Keshab Roy Choudhury - Week 5

Okay, Nandini Krishnan, I read your book ‘Invisible Men’, and here’s why it’s offensive

In this news article, the writer, a member of the trans community, critiques Invisible Men written by Nandini Krishnan. The story is said to be about the experiences of trans men, however, the writer argues through the piece that it is anything but an authentic portrayal of the trans community's experiences. It is not so much about the events themselves, but rather the way she, an upper class cis Brahmin woman, chooses to describe them. In doing so, she misgenders and dead names trans men and fetishises them, in addition to failing to understand the structural constraints that shape the lived experiences of Dalit and other lower caste trans people. Throughout the book, she adopts the position of a saviour of sorts and is evident in the way she describes certain events. She also provides graphic descriptions of trans people's surgeries and their genitilia, showing a morbid fascination in them even post their death. She routinely misgenders and dehumanises them by refusing to adopt their actual names, instead using inappropriate pronouns and silly made up names. She also attempts to steep the trans communities experiences in Hinduism, refusing to acknowledge their unique histories. Instead of viewing her trans interviewees as human beings with unique experiences, she instead views them as subjects and creates a narrative that clearly suggests the same. In the end the writer shares an excerpt from the book describing how Krishnan is shocked at how merely writing about the experiences of the trans community from a dominant community's lens could be an act of violence, clearly hinting at the irony that she is shocked at something she has done consciously and without regard to the experiences of trans people. 

Transgender people hope for SC intervention

This news article focuses on the difficulties trans people had to face during the Assam NRC. People from these communities are the worst affected in terms of documents dealing with citizenship and identity. There were firstly huge difficulties procuring documents to prove citizenship, as often trans people are disowned by their families and have to move out of their parental homes. Secondly, even if such documents were procured, it was difficult for them to convince officials and family members of their current identities. As a result, a few were left out of the NRC as their new identities did not match those that were given in other documents. The article also highlights that members of the trans community were planning to file a petition in the Supreme Court, highlighting how the NRC process was discriminatory towards these communities and that they sought the SC's intervention in the same. 

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

In this piece, Vikramaditya Sahai analyses the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act 2019 through the prism of consent. The writer elucidates the features of the social contract theory, highlighting the importance of consent of the citizen to the government's actions so as to keep the latter in check, subject to obligations and rights, and also to enable the individual to choose how they would act. They highlight how the new act takes away a transpersons right to consent by placing it in the hand of the District magistrate, who would determine the gender of a transperson. This is in direct conflict with the Apex Court's judgement in NALSA v Union of India which allowed trans people to self identify. This is hugely problematic, as medical, psychiatric and legal research often do not account for the interests of the trans community accurately, and reduce a trans persons identity only to their bodies, when reality is often more complex. Additionally, the act does not provide for reservations in education and jobs, condemning the trans people to a life of beggary and sex work. Concluding, they note that the act, while couched in the language of protecting rights, fails to do the bare minimum by failing to acknowledge that their identities are complex and cannot be controlled by looking at the world from a cis lens.