transgender friends, it is very important for them to transition to their target gender, I would want people to understand that I don’t have a target gender. In my exploration of life, as well as my understanding of gender, my purpose is not to reach a destination but to just enjoy the journey. I am not here to discover an identity that fits me. I just want to keep exploring ways of expressing myself that makes me feel satisfied; without harming others, of course.

Some people think that fluidity means they can fit me into whatever identity they feel best suits me. Typically, I am asked, “So if you are not trying to become a woman, why do you want to wear women’s clothing?” There are multiple ways of looking at it: one perspective is, what is wrong if I dress like a woman? That is what I feel like doing at the moment. Another perspective is, why do men and women need to dress differently in the first place? By this perspective I also want us to question the relevance of gender. While most of the times I try to explain, sometimes I just ask them back: “How does it bother you? In what way is my dress affecting you?”

I am much happier now that I have started accepting myself. I feel I can share my experiences in the hope that it could benefit others. Most people live with gender dysphoria; they are not comfortable with at least some aspect of gender assigned to them. For example, a girl who is not allowed to study in an out-of-the-town college because no other girl in the neighborhood has done that or a boy who is discouraged from wearing nail polish because “boys” are not supposed to do that. I want to reiterate that the right to gender expression is a basic right—an integral part of the fundamental right to freedom of speech and expression and the fundamental right to equality. This is something that should concern not just certain individuals like me who don’t want to be identified as male or female. This is something that should be of concern to every single human being. Sometimes, people ask me what is so significant about wearing nail polish? Why do you have to talk about fundamental rights here? Parents telling their child not to wear nail polish because of the gender assigned to the child are at once violating both the right to equality and the right to freedom of speech and expression the child is entitled to. The body parts of the child have nothing to do with how the nails can be colored. This is as absurd as saying that a child should never wear a red shirt because he or she has long fingers. Some people might argue that though arbitrary and absurd, such a parental injunction would not by itself violate constitutional rights as no serious harm is done. It is not just that the child cannot color their nails but the consequence is that the child cannot participate in several meaningful social interactions just because of the gender assigned to them. Imposing norms such as use of nail polish, prevents the child from expressing their own identity. Therefore, I feel this is a violation of fundamental rights.

One other personal question that I find difficult to answer is “What is your gender identity?”. To those who insist on me mentioning a label, I usually say “genderfluid”. However, I don’t think there is any label that exactly describes me. I personally view gender as a performance rather than as an identity. I tell people, if I look feminine to you, call me “she”, if I look masculine to you, call me “he”. I don’t care what you think about my identity as long as you treat me with respect and dignity. I have a problem with someone only when they try to interfere with my right to express myself. In fact, I don’t even feel gender should have much relevance in my life. As long as I have the right to wear clothes of my choice, participate in activities that interest me, and associate freely with people who have similar interests, it does not matter to me if others think I am man, woman or someone of another gender.

A Tamil version of this piece translated by Arthi Vendan is available on eanil.com

Very recently, I was caught off-guard by one of my close friends who came out to me as gay, while we were in the middle of dinner at a restaurant.

Stunned, I gulped down the food. I assumed my friend expected a strong reaction out of me, instead. But I simply said: “Gimme sometime to digest this!” (I guess I got too carried away by the food.) We didn’t talk much after that for the whole evening.

That night, I slept over it. Then, realisation dawned. And I had things to say, not just to my close friend, but to all of you as well.

Many of us will, like I did, face a “coming out” situation – whether we’d like to face it or not. Perhaps a dear one coming out to us. Or even some of us coming out to our dear ones.

Here are my thoughts on how a heterosexual person should respond when someone comes out to them as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT).

This is all the more important in the Indian context since we know how unpleasant the scenario can be for LGBT people here in terms of social acceptance.

It probably hits you the hardest when the person coming out has been close to you for years, and you’ve been absolutely unaware of their sexual orientation all this while.

Man, that strikes like a bolt of lightning.

A volatile reaction is not unexpected. The surprise may even turn to ire. But this is the defining moment. Harsh reactions would certainly hamper the relationship between you two. If you value your friendship with this person, here are some points to keep in mind.

1. UNCHANGED
Sure you’ve been made privy to additional information about your friend, which you were previously unaware of. But why should his/her sexual orientation change anything that currently exists between you two? He/she is still the same person you’ve known all along.

We all have secrets. Not all secrets mask our personality, our humanity. The top ten things that made my friend my close friend didn’t have “sexual orientation” among them. So I guessed nothing was really going to change!

2. HONOUR
Out of everyone, if my friend chooses to tell me first, or even just tell me something that is so private to him/her, I would be honoured.

It’s a big step for your friend. For anybody to believe and trust in somebody else. So value that decision, and take it like the honour it is. They trusted you. Let’s not prove them wrong!

3. LISTEN
That which everybody should generally do more. And more so in this situation. Your friend is already going through a lot of internal turmoil and agitation. They just need someone to share their feelings with, to speak their heart out, obtain emotional support. So don’t bombard them with questions and your assumptions.

Listen.

If something worthwhile comes to your mind, speak out. Ideally, words that attempt to calm your friend. Words that will reassure your friend of your unconditional support. No big speeches, please.

4. GAY
Also means “happy”. So while you are doing all that listening, don’t sit like a zombie, emotionless, expressionless. You may not speak at that moment, but you can certainly respond through your expressions. Trust me, that’s a lot easier than finding the right kind of words to say!

Have feelings of happiness on your face. A smile, definitely. Laughter, no. Nod. Look into their eyes. That’s the most assuring. And if you are comfortable then, don’t forget to sign off with a warm hug. I think hugs make everybody happy, irrespective of their orientations.

(Also, try reacting a little less surprised or less happy for someone who breaks this news on Social Media. I’m still figuring out that part)

5. DISCREET
More than your friend is. Because, intentionally or unintentionally, it’s not your job to spread the word about your friend’s sexuality. Not unless your friend is OK with it, and the two of you have that understanding between each other. Either way, let’s not be the speakers for something that isn’t ours to tell, unless the situation compels it.

That’s all I have for now. But I would like to conclude with a few additional pointers.

a. If your friend is of the same sex as you, do not assume that your friend fancies you.

b. Please don’t ask silly questions.

c. This would be a good time to cultivate some general knowledge regarding the LGBT community. Know the difference between sexual orientation and gender identity.

d. Importantly, continue doing what you’ve been doing with your close friend – being friends with him/her.

e. And it’s never too late. You can still make up with your friend =)

Know you’ve found that special friend in your life, when you can share anything, absolutely anything, with that person. Please be that person to your LGBT friend(s).

Credits: An earlier version of this post appeared on Raveen’s blog. Orinam thanks his friend (the one who came out to him) for sharing it and Raveen for permission to adapt it for this site.

Indira is a transwoman who had initiated her personal and social transition process about four years ago and got her gender and name changed last year, in 2014. Indira also happens to be dyslexic and, by virtue of this learning disability, has her own set of strengths and inadequacies.

Indira has been out as a queer person since she was 20. However, she was not out to herself as a transwoman back then, identifying as a gay man for a long time. She began her professional career with the India operations of a Wall Street giant ‘X’. During her six years at X, Indira was open and out as a gay man with her employer. She did not have the need to inform them that she was dyslexic, as the role leveraged her strengths and didn’t put her inadequacies to test.

Indira was recognized with awards for high performance every year of her time at X.

She then moved to company Y. During the next six years, Indira was open and out as a gay man to her employer at Y as well. It was over these years that Indira began questioning her gender and gender identity, and came to terms with her disability. In June 2014, Indira was rehired by company X. Over the next six months Indira would be at the receiving end of the company’s violation of the mandate of the NALSA vs. Union of India judgement (hereafter, NALSA judgement) where the Supreme Court laid down that SRS should not be a prerequisite for gender change as gender transcends the body and cannot be reduced to the presence of an organ or the absence of it. The company also violated its own disability policy that mandates that differently-abled people be offered roles in consonance with their skills and strengths. This essay documents the challenges faced by Indira since her coming out as trans and dyslexic.

The First Week
Late in March 2014, Indira received a call that informed her of a role in her former employer X. The job description (JD) emailed to Indira detailed that the role she was being considered for was a ‘high logic’ role in need of a person with ‘investigative problem solving’ skills and ‘out-of-the-box’ thinking. The JD laid down the need for very strong logical and analytical skills in the candidate and Indira was an excellent fit. She was immediately hired after a battery of aptitude and psychometric tests. Almost immediately, Indira received an offer, and in less than a week she had landed the job. It is widely believed that a corporate does not rehire an ex-employee unless it is very clear and convinced about the value proposition that he/she would bring to the table.

Indira joined X in the first week of June. Her on-boarding was rushed and was completed in just 1.5 hours. She was made to board a flight to Mumbai on an assignment the very same day. Consequently, Indira’s full-fledged three–day long induction was deferred for 6 months. And, no bank account was set up.

Indira did not come out to her employer as a transwoman during hiring, for fear of an adverse hiring bias that may have no bearing whatsoever on her competence or merit. No law or organizational policy mandates that candidates reveal either their gender identity or sexuality at the time of hiring. Candidates may choose to disclose it if they wish to. Also, during the time of hiring, Indira had applied for gender- and name-change documents through an affidavit. Within a week of her joining work at X, she obtained her papers formalising these changes. Immediately, Indira came out to her manager and the functional head as a transgender woman. She submitted the papers and stated that she wanted her new name and gender to be reflected in all her records, emails, business cards and HR and business databases. She also sought access to either a women’s restroom or a gender-neutral restroom. Indira also informed her manager that her induction was pending and hence all other joining formalities were undone too. He listened and assured her that it would be done and that she will be nominated for it in some time. He did not specify a timeline, and instead put her on to the HR person. Indira also came out to the HR as a transgender woman. In a follow-up email to the HR and her functional head, Indira flagged four key concerns:

1. The training on prevention of sexual harassment at X is obsolete as it does not take transgender people and the NALSA 2014 judgement into cognizance. This is a grave concern: inaction makes the organization strategically complicit in the invisibilization of transgenders, in allowing practices deleterious to their wellbeing at the workplace. It is also violative of the NALSA judgement.

2. Her discomfort in accessing the men’s restroom and need to access either the ladies restroom or at least a gender-neutral restroom in line with the NALSA judgment. She felt sexually harassed on being forced to used the men’s restroom.

3. Her complete discomfort with being addressed Inder or the use of male personal pronouns, such as ‘he’ or ‘his’. She stated that mis-gendering when read  with NALSA the judgement clearly constitutes sexual harassment. She also told them that as per both the statute and X’s policies all sexual harassment complaints need to take impact as stated by the complainant into immediate cognizance. She reminded them of the thumb rule of impact vs. intention applied in the Vishakha guidelines of the Supreme Court and the new law Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal of Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace Act, 2013.

4. Her non-induction till date and consequent incompletion of all induction formalities.
Indira attached her non-SRS gender- and name-change papers with this email. The HR questioned her as to why she didn’t reveal her trans identity at the time of hiring. Indira explained that her coming out was legally unwarranted. He addressed her as Inder despite her telling him that she is not Inder but Indira. Since he was clearly unaware of the NALSA judgement, the HR person was not able to advise Indira. He asked for some time and told her that as she was in a critical stage of a high priority project, she would need to wait to get released to get inducted. This email and this week in June was the first in a seven-month long fight against employment discrimination and organizational opacity.

The First Month
Indira began her assignment—a training and immersion programme with the client in Mumbai—that was meant to go on for 1–1.5 months. Near the last week of June, Indira reminded her managers and the HR, both verbally and on email, of her non-induction and of her trans identity for change of name and gender formalities.

In the meanwhile, another issue had popped up at work. The job-on-the-floor was completely different from what was communicated to her during hiring in the JD. It was, instead, a high precision job, demanding critical business decision-making in one reading, and within a timeline of 15–20 minutes; a dyslexic’s nightmare. Indira informed her manager, the functional head and the HR person of her dyslexia and the wrong fitment into this role. She explained at length that dyslexia is a statutory learning disability covered in X’s own disability policy. She followed this up on email by attaching her dyslexia certificates from two leading private hospitals, viz. Apollo and Medanta, and two leading government hospitals, viz. Institute of Behaviour and Allied Sciences and Vidyasagar Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, Delhi.

Indira was asked by the HR as to why she did not reveal her condition of dyslexia at the time of hiring. She responded that she was never asked if she was dyslexic either verbally or in writing. She highlighted that the JD sent to her showed no bearing that her dyslexia could possibly have on the role that she was being hired for. She also highlighted that the key information on the role was misrepresented and withheld by the employer who shared a flawed JD and skewed her understanding of the role. There was a clear and total JD vs. job-on-the-floor mismatch; this was not an L&D (Learning and Development) job, but an operational training role. Indira received a standard response on email from the HR person that her concerns were being considered, while he continued to address her as Inder.

Three Months, Two Reminders and One Escalation
In July, Indira requested her functional head and the HR for a resolution to all the above issues she had raised. She received no response to her email other than an out-dated Out of Office reply. Indira received an email from the HR in the end of July that she needs to submit her Sexual Reassignment Surgery (SRS) certificate for gender change. Indira immediately responded that insisting on SRS as a prerequisite for gender change is violative of the NALSA judgement. She did not receive a response. One month later, in September, Indira writes again to all highlighting that insistence on SRS as a prerequisite for gender change is violative of the NALSA judgement. She reminded her manager and the HR of her request for a resolution to all the issues raised. Four months down, Indira was still in Mumbai, hadn’t been inducted yet, bank account formalities were not done and salary unpaid.

By the last week of September, Indira escalated the issue to the General Manager (HR). However, that did not yield any results either. Her HR personnel responded instead, informing Indira that that there were no provisions in X’s India policies to change her name and gender. She wrote back explaining that it was not in line with the NALSA judgement and sends her the gender- and name-change documents again. She also drew attention to his email that it didn’t address the other issues she had raised, viz. statutory protection for dyslexics at work under the company’s policy, JD vs. job-on-the-floor mismatch, non-induction and incompletion of induction formalities.

Reaching the Ombudsperson
The ensuing reply from the HR personnel still addressed Indira as Inder and simply repeated that there were no such policies at X in India. Indira reminded him of X’s global policy, explaining that the global policies on ‘Respecting the individual and Diversity and Inclusion’ have a provision for it. The HR dismissed it as not being applicable in India. It was the end of October and the GM (HR) intervened for the first time, adding a one-liner that Indira should submit her sex re-assignment surgery (SRS) certificate. Indira was still in Mumbai after her first assignment of 1–1.5 months gets extended to 6 months.

In the first week of December, Indira received her confirmation letter. Now, she raised the same issues in the confirmation meeting with her manager and the HR and followed it up with an email. Indira was coaxed and cajoled verbally to stay calm as she is doing very well for herself and shouldn’t insist on a role change. They skirted the issue of her trans identity, name and gender change, access to gender neutral restroom, role change and other issues. Her subsequent escalation of this concern to the GM (HR) did not yield any result. Instead, she received an email from her functional head and the HR person complimenting her work in the project. The mail explained she was a strong resource, greatly needed, and that she could not have a role change. Her manager had also written in reiterating that she should submit an SRS certificate. This email had an undeleted comment in email exchanges between her manager and the HR personnel casting aspersions on her trans identity and questioning the veracity of her dyslexia. It must be remembered that she had submitted, well in time, all gender- and name-change documents as evidence and her dyslexia certificates from leading private and government hospitals.

Following this Indira raised a complaint with the office of the Ombudsperson and the Global Diversity and Inclusion Head. She mentioned in her email that the escalation to the GM (HR) did not yield any results and that she had engaged enough and more with the business and HR leadership and that she had exhausted all options of redress in India. She reported the deliberate mis-gendering, wanton sexual harassment, persistent disability discrimination, employment discrimination and protracted non-payment of wages.

She attached all supporting documents, emails, follow up emails, incomplete responses from her manager and the HR personnel that showed the inherent discrimination, and flagged these as violative of X’s policy and the laws of the land. She explained that her case had a very high risk of litigation if not addressed internally and adequately within X.

Hearings and the Deliverance of Justice
The offices of the Ombudsperson, Global Diversity and Inclusion took cognizance of this complaint and scheduled the first hearing—with Indira and the defendents, her manager and the HR personnel—on 11th December 2014. On the day of the first hearing, Indira presented and defended her case with evidence before the joint committee of the Ombudsperson, Global Diversity and Inclusion. After the 2-hour sitting her manager and the HR personnel seek time to build their defence and show evidence. The case was adjourned for second hearing on 17th December 2014.

On 18th December 2014, the second hearing was summoned. Indira defended her case with all the above evidence, supporting emails, notarised affidavits and certificates. The defendants failed to present any evidence other that their own verbal submissions. They sought more time. The joint committee made oral and written observations and gave time up to 5th January 2015.

On 5th January 2015, the third hearing was summoned. The defendants yet again failed to present any evidence in the form of emails or their responses to Indira’s emails. Making oral submissions, they sought more time to gather evidence. The joint committee made scathing verbal and written remarks on file against the defendants and gave a final timeline not exceeding beyond 13th January 2015 for submission of evidence. The committee mandated that the decision would be announced on the 13th of January regardless of whether the defendants submit evidence or not.

On 13th January, the fourth hearing was summoned. The defendants failed to present any evidence other their own verbal submissions. The committee awarded a verdict. The committee held the defendants complicit in violating X’s policies on the following counts:

1. Disability discrimination under X’s Global Disability Policy. The committee upheld Indira’s right to a role change in line with her skills and the JD that was emailed to her at the time of hiring.

2. Deliberate mis-gendering both verbally and on email as Inder instead of Indira by company X’s India business leadership and India HR despite submission of all relevant and necessary supporting documents by her. The committee declared that such treatment of Indira by X India was violative of X’s HR policies and the NALSA judgement.

3. Sexual harassment of Indira by undermining her integrity on email with disparaging remarks; denial of access to a restroom of her chosen gender and coercing her to only use the men’s restroom; and, wantonly addressing her by the name and pronouns assigned to her at the time of her birth.

4. Insistence of SRS for gender change as violative of the NALSA judgement.

5. Discrimination and severe harassment for denial of pay, non-induction and for not setting up her bank account even after six and a half months of joining.

The committee awarded immediate release of Indira from the current role and instructed a role change within a timeline not exceeding 10 business days to a role in accordance with X’s JD and Indira’s skills, resume and her dyslexic condition. The committee ordered that Indira shall henceforth only be addressed as Indira and that she shall have access to restrooms of her chosen gender and that all records both online and otherwise should reflect Indira’s credentials by her chosen gender and name and that all the above changes need to completed within 10 business days ending on 27 January 2015.

This essay tries to bring to light the undercurrent of bias and stigma that operate invisibly against a certain disenfranchised and marginalised constituencies, in this case a dyslexic transgender person at the workplace. Besides, it reveals how disability, diversity and anti-sexual harassment policies that are meant to offer an equitable workplace and cover of protection are observed more in the breach than in compliance in the case of the differently-abled and the transgenders. Consequently, X tested Indira not on her skills, strengths or inadequacies but on her disability. It also underscores how the same person with the same set of skills and the same level of performance is treated very differently before and after gender change by the same employer.

P.S.: For confidentiality, names of all people—including Indira’s—have been changed, places have been changed and the name of her employer withheld.

The post Coming Out as Transgender and Dyslexic in Corporate India appeared first on orinam.

I just paid 22 dollars to subscribe to a queer porn website.

This is 22 dollars I really cannot afford to spend on anything, really. As in most economic scenarios, those 22 dollars, or 1700 rupees and change, could have gone to pay for so many things. New clothes for me. A gym payment. Savings. Or just plain stayed in my account and be used to buy food and coffee later.

But. I did pay 22 dollars for this website, which not only is queer, it is brilliantly erotic and exciting as well, and inclusive.

I paid 22 dollars for porn. For the first time in my life, I paid money to watch porn.

It was the least I think I could have done, to say thank you to the wonderful, sexy, beautiful people who have for the last month, allowed me to watch porn, legally, for free. I did not pirate it. I did not download it off some peer-to-peer network. I did not use someone else’s login to stream. Quite legally, because of the kindness of an amazing human being, I watched a month’s worth of beautiful people fucking each other.

And so I wanted to say thanks to the people. By paying for the privilege of seeing them having fun in their own and in each others’ bodies.
It’s beautiful.
It’s exciting.
It’s so relieving.
To watch porn that you’ve paid money for.

And the reason I paid for it, despite not really being able to afford it, is because I think this is more than just masturbating, more than just getting off to something on the internet.

This is my politics. This is my activism. This is my way of affirming my growing belief in a few things.

I’ve been trying to go ethical about the porn I see. Which means buy it, not just rip it off someone or copy from a peer-to-peer network.

It’s hard. It’s really hard to not make illegal copies of things because most of the porn produced is priced way out of my (meagre) disposable income range. And it is in American dollars and behind a credit card wall. Which is tough for someone in India, who has to support their parents, pay for their own living expenses, save up some money for transition, pay off past loans, and spend on things like clothes and make-up, because whatever minor ways I express my femininity is very, very, very important to me now.

But, paying for porn is what keeps the people I like doing the things they like, which happens to coincide with the things I like. If they don’t get paid, they might have to go back to doing shit porn, which is not stuff I like at all.

Ethical porn – in one of my fave porn performer Jiz Lee’s words – “BUY the Porn you want to see in the world.”

I’ve had an excel sheet – it’s been around for a while – in which I’ve noted down costs, rates, expenses etc. for transitioning outside India. Basically, it helped me feel better about the rather desperate situation I was in. I thought if I could calculate how much it would cost to move, to live and transition, and how much I could earn, I’d actually do it.

I’ve now added an extra section there, under expenses. Porn. Buying porn that I consider good – one that shows me people like me, having great sex, and enjoying it.
I believe Porn – pornography – erotica – is an essential, important thing. I wish we had more of a dialogue about it. I wish we talked more openly about porn, about sex, about sexuality, and being a sexual person.

But, that’s not just why I paid for this site.

I paid, because, as I have already said, it is queer (and how! I will get to this point soon), sex positive, fun pornography.

Not the kind of porn with false gasps and moans and the battle of sizes. Here it’s beautifully natural.

I’d like to describe one moment featuring Jiz Lee (who I would love to hug and kiss) and a performer called Nina Hartley, as an example of what natural means.

Midway through a rather awesome session of sex where Nina is on top and dominating Jiz absolutely; there is a pause as Jiz turns around and asks Nina to use their belt on Jiz, as a way of holding/gripping them better. It was considerate, sexy, practical and so much of a turn on. It was a moment in which porn became less an artifice and something of a piece of reality. Here was quite simply, two people having sex. In the best way they both wanted it. And the camera became nothing more, nothing less, than something marking a moment of truth.

But that’s not just why I paid for my porn.

I paid, because my porn is sex positive and body positive and queer.

One of my fave stars is Courtney Trouble. Oh they are such a hottie.

In any other world of porn, they’d be in a tiny category at the end of the site and with enough warning labels to turn off even the staunchest seeker. They would be called BBW, tubby, big mamma and so on, and be fetishized the hell out of any erotic impulse. Here, Courtney is front and centre, no labels beyond the ones they themselves want.

You could be any body, any colour, any shape, any size. You could question your gender or be fully comfortable with it. You could question your sexual orientation or know, compass like, where it points to. You could want to give pleasure or take pleasure or switch it up. You could be big, tall and have gloriously chunky thighs that rub and roll together when you walk. Like me. Or you could be petite, or you could be the statistically average height, weight, skin colour and have 1.8 kids and a car and a house in the suburbs. You could be anything and mix and match everything.

I feel, there’s a little bit of me, and a little bit of everybody in the kind of porn I like, and the kind of porn I paid money for.

This website showed me people having fun with their own bodies and the bodies of their friends and lovers.

I can’t think of a time when I watched porn like that. That is why I paid 22 dollars for the porn I would like to see.

The post Supporting Ethical Queer Porn appeared first on orinam.

To my parents, wife, brother, close relatives and friends:

This may be a shocking letter to anyone who thinks they know me well.  I think it is better to reveal the truth before it is too late and things get worse. You can hate me lifelong for this, unfriend me from your facebook list, delete my contact from your mobile or choose to abuse me through your emails and phone calls.

Yes, I am gay/homosexual.  I chose to tell you this now, as there is enough strain in the relationships around me. I chose to get married out of peer and family pressure to adopt a conventional life. This was a big mistake. I take the blame for ruining my wife’s mental and physical health by not being the ideal husband material that she and society would have expected of me. But I am also quite clear about not to wanting to live in this make-believe world, which I am sick and tired of.  I am pretty sure Maitri* is too. This marriage was dead long back, according to me. Everyone in the family and a few close friends around us know that there has been a strain in the relationship. I chose to stay away from my family during my higher studies in the middle of this strain, just to do justice to my academics, which was then the first priority. I dropped numerous hints about not being comfortable getting back with Maitri (without revealing my orientation) during counseling sessions, psychiatry consultations, meetings with family and friends when my family sought our reconciliation as a couple. I returned home to give Maitri the moral support that she then required, as I was told she was depressed and likely to inflict harm on herself. There was no love whatsoever and there will never be. All through this, there is terrible guilt and shame that I have jeopardized her life and mental health.

Many times I  thought of opening up about this sensitive issue but always stopped out of fear of being ostracized. I didn’t want to lose my parents, my brother and the few close relatives and friends who genuinely cared for me. My biggest mistake was that I chose to hide the truth and lead a supposedly normal life, just because I was not brave enough to confront my inner demons.

I have never had a good relationship with Maitri. I did not respect her dreams of wanting to be a mother. I was fearful of bringing a child into a family situation such as ours, as I did not want another new life to become the next casualty. Maitri, you were wonderfully patient and tolerant while I went about my domestic routines mechanically. I often wished you realized you deserved better, took legal action or nullified this broken relationship much earlier…but you chose to stay on for reasons best known to you.

Yes Maitri, I was cheating on you: meeting random people through social networks and roaming about like a nomad. Not all those dalliances were just for physical gratification: I was also seeking moments of mental peace where I could find it, as the atmosphere at home was depressing. I felt helpless, caught in a self-woven web of infidelity and deceit, including self-deceit. I felt unable to express myself and seek appropriate liberation, as I feared I would be misunderstood and rejected.

I know this news comes as a big blow to people who have always stood up for me and supported me in good and bad times. My relationship with my brother has strained so much over the last couple of months. He and my parents never liked my attitude towards my wife, and I lacked the courage even then to admit that I was gay. I didn’t want to continue living with my legally wedded spouse purely for a formality. Whenever I articulated these thoughts, it created more unpleasantness among my parents and brother.

There was also my fear of losing my professional standing and facing societal rejection. These are normal but important fears that any gay/queer person would have, considering the rigidities of our society.

There are certain things I want to be very vocal about:

1. My parents did not ever know what was running through my mind. I seriously wish people don’t talk ill of them, as it is I who let them down, and this is no fault of theirs.

2. I do not wish to continue my married life and Maitri does not wish to grant me a divorce through mutual consent as she has been wronged greatly. I accept that. She will be supported by my father as he strongly feels I have been indifferent to her.  Maitri, I would like you to know now that my ignoring you had nothing to do with your qualifications, looks, tolerance, or earnings. I take the blame for messing up your life.

3. If my parents feel I have no more place in the home I share with them, I will move out and stay separately without being a nuisance to anyone back at home or to anyone in our close circle of family and friends. I would, however, need some time, may be a couple of months, to make suitable arrangements.

4. If my relatives and friends choose to stay away from me and cut off all communication, that is their choice. I know it is very difficult for people to digest this.  I will patiently wait for people who can accept me as I am.

5. I am not here for your sympathies or for advice that tries to convince me to continue my current existence. I just want to live my life with some mental peace and dignity, whatever little may be left of both. I am prepared to fight alone. I know the path ahead is going to be rocky. I am not contemplating suicide, as I want to live and breathe on my own, given a second chance.

6. And the last word to my parents and my brother/relatives and friends: please don’t hate me. Allow me the option to repent for my mistakes and try to restore the chance at happiness for two lives without worrying about family honour and stuff like that. I have already fallen in the eyes of everybody and I don’t want to lose my near and dear ones at any cost.

7. I never intended to hurt anyone voluntarily, but my conscience, fighting a bitter battle with me daily, made me realize that I had better come out in the open before the situation escalates. I feel disgusted with what I have done, but I guess, after years of introspection, I now have a clearer view and have chosen to come out and come clean, whether I am accepted or not.

From,

Purush*

* Names have been changed on request.
** This letter is part of the South Asian, Married, and Queer? resources collection. Read about this initiative in English and Tamil.

The post Coming Out Late, Coming Clean appeared first on orinam.

I think I have lost count of the number of times I have felt immensely guilty of getting what I have got because of my caste. I remember sitting in my university classes, people looking directly at my face and saying ‘some lower castes’ individuals do not deserve to be here, because technically they are economically better than even many upper caste brahmins. I did not know how to respond then. I was fairly new to a law school environment, a big reputed one at that. I was extremely intimidated by my peers around me, who knew how to spell it right with their superbly pruned dictions. I stayed quiet. It was only later I realized how deeply I have internalized the shame that I ought to feel about where I come from, how apologetic I should be based on people’s assumptions about my competency and constantly justify my position of being where I am.

There have been innumerable times when my batch mates had told me how I ‘never looked like one’, simultaneously and not-so-subtly, pointing at my lower class, Dalit batch mate who hails from Bihar: a boy who according to them clearly fits the criteria of ‘poor SC boy who needs the reservation’. How much it pained me to hear that. I come from an untouchable caste of Chamars from Jalandhar. I have been extremely privileged to be born in a family where my grandfather stepped out of his father’s occupation and earned enough to pay for my father’s education who in turn became a civil servant. Does that mean that I should feel sorry about an upper class, upper caste person’s accusations of my non-credibility of having reached a place which is so conveniently appropriated by men and women of unquestioned privilege? Was that unease I saw in their eyes when I wouldn’t just silently suffer the multiple disadvantages that were thrown at me?

I remember how as a child, my parents took me to Guru Ravi Dass Ji’s gurudwara and explained to me how he is ‘our’ guru. I remember being confused as to why he isn’t counted among the ten Gurus when he is evidently a Guru himself. I remember being confused by following rituals such as taking my shoes off, bending down just the way I saw upper caste individuals do when we were very much opposed to the way they perpetuated caste oppression by such exclusionary practices. What struck me most, and still does sometimes, is the level of secrecy that came with my caste. I was constantly reminded by my family to not wear my caste on my sleeve. How doing so, would attract unwanted attention. I get angry when I am required by my family members to touch my elders’ feet. I get angry when my parents forbid me from eating beef, of telling me to shut up about my caste when I refuse to name a fictitious number from a general list to avoid conversation about reservation list.

Much of my courage (or just plain common sense) to not shy away from confrontations with my daily realities with respect to my caste came from me dealing with bullying because of being an out of the closet homosexual. I am a cis-gendered man and identify my sexual orientation as gay. I never went through any questioning phase in my life. I just knew since 1st grade and even before that, that I was interested in people of my own gender. Not sexually of course…there was a sense of higher attachment with boys my age.

A very big part of me which was able to face caste oppression stems from the strength that I found through my comfort of being in my own skin; by respecting who I am, regardless of how everyone around me mocked me, joked about me, bullied me, for being different or girl-ish or sissy or a chhakka. I remember being in 6th grade and terribly upset about being mentally tortured by my school mates but forced to console myself because I just couldn’t ever feel comfortable about discussing it with my mother. Because if I would tell my mother what they called me, she would enquire about why would they call me such names and eventually connect the dots with my orientation.

I remember even being abused by my cousin for acting like a girl and bringing shame to my entire family. But I decided long time back in my life that I would never let anyone make me feel bad about myself. Slowly, while growing up, I came to terms with my caste. What supposed impurity meant. How I should never tell my friends what my caste is. ‘Why?’ I asked. “Bas nahi batana. Humain woh bura samajhte hain.‘ Thus I hid my caste (besides keeping quiet about my orientation). Not only did I try to look and seem masculine, I would also try to imitate my upper caste friends’ fascination with their cultures (which I came to know much later is the mirroring of upper caste ideologies by lower castes, as Srinivas calls it Sanskritization and Brahminization).

As I grew up, it became much easier for me to ‘come out’ about my sexuality, but not my caste. I guess it just became easier for me to take the struggles at my own pace. I realized that I was trying so hard to fight the shame attached to me being gay that I somehow overlooked to fight the shame that is attached to my caste. I began to accept my caste within my engagement with my sexuality. I realized Ambedkar has so much to offer not just to the lower castes but marginalized people across the spectrum. Annihilating caste by challenging the very foundation of the Hindu society helped me to come to terms with attacking the hetero-normativity and assumed notions of femininity and masculinity. Ambedkar and his readings not only helped me challenge oppression at various degrees, but it also helped me embrace the ‘emotional’ within the rational.

While talking about the Gandhi-Ambedkar debate, one of the points in which some analyse those deliberations, is how Ambedkar demolished the opposing side’s arguments, one by one, rationally. For me, on the other hand, the very fact that he was so emotional about the cause, that emotional rationality carried a stupendous importance. When people around me dismiss my dis-engagement with law and my ‘dildo-shoving-feminism’, I feel in no sense non-emotional about my feminism, caste and LGBT or diluting the baggage that these movements come with just to please the comfort of the listener or the opposition. My caste taught me how not to be uncomfortable with me being emotional and dismissing them in the name of making rational and public pleasing arguments.

In discussions which are perpetually lost in unearthing each other’s dispositions, Ambedkar is someone who is supremely relevant and will be for infinity to help us deconstruct the taken for granted structures around us. The intersectionality of experiences, if not educating us about multiple marginalizations, also teaches us to be more inter-disciplinary in our approach to issues.

Credits:  Orinam thanks the author and Round Table India, the site where the article was originally posted, for consent to republish. Round Table India is an anti-caste Dalit Bahujan news and information portal.

The post Ambedkar helped me embrace the ‘emotional’ within the rational appeared first on orinam.

For over two years now, the idea of privilege, especially my own privilege, has occupied my mind. I stayed clear of writing about identity; let me figure out the thin line between speaking with and speaking for, I thought, and only then will I be equipped to say anything meaningful. Some of this tentativeness also, possibly, stemmed from the fact that my own description of myself was in flux; I need to sort myself out first, I thought. Of course, life must torpedo the most carefully laid plans.

A week ago, I uploaded a picture of my provisional transcript on Facebook, excited that I finally had written proof of the fact that I was graduating (after half a decade spent in law school) and that the university had acceded to my request to have a gender-neutral honorific before my name (Mx, instead of Ms). The move to upload the image was political, in that I wanted others in the university to know that this was possible, and they could ask for it too, but I did not expect too many people outside the university to hear of it. Instead, the story ended up published in practically every leading daily, and I, who had been too uncertain of my views to write definitive conclusions to essays, found my opinion on gender identity plastered across websites and newspapers ranging from The Hindu to Buzzfeed India. It was, and still is, both unnerving and bewildering.

The first interview I did, which formed the source of the media frenzy that followed, was with Legally India. In my statement there, I mentioned that I did not see any reason why my certificate needed to carry markers of my gender identity, especially since I am still uncertain as to how I wish to be identified. That statement, apart from causing my parents mild consternation, led several people to presume I identify as trans*, because, well, why else would anyone want a gender-neutral honorific, right? I was asked, in due course, whether Mx ought to be only for those who check the ‘other’ box; why I stayed in the ‘women’s hostel’ in the university; whether the request had anything to do with my sexual preferences; and so on.

That people were making this very linear connection between my request for a gender-neutral certificate and trans* identity alarmed me. To lay claim to trans* identity, in today’s world, is to lay claim to certain narratives and lived experiences that are not mine. If I was being attributed that identity, was I also being attributed the voice that comes associated with it? Was I unwittingly speaking for others, just because the media chose to pick up and amplify this light and fluffy story? This essay is a consequence of that alarm.

I was raised without many gendered cues at home. My parents brought me up as their child, not as their daughter. I did not have gendered toys, I sported a ‘boy-cut’ most of my childhood (and then, through most of college) and I was never told to do things because that’s what women are meant to do. A lot of my clothing is from the men’s section of stores. When I go out, sometimes people call me ‘sir’. I shrug it off, most of the times, but it has brought home to me the idea that gender is perceived through many symbols and my short hair and baggy clothes were powerful ones. Nonetheless, gendered cues are all around us, and I absorbed my fair share of them. I have faced the everyday harassment (and the fear of it) that women come to see as inevitable. I have internalised norms relating to women’s bodies to the extent that, despite interrogating every one of them in theory, I still cannot bring myself to wear sleeveless clothing unless my underarms are waxed. All this is to say that, despite the relatively unorthodox upbringing I had, if I were to characterise my experiences, I would say that I lived the life of a woman. A middle-class, brahmin, urban woman. [With short hair; always with short hair. Even cat-calls directed at me tend to be of this variety: “Oi, BOYCUT!”]

In time, though, I read and found language for what I had often instinctively felt: that my experiences were such because of the manner in which I was perceived, not because of something innately ‘womanly’ in me. Or to use academic language, I came to understand gender as being socially constructed and, essentially, performed. One is a woman only insofar as one does the things women are supposed to do in society, and look the way women are expected to look. But I did not fully comprehend what that understanding of gender implied, until an incident a couple of years ago. While speaking to a colleague, I said, “I self-identify as a woman…” and she retorted with, “Why? Tell me, what makes you a woman?” And there I stood, opening and shutting my mouth like a guppy-fish, completely astounded by the idea that I could no longer self-identify as a woman, if I believed there is nothing essential to ‘womanhood’. I could be identified by others as a woman, yes. But could I call myself a woman again?

At the same time, I found myself strongly allied with the trans* movement. Insofar as persons who identify as agendered are concerned, the idea of constructed gender identity makes perfect sense. But what of those who transition from one gender to another? How does the notion that our gender is defined by the ways in which we are socialised explain the lived reality of an intersex person assigned one gender identity at birth and raised with that identity, but who grows up to transition to another? I find it useful to think of biology and society weighing in together to determine our gender identities, in different measure for different people. If that is the case, then, to what extent does my sex define my gender identity?

These were the questions plaguing me when I said that I am still uncertain as to how I’d wish to be identified. In addition, there was the concern that the trans* movement itself does not speak in one voice. There are those who seek to dismantle the gender binary and do away with these categories altogether, and there are others who seek only the inclusion of a third category. While the latter has begun happening at some level (though I think the language still is problematic; imagine checking a box describing yourself as the ‘other!), I find myself allied with the former politics. Does allying with one adversely impact the other? These questions continue to bother me, but being thrust headlong into a media circus seems to have forced a certain sort of clarity (whether temporary or not, we shall see) in my thinking.

Theoretically, I’d love to see all of us as radical singularities, bound together in communities of choice (my primary identity would be as a non-erudite, GoogleTranslate-reliant lover of Faiz, in that ideal world). In that world, we would all be genderqueer, because categories would no longer withstand scrutiny, so being identified as trans* would be no big deal.

But if I were to quit dreaming for a moment, I am forced to reckon with the fact that identifying as trans* today, comes gratis with a side of structural violence that I have not experienced. It comes associated with exclusions that I have never had to struggle against. It would give me a voice and an identity, especially in an age of identity politics, that I have no right to claim.

Politically, therefore, the gender identity I can lay claim to is that of a woman. I can only try, in whatever way I can, to be an ally to the trans* movement. Was my request for a gender-neutral certificate foolhardy, then? Of course, it is for the broader movement to engage with, critique and possibly rip apart the request and its politics. But I would argue that was not foolhardy, but essential, on the basis of what Chomsky calls the ‘responsibility of privilege’.

I have had the privilege of arriving at the same theoretical position on gender identity as the trans* movement (or parts of it), without having to bear the brunt of the exclusions faced by trans* persons. I was studying in a university with no trans* students who could have made the request. For me, the stakes were low: if the request was denied, I was ready to pitch battle on the principled point, but even if all efforts failed I would still graduate. If the request was allowed, it would open a tiny window (I thought) into institutional conversations about gender fluidity and the need for more inclusive policies. It has the potential to force harder questions: if we recognise gender fluidity, then how do we rework the 30% horizontal reservation for women? How do we put in place affirmative action that would correct the historic exclusion of trans* persons from higher education?

On account of the sheer arbitrariness of Indian news-houses, that window became much larger than I expected, though very few hard questions were asked. I was then faced up with another quandary: should I speak at all? As it became evident that the story was going to be picked up regardless of my participation in the process, I was convinced by those I sought advice from, that it was far better that I tried to make a point or two, instead of letting the opportunity slip merely in order to stay clear of allegations of seeking undue publicity. But when it came to TV and radio shows, I tried my best to put those who called me in touch with persons who have fought the bigger battles on self-identification and respect, asking that the moment be used to open up a broader conversation and give space to those who really have far more meaningful things to say. Whether these shows will happen, I do not know, though I certainly hope they do.

I have been asked, incessantly over the past few days, what pronouns I prefer, and this question is what I would like to close with. In many ways it is symbolic of the dilemmas I have highlighted above. I firmly believe that if gender-neutral language is used only by trans* persons who do not conform to the gender binary, then we will have only created a third category, not undone the existing two. Personally, therefore, I would prefer to use gender-neutral honorifics and pronouns. But politically, as I just said, my experiences only allow me to identify as a woman. Is this a contradiction? Can I identify as a woman and yet insist on gender-neutral language? I would obviously say yes (my whole understanding of my situation is at stake), yet I doubt we have developed language enough to make sense of these questions. Unless we experiment though, I doubt we ever will. For me, this is the beginning of that experiment. It is also the moment at which I recognise that the agonising and experimentation cannot be private. This essay, then, is my (somewhat confused) attempt at making sense of the intersections between gender, language and privilege, as I find them playing out in my life at this moment.

The post Rethinking gender and language in the face of privilege appeared first on orinam.

It was a Saturday morning. I shut the door to my room on some pretext, went into the bathroom, and began reading out numbers on my phone screen. The number sequence was random, and I read each sequence out in different voices. First slower, pausing and extending the way I pronounced each digit. Next, breathier and huskier than my usual staccato. Then high pitched once, but quickly abandoned, because it sounded like I was being squeezed by a vice.

I was trying, and miserably failing, to sound like a woman. My voice, which at some point in the past I had intentionally broken to make myself sound bass and deep, was now unmistakably masculine. The kind of voice that could and did do radio voiceovers. So why was I trying to sound like a woman?

Because I am.

And because I am attracted to women and wanted to get on to LesPark, a lesbian dating app that not only demands you look feminine, but that you sound feminine too — in sum, that you prove you are indeed all oestrogen and no testosterone.

Which meant that I, transwoman me, was an inferior, second-class citizen in the world of LesPark.

***

Till I was 17, I did not have a word for who I was, or could be. I did not know I was a transgender girl. But as a 16-year-old, I discovered the internet. Those were the days of dial-up, of VSNL’s multiple gateway connections to the big blue yonder. And in between searching for games to play, attempting to learn HTML by copying code from other sites, and trying to find people to talk to, I hit upon what at the time felt like a novel idea: pretending to be someone else.

I had stumbled into a chatroom that was meant for frank conversations between women, and was strictly off-limits to men. And so on Yahoo, a girl I became. I borrowed liberally from my classmates’ lives to invent an alternate backstory for myself. I expected I would be found out immediately. I feared what I was saying and how I was saying it would be seen through for the thin façade they were, and I would be shamed forever. But that did not happen. Yahoo’s chatrooms became my second home, and its people my mentors, my crushes, my fantasies and, over time, my friends.

As tentative friendships firmed up, I followed each of my chatroom friends to their personal profiles. Jumping from link to link, I learnt of interests, hobbies and terms that were new to me. Transvestitism was one such. After a little digging, I landed upon a chatroom dedicated entirely to this ‘interest’, where I found validation for deeply hidden, very frightening thoughts I had always had. I found community.

One of the first people I befriended on this chatroom was a middle-aged former sales executive from Portland, Oregon, who in their late forties underwent hormonal transition and began life anew. Frank became Francesca and she called herself a transwoman. I knew, then, who I was.

This understanding was neither liberating nor comforting. Teenagers do generally go through a period of rebellion, of questioning their identity, of challenging authority and received wisdom. But to realise that a deeper, more fundamental aspect of myself was based on a shaky foundation — and that others took for granted who I was, while I wasn’t sure of it myself — was painful, confusing, and exasperating.

Questions. Doubts. One remained, a thorn forever in my flesh: did this explain why, even though I had crushes on other girls, I didn’t act on them?

***

It was another Saturday, one of those lazy afternoons. A colleague-turned-friend and I were sitting in the balcony of a coffee shop; she was smoking, I was trying not to cough over mine. In a distracted, offhand way, she spoke about her crushes and disappointments, her possible-loves and maybe-loves. It was a regular, innocuous conversation, but it soon triggered a bit of pain; a sense of melancholy for a past me.

Growing up cisgender[1], a person can experience the various joys and trials of an adolescence in which their identity and assigned gender are in fairly close sync. And with this understanding comes the feeling of being attracted to, and more importantly, being attractive to, other people. Of being someone who is sought as a romantic or sexual partner.Of having a bit of confidence in their body. Even growing up transgender, if the realisation that one is trans comes early enough, one can perhaps feel some degree of attractiveness.

One can talk about boyfriends and girlfriends, of maybe-wives or possible-husbands. One can look back on those people who sought you, those who pushed their luck once or twice to no avail, or those who gave you the space you needed. One can talk about the boy who categorically stated to your mother that he couldn’t possibly drop you home before 2 am. One can talk of the girl who came home one night, offered to help you through a bad breakup, and stayed on to be your next love.

All that, I never had. Oh yes, in the future I may. Once, if-when-maybe, I transition.

But I have never experienced young love. That hot-blooded, hot-hearted feeling of being someone’s sole pursuit. Of being wooed, of having someone come home and meet my parents, to ask if they can take me out for a movie, for a dinner, on a date.

Growing up with a distorted understanding of my own identity, I felt a deep-seated anxiety and a sense of shame about my own body. This, together with a conditioning that prevented me from being either a complete rebel or a total conformist, meant that all I could do was experience the life of a teenager at a distance. Experience it vicariously, falsely.

I never had any one coming home to ask me out. I did not have any girl friends, giggling and whispering in my room discussing potential dates. I haven’t had, and will never have, a girl trying to sneak a kiss while my parents are downstairs.

Of course, these experiences can be criticised as shallow teenage crises, as puppy love. As western ideas of adolescence. But I grew up with people for whom all these things happened. I have friends from later in life whose conduct and bearing have been informed and influenced by their teenage loves and lives.

Not for me.

Whatever a person’s teenage experience of love or sexual awakening was, good or bad, it paved a path for their adult pursuits. All I had were fictions and inefficient facts culled from hastily put together books.

And so it was that as an adult, I did not feel capable of acting on my debilitating, deeply felt, crushes.

***

I have always been aware of dating websites. They have been in the background of all my internet forays. A hook here, a line there, asking to reveal all, with the promise of a soulmate, or at least a partner for sexy times.

I’d tried a few too. From my early twenties onwards for nearly a decade, I left personals on Craigslist, drafted profiles on Match.com, and attempted to navigate the world of hook-ups in the pre-smartphone area.

To glorious non-results.

These early shots at dating online were my over-sincere attempts to conform to the male gender assigned to me at birth. And so I strutted out and acted the ‘sensitive cool dude’ I knew I wasn’t. Then I gave up, accepting what teenage me had realised long ago. I was a woman, dammit. And it was as a woman that I must find love. Or even friends.

And so, aged 30 but feeling like a 17-year-old girl, I went online to OkCupid.com and created Nadika’s first dating profile.

It was a kick.

It was a deep emptiness in the bottom of my stomach.

It was exhilarating.

It was confusing.

Today’s OkCupid is vastly different from what it was in 2012. Back then, you could be either Male or Female. Two choices. Oh and you had to have photos that were of you, and mainly of your face. So I wasn’t male, but was I entirely female? Wouldn’t the lie be blatantly obvious the minute I uploaded a picture? I was deeply insecure about the photos I had. They were all of me solidly performing the masculine. But I poured my heart into the profile, and for photos, I reverted to my favourite source for pictures of myself, even today: Second Life.

Second Life (SL) is an immersive, massively multiplayer online game that creates a virtual world in which users interact with each other through avatars, or online selves. For me, it was not just a game. It became an existence, a life. On SL I could craft a woman me. I could give her all my aspirations and hopes, fears and loves.

So I created her; I created me. I gave her a shape that I wanted for myself and a body that I could both covet and be inspired by. She was — I was — tall, just the right amount of curvy, deeply tanned, brown skinned, curly haired, and as feminine as I could never be. SL became my vent for frustration, a space for my art, a boudoir to explore my sexuality, and my personal photo studio.

Back on OkCupid, I had no way of limiting who could see my profile — an option that users have on the platform today. So I got random men, mostly from India, trying to strike up fraandships with me. With some really awful opening lines. ‘Hi. I am not into transgenders. Penpal ok?’ was perhaps the least insulting, least transphobic of the messages I got.

This was about six months after I returned from the UK with my heart and soul still stuck there. I was set on going back to transition. But the UK Border Agency and the global economy didn’t see it my way. I was in the midst of a depressive, self-denying spiral, and confusion was the order of the day. Fear and self-loathing gained the upper hand, and my OkCupid profile lasted all of four months before I pulled it down.

***

In 2014 I came out.

Or rather, I opened the closet a bit and invited a few friends in. This had two immediate effects. One, my depressive spiral improved a little and I could sleep better. Two, I restarted my OkCupid profile.

In the meantime, I had graduated from a basic Nokia phone to an HTC Android device, which allowed me to operate my many lives and online identities without having to stay awake 24 hours a day.

The smartphone freed me.

OkCupid, Tinder, and Facebook were all now just a 3G connection away. Google, Android and Gmail enabled me to express my opinions, and my gender, easily. There was a reverse side to this coin. I lived in constant fear of outing myself accidentally. Worse was the fear that colleagues, social media contacts, cousins who were more active online than they let on, and people with free time and no scruples would go out of their way to connect my two identities and expose me.

Even today this manifests itself in what I do or don’t put up on Twitter and how many photos, and which photos, are seen on OkCupid. And for a long time, this fear was present in my indecision over Tinder. It was irrational but I thought having both OkCupid and Tinder on my phone would lead me to be outed almost instantly.

Tinder is a location-based dating app, widely used for short term dating and hook-ups. It plugs into your Facebook profile to find you potential matches based on a variety of parameters: interests, pages you like, people on your friends list, and more. In early 2014 I had deactivated my ‘male’ Facebook profile. Tinder was tied to my ‘female’ or real profile. I was a woman, and I was looking for a date.

It was therefore natural that Tinder would throw up the name and picture of a male colleague. In an office that was heavily mainstream in its understanding of gender and sexuality, an office where women tended to be one of the boys and the boys went out of their way to be manly men, the last thing I needed was a colleague to see my Tinder profile.

If Tinder showed me my colleague as a potential match, would I, therefore, be on his list? As a transwoman, in my yellow kurta and lipsticked self? Just the possibility of this was a rude shock, and one that coincided with one of my periodic bouts of melancholia. And so, off Tinder I went. I deactivated my profile, uninstalled the app, and tried to purge all my photos from the internet.

My self-imposed exile did not last long. The desire for, nay, the need for a meaningful, significant relationship outweighed my paranoia, and a few months later, I took cautious steps to revive my Tinder account.

***

In theory, I am a pansexual. I am also a demiromantic. In other words, all kinds of people could potentially float my boat, but I need conversations. I need camaraderie and cuddles first. And so in my early OkCupid and Tinder days, I requested potential matches from both the available genders. Men and Women. Never mind that I was swiping left 100% of the time on the men and swiping right about 60% of the time on the women. I just felt more attracted to females of the Tinder species.

There’s a Twitter account called Tinder Problems where users share screenshots of everything from messages that escalate quickly to interesting outcomes of hook-ups. The account showcases a range of behaviours human beings express in the hope of love, sex, and companionship. But one Tinder problem the account did not feature was the worst of them all.

No one new near me.

Everyday.

Every time.

I would open up the app to be greeted by little concentric circles exploring the depths of the internet and coming back with nothing to report. Meanwhile, friends of friends were juggling multiple successful hook-ups and relationships.

Straight women and gay men seem to have the most success on Tinder — according to my limited sample of data. There just seem to be more men on Tinder. And some of them are pretending to be women.

Was I, despite my self-determined gender and my obviously feminine clothing (and rather wordy explanation of my gender and sex) also one of them? Was this how other women were seeing me? As a man trying to impersonate a woman? I knew only too well how common that was.

Because I was on Brenda.

Easily one of the least elegant, most ungainly of the apps I’ve used, Brenda was touted as one of the earliest lesbian dating apps. It sure seemed like it.

Grid-shaped Brenda comprises squares upon squares of people from everywhere, including far away Singapore and car-drive-away Bangalore. In a review of Brenda, Lisa Luxx writes, ‘Brenda is a bit like the discard pile in a game of rummy. Doesn’t mean the cards are no good, but they’ve just not worked out for anyone else who’s had them yet.’

To me, it felt not only like the cards weren’t working out, but that someone had changed the game: we weren’t playing rummy any longer, but a form of severe poker. And the bluff was to know who you could trust and whose profile you should ignore. A surfeit of CGI hearts with lightning streaks, roses in all colours of the rainbow, plus dogs, cats, and photos of celebrities made up half the grid. The other half were anime characters, close-up shots of shoes, and occasional pictures of men.

Brenda was remarkable in that it was the app I used the least and on which I had no conversations with anyone — save one person who told me she was a lesbian through and through, and refused talk to me. No amount of arguing that I was indeed a woman worked. I didn’t blame her though, because I was fending off seriously probing questions from people who my instincts warned me were douchey men. ‘I am never good at pickup lines, what works on you?’ went a message from one anime-fronted user. ‘What is trans, are you shemale?’ wanted to know another. ‘I want lesbian sex,’ proclaimed one. Well, at least they were looking for it in the right place.

That was the end of Brenda. Poor woman. She meant well, but she wasn’t for me.

***

A few months ago, GooglePlay suggested I might like LesPark, an app that invites you to ‘Expand your lesbian social network.’ I really needed such a network. A lesbian friend of mine once said to me, ‘Being queer is an identity, being a lesbian is a practice.’ I laughed at it then, as I pegged it for a joke meant to cheer me up. But what if it was true? What if, indeed, being a lesbian was a performance and a practice, and one had to constantly ‘be at it’ to be truly seen as a lesbian?

And so LesPark was duly downloaded and installed.

By this time, pictures and profile info were no-brainers. I’d been socially transitioning for a while, and I had some selfies to add to my usual Second Life pictures. This in turn gave me some confidence in my identity, allowing me to develop some banter and get my story down to an art form. My politics and my choices had firmed up rather nicely too. So hit me with everything you have, Lisa of LesPark!

She did.

Points system. And Gender Verification.

It works like this. You get a point for every day you log into LesPark. The points determine who you can talk to. No points, no conversations. Everyone I wanted to talk to had way more points than I did, and so I could do nothing more than bookmark their profiles for posterity. Meanwhile, interesting-appearing women would send me messages, but given that they had fully verified profiles and a glut of points, I could not respond. The points system essentially made it impossible to even reply to a message, let alone start one myself.

LesPark also insists that only genuine, ISI-tested, Agmark-branded, made of 100% pure ghee lesbians (and bisexual women) can use the app. To this end, they came up with Gender Verification.

It works in three stages. First is voice verification. You read out a sequence of numbers from within the app, which is recorded and sent to the moderators for review. If your voice sounds feminine enough, you go to the next stage. Video verification. You shoot and submit a video of yourself. If they’re satisfied, you move to the third and final stage. ID verification. You upload a video of yourself holding an ID card. The name, picture and gender-marker on the ID card should match those on your profile.

No amount of twisting, contorting, forcing pitches and breathing could alter my deep bass voice. Stage 1 fail. Which meant, simply, that LesPark was a fail as far as I was concerned. Anger and resentment bubbled in me. Transwomen with deep voices are women too. Transwomen can be lesbians too. This was transphobic. This was anti-feminist. This was, simply, not cricket. LesPark had to go.

This moment marked a growing up. While I might have hankered after a romance or a relationship, I was not going to stand for trans*-exclusionary, discriminatory behaviour — be it by an app or by a person. And so, that Saturday afternoon, I emerged from my room a lot surer about who I was, what I wanted, and what I was not willing to do to get it.

***

By mid 2014 I was slowly getting over my colonial hangover. On OkCupid, I stopped vainly searching for partners, lovers, and friends from the UK and began looking for people closer to home. By this time, the app had progressed a fair bit, and I started to have more control over my expressions, visibility, and photos. Despite its continuing binary blue and pink colour scheme, OkCupid realised that there were perhaps more genders out there. I began having conversations with some very interesting queer women, slowly developing friendships with a few people I met. And by this time, I also had a couple of matches on Tinder.

These were uncharted frontiers and I was scared to move forward. I was afraid I would be rejected for being too masculine or not trans enough. Or spurned because I was boring or normal or like a million others. I was afraid my politics and motives were too banal, too everyday, for the amazing people I was beginning to crush on. These wonderful people were reading so many authors I’d never heard of, had seen so many great films, were doing so many wonderful things to bring life and light into some of the darkest corners of the world. They were everything I was not. Surely, none of these people would want to be friends with me, let alone date me.

Inexplicably, they did. They really wanted to be friends. Perhaps out of pity. Or maybe I fit a box they had to tick off. Whatever the reason (and I wasn’t going to dive deep to find it), I now had a network of queer women friends.

Approaching my 33rd birthday, I had my first date. And thus far, my only one. I have thought and re-thought about mentioning this. Do I talk about it? Do I not owe them the privacy they obviously deserve, and the chance to veto what is being said about them?

I will only say, then, that it was an OkCupid match.

[1] The terms ‘transgender’ and ‘cisgender’ are derived from Latin. Trans means to move, or moving; Cis means the opposite. So a transgender person is someone who ‘moves’ from one gender to the other, while a cisgender person is one who ‘stays’ in their assigned gender.

[2] Credits: this piece was originally published by Deep Dives as part of the series Sexing the Interwebs and has been republished with kind consent of the author.

The post ‘The smartphone freed me’: a journey of dating as a transwoman appeared first on orinam.

Prerana Kudur from Ondede and Gowthaman Ranganathan from Alternative Law Forum have compiled powerful testimonies of transgender people in Karnataka. This report comes more than a decade after PUCL-Karnataka’s pioneering documentation (2001 and 2003).

The report shows that the transgender community continues to face harassment, abuse and violence, despite advances in transgender rights as articulated in the Supreme Court NALSA judgement (2014), anticipated in Rajya Sabha MP Tiruchi Siva’s Transgender Rights Bill, and heralded in individual successes such as those of Manabi Bandopadhyay, Madhu Bai Kinnar and C. Anu.

Ondede (“convergence” in Kannada) is a collective that recognizes and endeavours to link existing movements such as child rights, women’s’ rights, sexual minority rights and other vulnerable sections through dialogue, research and action on Dignity-Voice-Sexuality.

Orinam thanks Ondede for sharing this report.

Click here to download the report.

The post Ondede report on human rights violations against transgender people in Karnataka appeared first on orinam.

Among my teaching assignments as a faculty member are a course in Sociology of Law for second year law students. LGBT issues are part of the core syllabus, as part of a module that also covers family, marriage and other kinship structures.

Besides lectures, the course also has a two-hour lab exercise on Fridays, that includes group work, skits and other interactive sessions to bring the lecture material to life.

Last Friday, I assigned the students group work to depict, through mime, a prevailing social issue from the syllabus, in about two minutes per group. Each group comprised of five students. One group asked, “Sir, can we present a mime on homosexuality?”

I replied with utmost joy, “Yes. of course! It is part of our syllabus”.

After practising for ten minutes, the group presented the theme as follows:

First, a man proposes to another by kneeling down and offering his hand. The other man accepts his proposal and lifts him up with both his hands, structurally forming a plus sign.

At this juncture a woman appears in the scene and asks the second man to drop the one he was carrying, and hits them both. The second scene depicts ostracism of queer people in a workplace-like set up. In the third scene, a cop comes and handcuffs both individuals, and takes them away, depicting criminalisation of same-gender relationships.

While miming his feelings of love and yearning for his lover, the student playing the role of the man proposing, suddenly blushed and froze, unable to proceed. He stood up and sat again for a re-do. I could understand his difficulty and let him repeat the action. After all, this was his first attempt to put himself in a gay man’s shoes.

While this was happening on stage, I was watching the audience keenly. To my relief, they were attentive. The class applauded spontaneously when one man lifted up the other in the proposal scene. During the other two scenes, the class was silent, indicating they were aware of the grim realities. Once the performance concluded, there was thunderous and long applause.

Other groups presented themes such as callousness of the public in the wake of a road accident, college bullying, dowry, etc.

I shared what happened in my class with my senior academic colleagues. They received the information in a matter-of-fact manner, neither cheering or frowning. But for me, it was not a routine event. My students have made me feel good about them – once again!

I have a long way to go in my efforts to sensitise the academic system. Filters imposed by campus servers prevent me from downloading and showing my own write-ups on queer themes to my students. I continue to wonder how and when I would be able to help establishing a fair and just atmosphere for people who are different from the mainstream.

In the meanwhile, rewards such as my students’ performance in the group exercise are what keep me going.

The post A teacher’s rewards appeared first on orinam.

Dear Pappa, Mamma and Keerti, my sis,

Never had I ever thought in my dear life that I would be in such a position. All I ever want is happiness for all. I am still trying to make that happen. Just to let you know this is very difficult for me. So please bear with me, keep an open mind and try to read the following fully, thoroughly, as calmly and as understandingly as possible. This is difficult for me, very difficult. And I am crying as I write this, but I am not trying to create sympathy here. It’s just because of the pain to arrange my whole life in front of you right now, even though I was right there with you all, living it.

Let me tell you, these are the things that I realized/noticed after coming here and I had never thought about it when I was back home. And even if I had thought about it sometime when I was younger, I was terrified of the very fact of daring to consider this. It is just not easy at all. I want you to help me through this process. I feel so helpless sometimes thinking about what I want, what I can have, and what I am allowed.

This year is for studies, but somehow it has also become the biggest exam of my life. Being away from home, gave me space and time to think about my life. So below is my life story, I am not going to hide any details and tell you about as much as I remember of my childhood times, it’s all here below.

In the 3^rd grade, I joined a co-ed school and there, as you know, I used to be the tomboy of the class. I used to play cricket with the boys and also kabaddi with the girls. Never having had a good group of friends, I used to fight with the girls and keep moving from one group to another based on which group the fight was with.

Please try not to be disgusted with me for what I am going to say now, because I have gone through this a lot. I have been shocked at myself for thinking like this, but I just cannot help it. When I was young, studying sometime between 4^th and 6^th grades, all must have watched movies or shows where couples were romancing and fantasised about it. For any girl it would have been the predictable fantasy of being with a man, but for me it was the different, the fantasy was of me with a woman. I was young at that time and thought that everyone must have similar thoughts. I did not share these fantasies with anyone. There are times during my 6^th to until may be 10^th where I used to plead with God for a miracle that would change me into a boy, overnight. That mom and dad should start thinking that they have given birth to a boy, the records in the schools must miraculously change, and I should be one of the boys in the class. But yeah, this was too much to ask of God, wasn’t it? Such miracles never happen.

There were only women teachers in my school, and I used to have crushes on the beautiful ones. I also used to befriend the beautiful girls in my class, and charm them using my humour and my imitation skills, and make them laugh. Let me tell you all, there were no questions in my mind about who I was and why I was that way, nothing crossed my mind. Then it was 11^th and 12^th grade, it was time for studies, and nothing much happene. I don’t remember much about those times.

Then entering college life, an environment where girls talk a LOT about boys and check them out: I did too. I became best friends with Padma. Basically, as you might know, it was a co-dependent relationship. She needed a shoulder to cry on as she thought she was the most unlucky person in the whole wide world, and I was happy to lend my shoulder because – I don’t know why – maybe because I enjoyed the importance I was getting in her life. I used to hang out with her most of my free time and we were inseparable. I used to write poems about her.

It was during my second year of college, that I came across the Ellen DeGeneres show on TV. I became her fan immediately and was able to relate to her for her dress sense, sense of humour and her dancing. I googled her, and found that she is gay! I did a little research about what it means and found that she likes women and that she is going to marry a woman in California. I was shocked. I got too afraid and since Padma had not yet got into a committed relationship with a guy, I was terrified that people in college might start talking about us in a bad way based on the amount of time we spent with each other. Then Padma got committed to Suresh, and I never really cared about making any more best friends. It was too much of hurt and trouble and I did not want anyone to be as dependent on me again as was the case with Padma. I chucked the thoughts of Ellen out of my head. and as an obedient daughter when the college got over, told you to look for a boy for my marriage, because after college life, I felt very lonely without anyone so close in my life.

I am skipping the part of engagement and things with Mahesh that you all know. So, after coming here, I do not know, what was the hidden urge in me that made me join the LGBT society in the university here! I had also joined it as a strong ally (a non-gay person who wants to support LGBT people); because I don’t know why I felt like these people deserved equal rights in their lives too.

Then began my journey of self-discovery, you see all the paragraphs above, all these little details, I started to get reminded of all that, the things that I had locked into that little box in my heart, my fantasies, my dreams, everything that I had tried to erase out of my life, came back to me. May be it was the space and time that I got here to think about myself. But I researched a lot, read a lot and was depressed thinking about what I feel, think, imagine and compare it with my research findings and cry and feel sad for what I was doing to myself by pulling out old stuff from that little box! It took me four whole months from September to January, to finally I accept myself for who I am, without any anger or regret. I needed someone to talk about this and I have a close friend and I knew she would understand my situation. After a whole week of gathering up courage, I did not even tell by words, I gave her a letter stating my dreams from which she asked me questions and I answered them and she finally understood what I was trying to tell her about. It is difficult.

When one knows that one is different and that a kind of different that will be looked down upon by the society of so-called “normal” people, I feel sad. There, tears start again. Being LGBT is not something abnormal, it’s not by choice, it’s just natural. When I finally accepted who I was, it was like meeting another self of mine. That person who was locked in so much within myself that I had forgotten about her, who has been a part of my mental and physical being but I had just decided to ignore her. But I could not do it anymore; I needed to recognise that other person within me.

I would humbly request you, not to take any hasty decisions. I did not know all this would happen to me if I came here, and believe me when I say, I swear on my God, this is not how I had planned my life. I want you to be with me in this journey, I want you to accept me for who I am. Please be with me, I cannot do this without you all.

I have never ever wanted to hurt any person in my life, I love you all so much and I care so much about you all. This is true and my God knows and I think you know it too. I hate hiding stuff from people I love, and I knew that you should know what is going on with me. But believe me, this is very hard to accept oneself and it’s like one terrifying journey to tell someone about who you really are. I love you mom, dad and sister so much, I love you so much and I don’t want to lose you all. I hope you will understand. I miss you all so much right now and feel so lonely. And I am not able to stop crying. This is very hard for me. Please be with me. I try to be a strong person, but I will be very lonely without you all. Please understand the things I have said.

I notice women, I notice how they smell, imagine having a good chat with them and some romantic dance. Whenever I listen to songs, I am singing the male lyrics that praise the girl and not bother much about the girl’s lyrics. There is this rush and tingly feeling that happens in my heart whenever I notice a woman that I like, and I get nervous around her. Whenever or rather rarely I imagine dancing with a man, I still tend to lead, I do not know why, I have always wanted to lead and be the man in a relationship rather than being a woman.

In the light of this situation that I am in and the things that I found about myself, it would be selfish of me to get married to Mahesh and spoil his life. He noticed that I was not myself for past few weeks. I had to tell him before I told you all. He understands my situation very well and I think we have agreed upon cancelling the marriage plans. Because, if we didn’t, it would be us who would be living the marriage and it would been fated for doom. He deserves a good life with someone who can make him happy emotionally and physically. I cannot handle the physical aspect of the relationship with a man. He understands me for who I am and has been supportive for past one week. He has told his parents and therefore I would request you not to call them for a while until you can process this information because they are trying to process it as well.

I am sorry that I had to take this decision, but I am telling you pappa and mamma, you are reading this and may be finding it hard to accept, but I am living this. Knowing that I was never really the person I was, that’s something big to accept oneself. I know since our lives are connected, I am making you face these things with me, and I am sorry for that. I really am. I have tried to be a good daughter that you both deserve, you are wonderful parents anyone could ever ask for and I want to make you both proud of me. I hope I will. I am the same daughter that you have had, but this is a reality about me, which I hope you will accept. I love you pappa, mamma and sister. I know I am unable to keep up with your dreams of getting me married to a man and sending me off with him, but please see the fact that I am more at ease with my identity and inner self now. I have understood that I was not crazy to feel different for the past 25 years. My God has always given me what I have asked for. I had written him a letter after coming here saying that I have realised who I am and I don’t think I will be able to fulfil that aspect of myself in this life. But see what he did, he made me accept my identity in front of my parents. I think he wants his daughter to live the life in her way.

I know the outside world is tough. It might even mock me for who I am. But mamma, pappa and Keerti, if I know the fact that you all are there with me, I will be 200 times stronger than I am now. I can face the world or anyone else. I just want you all to understand me, accept me and my heart.

I know you will have many questions about this and I request you to keep calm and read this FAQ sheet fully. It will answer most of your questions.

http://orinam.net/resources-for/friends-and-family/faqs-gender-and-sexuality/

I will not be able to answer your call or Skype with you all for few days. Because I am not ready and I think even you will need time to understand this information and process it fully. I wish I could have told this to you all in a better way, but I lack the courage to say on phone or over skype. I have my LGBT support group here and my best friends who are there to give me support. I would request you to try using the contact numbers in the above website and talk to any parents of LGBT people or their counsellors to have a support group, so that you have someone to talk to about this and understand my situation and your own situation better. Sister, please do this for me, try contacting some numbers in this website and arrange a meeting with them sometime soon.

http://orinam.net/resources-for/friends-and-family/support/

I will be just a call away but not immediately as we all need to process this and we all need time to come to peace with our thoughts. It’s been an emotional toll on me to write this email and I know very well it was for you all to read it. But I did not want to hide myself from my family, after I discovered myself after so many years.

Dear pappa, please do not be angry towards me, this is not something that I am doing on purpose, I am BORN THIS WAY and my God wants me to acknowledge it! I cannot help it, it’s not a choice I have, but this is who I am, I am attracted to women. I would request you and mamma to please forget about the society for a while and just think about your daughter and the things I am going through. It’s me who is living this and not them. It is no one’s fault, it’s in my nature.

With lots of love, hugs and a wish that you will reply to this email and not avoid me. I respect you all, but please don’t call me immediately I will be unable to answer it pappa, I need you all the most now and an email reply from you whatever it is that you all want to say would give me strength, I love you pappa, mamma and sister, please remember I am the same daughter you have and the same didi you have my little sister, there is just this one thing that you need to accept about me…

Love, Bubbly

All names in this post are pseudonyms

The post The biggest exam of my life: Bubbly comes out to family in Chennai appeared first on orinam.

Today is Coming Out Day 2016 and I would like to tell you a little story.

It took me 27 years to admit I wasn’t straight.

15 of those years were spent in me being a teenager in denial: fending off whispered catechism-class speculations that I was lesbian and generally being a homophobic transphobic everything-phobic asshole.

8 of those years were spent being a shit ally. The “LGBT folks have a mental condition let’s have a pity party” ally. The ally that equated polyamoury with untrustworthiness. The ally that said her crushes on women were a result of being in all-girls’ institutions all her life and see, see, this is why you should send your daughters to co-ed schools. The ally that ignorantly misgendered Brandon Teena after watching “Boys Don’t Cry” and said “the most traumatic thing about the rape is that it was proof that she wasn’t a man”. Even as I write this down I cringe, partly because I am still guilty of misgendering people, and still struggle to ask about what pronouns they prefer. Partly because how dare I.

Five of those years were mired in confusion, self-loathing and pain. I was a newly married woman who still didn’t know if she was bi or not. Who went to Queer Pride meetings masquerading as straight because would I be lying if I said I was bi? I tended to like men more. Did that mean I wasn’t, what about that part that loved women. Where did it lie? Where could I place it?

And what was I going to tell my husband? That his wife had an entire side to her that he had no clue about? Would he feel cheated? Disgusted? Would he be afraid that I would cheat on him? By then I’d seen enough internet links on bi-phobia and bi-erasure, heteroflexibility, discrimination, to fear that he would either mistrust me or joke about threesomes. By then I was hardly sure myself what I was.

I came out to my husband two days after the 2013 Supreme Court verdict on Section 377, when he asked me why the verdict disturbed me as much as it did. It’s horrible, yes, he said, and it makes absolutely no sense, but you haven’t gotten back to normal since then. What happened?

I told him.

He was shocked when he heard this, and tried too hard to pretend nothing had changed for two days after. It hurt more than I would care to admit and I was sure everything I was afraid of had just happened. There were times when I wondered whether I should have just shut up.

Well I’m glad I didn’t because on the third day he asked me if we could talk and sat me down. He said a lot of stuff I don’t exactly remember now. But one thing stood out, and it was this: “You really only get to know what kind of ally you are when someone you love comes out to you. I’m sorry. This is who you are and I wouldn’t want you to change a thing.”

He has not budged from that stand since. There have been, quite literally, times when he has read up and listened and asked, listening with an excited kind of interest. There have been times when he has asked me if I would like to be with a woman. When I was pregnant, he wrote me an emotional letter telling me if I ever wanted to express my being bi, I should. “It won’t change anything between us, Anu. We will always be husband and wife”.

Our relationship is messy, complicated, sometimes sweet and sometimes stormy, but I know for a fact that this is a man I can trust. A man who has taken me for all I am and loves me because of it all, not inspite of it. He is my biggest source of validation.

Three of those years have been spent embracing this part of me that I spent so long rejecting. Spent delivering smart zingers to peoplr who call me bi-curious because I have never slept with women (not that my track record with men was any better) (cmon, “nine years is a long time to be just curious” sounds pretty clever I think). It’s been spent learning to respect the way people see themselves because a man I loved once did that to me. It’s been spent loving myself and loving everyone. It’s been spent learning and accepting that I still don’t know shit. And you know what? That’s okay. You learn something new everyday.

Edit: Someone asked me to what end my speaking out was. What purpose did it serve? Good question. When I was a little girl I could have done with a voice like this. There are kids who cannot come out, will never come out, can never envision support. Well, look below, my darling one. See what you will find. Support. Love. Acceptance. Know that you will find it whenever you are ready to do so, please. <3

This piece was originally posted on Anu’s FB timeline.

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