Muskan Singla week 5

Though the landmark judgment of NALSA v UOI gave trans-community an official recognition as a third gender, segregation into two genders and absence of acceptance of one’s choices is still very prevalent. This has been ensured by multiple laws and perspective of society in general.

In ‘Transgender people hope for SC intervention’, Dhurbo Jyoti explains how NRC does not include many transgender. They were thrown out of their families for being trans. Furthermore, their families refused to provide documentation for their identification. Another problem which arose was mismatching of names. After 2014 judgement, many people belonging to that community changed their names which did not match the documents making it even harder to prove their identity.

It is considered to be disrespectful to address a trans-person with their previous name which is something that Nandini Krishnan does in her book ‘Invisible Men’. Gee Imaan Semmalar called the reference as trans-phobic while reviewing the book. The book was written with the intention of supporting transgender community but instead, the reviewer lists out 10 problems that exist in the book.

In ‘The Sexual is Political’, Vikramaditya Sahai shows the contradiction between The Transgender (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019 and NALSA v UOI where, the latter gave the trans community to determine their gender while the former took away that right and gave it to a stranger (District Magistrate) to decide it for them and forces medical surgery. This re-enforced the concept of gender binary.