Jayanti Srivastava Week 5

Summary - week 5 - Jayanti Srivastava

Okay, Nandini Krishnan, i read your book 'Invisible Men', and here's why it's offensive.
Gee Imaan Semmalar

This is an article written by Gee Imaan Semmalar, which is basically a book review for Nandini Krishnan's book 'Invisible Men'. More than a review, it is a critique of the book. The author of this article finds the book highly offensive to the people of trans community, and the reasons for the same have been listed out in the article. Semmalar says the book is poorly written, and that Krishnan has a rather transphobic approach in the book, filled with caste prejudices. Krishnan has tried to force the transpeople into categories, taking away their individualism. Semmalar lists out ten reasons why the book was offensive, which are as follows - the book is full of; 1. Misgendering and dead naming; 2. Infantilisation of trans men; 3. Transphobia; 4. Poverty Porn; 5. Attempts to saffronise the trans community; 6. Violent nationalist fantasies; 7. Brahmanism; 8. Sympathy porn; 9. Necrophilia; and 10. Dehumanising of the trans people.


Transgender people hope for SC intervention
Dhrubo Jyoti

This is an article relating to the NRC. Its current mechanism of documentation excludes large sections of the community.
The NRC process did not keep transgenders in mind. There are many hurdles that the transgender people faced in the entire NRC process, some of which were:

1. Procuring documents from families that had estranged them.
2. Convincing people of their identity, since they had to change everything, when they decided to change their identities.
3. Family tree verification stage - families were called. Most of the families refuse to accept their existence.

It became extremely hard for these people to prove their identities, let alone prove their citizenship of this country.

The sexual is political: Consent and the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019

Vikramaditya Sahai

• This article talks about the transgender (Protection of Rights) Act 2019.
• This act:

1. Revokes the ability of transpersons to consent.
2. Denies transpersons the right to determine their own gender.
3. Endows the DM to judge who is a trans person and who is not.
4. Surgery is not necessary for being a trans person, but with this new law, if someone has not undergone surgery, they won’t be recognised as a trans person. 
5. Dehumanises them. They are just a body. 

Decolonizing Transgender in India

Aniruddha Dutta and Rina Roy

In this piece, the authors are discussing gender and sexually marginalised communities in the eastern part of the country. They tell us how the word “transgender” has been used as a sort of umbrella term, to include all the different types of gender identities. The different identities that could exist, such as homo-trans, or cis-trans etc., are not any all taken into consideration. Even within the gender, a firm of hierarchy or division can be seen. This leads to discrimination between the individuals also, owing to their socio-political background. Given an umbrella term leads to the generalising of different types of gender identities, and ignoring their diverse nature, while also taking away their individualism.