They insist that self declaration of students must be proof enough, information of ‘medical interventions’ must be “none of anybody’s business”
Despite several grievances that face women in my country, the Indian policymakers continue to prioritise ‘gender identity’ above everything else. In a recent news from the TRA universe, a trans-identified man has drawn up a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) urging the State to to address the lack of “inclusive and safe accommodation for transgender students” in higher educational institutions. The petitioner – with the support of Centre for Law & Policy Research (CLPR) – has requested that several government bodies alter policies to better accommodate ‘trans’ students in colleges.
In a brave and stunning (!) instagram post, the petitioner, Gummaraju wrote: “My writ petition filed in the Karnataka High Court by @kothari.jayna @clpr_trust seeks gender neutral accommodation for trans people, access to men’s and women’s hostels for trans men and trans women, and procedures to include trans people across higher educational institutions in admission and hostel forms in accordance with the NALSA Judgement. Trans Rights Are Human Rights.” Some of you probably remember him as the ‘triggered’ TiM medical student who lobbied the authorities to revise medical textbooks to exclude supposedly ‘unscientific information about LGBTQIA+’ and as the face of British cosmetic brand ‘The Body Shop’- endorsing their menstrual hygiene products as someone who was “bleeding for weeks” after vaginoplasty.
Gummaraju (who now has his sex marker changed to ‘F’ on his passport after surgically altering his body) claims: “What is between our legs is NONE of anyone’s business, and no one has the right to ask for proof of it. Period.” His petition directs authorities to create separate hostel for ‘transgender and nonbinary’ students, or grant access to the hostel of the student’s choice based on self ID. Gummaraju has also sought to direct educational institutions to produce guidelines to assert that, in the event that a student wants to change their ‘gender identity’ during the course, they may do so through a self-declaration affidavit without requiring proof of surgery.
Earlier this week, the High Court of Karnataka has issued notice to the State and has instructed the following bodies to file their reply by the next date of hearing: Department of Women & Child Development, Higher Education Department of the State of Karnataka, Directorate of Medical Education, The University Grants Commission, and the National Medical Commission. The hearing is expected on the 6th of June this year.
Problems with ‘NALSA v Union of India (2014)’ & ‘Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019’
The judgment of the Supreme Court of India in NALSA v Union of India recognised that ‘transgender’ persons are to be accorded a legal status under Indian laws. And the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019 is a culmination of efforts to give effect to NALSA and to enact a legislative framework to protect the rights of the ‘transgender’ community all over the country.
During NALSA, the Court took into account certain international guidance and laws, which are not of uniform status i.e the Court extensively uses the Yogyakarta principles, which are NOT international law, nor indeed, best practice.
The Supreme Court also interpreted the word ‘sex’, as given in Articles, to include ‘gender identity’. It said, “both gender and biological attributes constitute distinct components of sex.” And instead of defining ‘gender’ as a set of sex stereotypes, it defined it as ‘gender identity’. And with this interpretation (which is not in line with the Constitution of India which only mentions ‘sex’ as the protected category) the Supreme Court concluded that protection from sex-based oppression under the Articles inadvertantly includes gender identity. But sex and gender identity are not the same and must not be conflated. Sex is biological, dimorphic, and immutable. Whereas gender identity is a person’s “feeling” of what ‘sex’ they are. This legal ambiguity within the NALSA judgement has set a dangerous precedent for all further judgements.
The overuse of ‘gender identity’ has changed the very meaning of the word ‘gender.’ It is no longer understood as a social construct riddled with hierarchy wherein women are accorded an inferior status; instead, TRAs claim gender to be some “unique feeling” which deserves to be given precedence over material reality. Thus the Court’s decision to stitch together the words ‘gender’ and ‘identity’ is nonsensical. Stereotypes, by their very nature, are broad oversimplified generalisations, not personal idiosyncrasies. Sex stereotypes are attached to a particular sex; and not individual or personal feelings.
Incidentally, the claimants in NALSA did not seek to change sex, but called for recognition as a third category. Yet, the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act of 2019 provides for self-identification as the opposite sex. Therefore, both the NALSA judgment and the Act of 2019 display the same problematic conflation of sex and gender.
The TRAs have managed to successfully obfuscate the meaning of words using ambiguous legal terminologies (conflating sex, gender and gender identity), and have managed to implement several anti-woman policies using stealth tactics.
Loopholes and stealth tactics
Language is important, in law as in life. The TRAs have managed to successfully obfuscate the meaning of words using ambiguous legal terminologies (conflating sex, gender and gender identity), and have managed to implement several anti-woman policies using stealth tactics.
- Tamil Nadu Uniformed Services Recruitment Board (TNUSRB) was recently given a Court order to incorporate several changes to their policies, which would affect women.
- ‘Women-only’ prisons remain underutilised as incarcerated women are housed with male prisoners; to make matters worse, the Ministry of Home Affairs is placing ‘trans’ identifying men amongst the female estate.
- At a time when women’s rightful reservation in politics has been under debate for more than 25 years, the Bombay High Court allowed a trans-identified male to contest village panchayat (town council) polls as ‘female’, in a ward reserved for women, saying that such persons have the right to a “self perceived gender identity.”
These are just some of the examples in which laws have been altered to favour a group of people with no regard for the consequences this has on others. Though the request to change all hostels into ‘gender neutral’ ones is a first for Karnataka, several educational institutions elsewhere have already indulged in the ‘wokery’ years ago. Since April 2018, Tata Institute of Social Sciences has earmarked the ground floor of an existing girls hostel to accommodate gender ‘non-conforming’ [sic] students admitted to the institute. In the months since, residents of the hostel have been working with the administration to make the space ‘inclusive.’ In December 2018, the ‘men’s’ and ‘women’s’ signs were removed from both washrooms at Ashoka University, and subsequently replaced with ‘gender neutral.’ A male student from the National Institute of Design has posted on his instagram story that he has “finally shifted to Girls Hostel.” Recently, a Hyderabad-based NALSAR University of Law announced that it has designated one floor on its campus as a gender-neutral space with rooms allotted to students “who self-identify themselves as members of the LGBTQ+ community.” In 2015, NALSAR Law University issued a gender-neutral graduation certificate to a student who did not wish to be identified with honorific Mr or Ms but with “Mx” – a Law university that doesn’t understand the significance of words and meanings!
Violence against female students within campuses
Within the canvas of academic movements, there have also been agitations resulting from several cases of violence against women, rapes and assault within the supposedly ‘safe space’ of a college or a hostel. 75 cases of sexual harassment cases in higher educational institutes were reported across the country between April 2014 and March 2015. In 2016, 94 such cases were reported from universities and 18 from colleges and institutions. Union minister of State for HRD, Satya Pal Singh stated that universities and colleges across the country reported a 50% increase in sexual harassment cases in 2017 compared to previous year. Singh said that 149 cases of sexual harassment were reported from universities and 39 cases from colleges and other institutions in 2017.
The end game is to entirely eliminate the concept of a woman’s space or her body, so she can be torn and worn by any man, based on his “feelings!”
For all the intersectionality they constantly allude to, liberal feminism only pays lip service to women and girls from the marginalised castes or the Indian tribes. The caste system, a grotesque practice still rampant in India, predominantly affects women and girls. Females from the oppressed caste are targeted for physical and sexual violence because of their caste. The anti-caste activists have time and again pointed out the crimes committed against young women. Underprivileged families find it impossible to enable their children to pursue education despite affirmative actions, while boys may succeed in some cases, the odds are always against girls aspiring to study. Despite that, should they manage to get to collegiette level, their lives are riddled with harassment, bullying and sexual violence.
In my film ‘But what was she wearing?’, I tried to portray the impotence of this paper law and the impossible odds Indian women are up against in pursuit of justice. As a nation, violence against women is swept under the rug as unimportant or deemed frivolous compared to the entitlement of men who commit the crime; and now, the entitlement of men who claim to ‘feel’ like women.
Government bodies obliging the whims of TRAs, who seek to act against the interest of women’s sex-based rights, are complicit in advancing male violence against women. There seems to be an oft-used caveat to safeguard one’s social capital that clarifies #NotAllMen (or in this case, #NotAllTrans) but crime statistics say otherwise. I am not one to cower or mince words – no matter how desperate the situation of the ‘trans’ community is in India, the (already scant) women’s spaces must not be up for debate. While stakeholders keep pushing such neo-misogynistic policies in the name of inclusion and kindness, women’s safety has become an afterthought at best. Perhaps that’s their end game after all – to entirely eliminate the concept of a woman’s space or her body, so she can be torn and worn by any man, based on his “feelings!”
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