Not the other

In her book, We Are Not The Others: Reflections of a Transgender Artivist (2021), Kalki Subramaniam opens up about the insensitive questions that transgender people are compelled to hear and answer on

Why are Bollywood actors such as Akshay Kumar, Vaani Kapoor and Milind Soman playing transgender characters when trans people could be cast in these roles? This is an important question to ask because of films like Laxmii (2020) and Chandigarh Kare Aashiqui (2021), and the web series Paurashpur (2020). While we demand sensitivity from the entertainment industry, it might be helpful to check how many schools, homes and workplaces are ready to embrace trans individuals as they are, without any show of charity or condescension.

Earlier this year, the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) released its new teacher training material titled “Inclusion of Transgender Children in School Education: Concerns and Roadmap”. Social media outrage and a complaint from the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR), objecting to the mention of gender-neutral toilets and puberty blockers, made the NCERT withdraw this training material.

Whether the NCERT chose the easy way out or succumbed under pressure can be debated endlessly but what is worth noting is the resistance mounted by activists and academics as well as allies of trans people. They have been joined recently by Justice Anand Venkatesh of the Madras High Court who said, “No one can be allowed to arm twist a state-run council into forcibly withdrawing material that came out after a long study by a committee.”

The training material was created by the NCERT’s Department of Gender Studies with inputs from experts associated with Solidarity and Action Against The HIV Infection in India (SAATHII), Ashoka University, Centre for Law and Policy Research, Trans­gender Resource Centre, and Delhi University’s Department of Adult and Continuing Education and Extension.

By withdrawing this training material, the NCERT failed to stand up for the transgender and gender non-conforming children that it wanted to include through sensitisation of teachers. The urgent need for this training material hit me while listening to a presentation by Kavita Arora, a psychiatrist, at the Second National Symposium on LGBTQI+ Health that I was invited to attend in Delhi on December 9.

Her topic was “Identity-affirming psychiatric care to LGBTQI+ and gender-diverse children and adolescents”. She emphasised that mental health professionals must grow aware of their own biases in order to support not only trans children and adolescents but also their families, without pathologising experiences viewed as different. She said, “The preamble to our Constitution begins with the words ‘We, the people’, not ‘We, the men and women.”

At the same symposium, a transman named Aarav Singh, who works with the Humsafar Trust, spoke on the topic “Transmasculine youth’s perspectives: Health and relationships.” He highlighted the difficulties that trans people encounter while accessing medical care. They end up with doctors who lack the knowledge and training required to work with trans patients. These doctors treat them as “experiments”, and also compromise their safety.

Clearly, the National Medical Commission’s advisory — issued in October 2021 to stop universities and colleges from using medical textbooks that portray LGBTQIA+ people in a derogatory and discriminatory manner — needs to be backed with action. Medical textbooks cannot be free of such depictions unless they are informed by the experiences and insights of LGBTQIA+ people who have produced books, films and art about their lives.

In her book We Are Not The Others: Reflections of a Transgender Artivist (2021), published by Notion Press, Kalki Subramaniam opens up about the insensitive questions that transgender people are compelled to hear and answer on a daily basis, especially in relation to their bodies. In her poem “Don’t Tell That to Me”, she writes, “I want to shout/ I am made of/ flesh and blood, / of fear and hope, / of joy and pain. / I am like you/ I am human too.”  

Subramaniam calls herself an “artivist” because her activism incorporates visual art, performance and storytelling. Living Smile Vidya, Manabi Bandyopadhyay, A Revathi, Laxmi Narayan Tripathi, and Grace Banu are some of the other trans people in India whose life stories have been chronicled in books and films.

Such narratives serve as a corrective to the flimsy claim that transphobia has been wiped out because of diversity and inclusion initiatives in corporate offices. Violence will not end until schools, colleges and universities take on the responsibility to educate teachers and parents about what they can do to support trans children and adults.

Nandita Basu’s graphic novel Rain Must Fall (2021), published by Duckbill Books, gives an inkling of how cruel even peers can be. When Rumi, a non-binary teenager in this book, comes out to a close friend about their gender identity, Rumi’s personal life becomes the subject of gossip. Instead of mobilising support, these peers are curious about Rumi’s genitals. India has a long way to go before trans people feel respected, let alone included.