Transgender Bill falls short of estranged community’s expectations
Text Credit: The Economic Times Image courtesy: Firstpost , Economic Times
When she settles into the ladies’ seat in a Kerala state transport bus, neither the conductor nor other passengers express any objection, though some of them do take a second and third look.
In a grey t-shirt and brown jeans, with her hair pulled back in a ponytail and the remnants of mehndi on her fingers, Faisal Faisu, who came out publicly as a transgender three years ago, says she is not usually stopped. “But I am not one of those people to cause trouble. I gauge the situation and act accordingly. If you want a different reaction, you will have to ask someone else,” says Faisu, smiling. Finding a space for herself, whether in a bus or in a larger society that treats her community with fear, rejection and prejudice, had never been easy, from the time she was growing up in Chavakkad, a beach town in Thrissur village, to her life now, as an activist for minorities and an employee of the Kochi Metro.
Transgender people are those whose gender identity or expression differs from their assigned sex. The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Bill, introduced in Parliament in 2016, was supposed to make life of people like Faisu better by guaranteeing equality and promoting their welfare. The bill came in the wake of a 2014 Supreme Court judgment, which said those apart from the binary gender should be treated as the third gender.
It also upheld a transgender person’s right to decide their self-identified gender. But when it was finally introduced, it came under severe criticism from activists, lawyers and members of the community on various grounds, right from its definition of a transgender person. Then, in late July, a Parliamentary Standing Committee recommended several changes to the bill, including the fact that transgender persons remained at the risk of criminalisation under Section 377. “The bill must at the very least recognise the rights of transgender persons to partnership and marriage,” it said.
Faisal sees the continuance of Section 377, a colonial-era law that criminalises non-peno-vaginal sex, as one more obstacle in a long list the community needs to overcome. “What is there to be said about an outdated law that has been scrapped even in Britain, the country that introduced it in India,” she asks, as the bus gets closer to Edappally Metro station, which she has to reach before 2 pm, when her eight hour shift in the housekeeping department will begin.