Lok Sabha passes transgender rights bill, community says it's violative

'This Bill is not actually giving us any rights, but legalising the atrocities committed on us'.

On Monday, the Lok Sabha passed the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Bill, 2016. In the eyes of transgender and gender non-binary activists, this is an act of doublespeak because the Bill, if it goes through the Rajya Sabha, will not only fail to protect the rights of transgender people in India, it will actively violate these rights.

Activists from the community have condemned the passing of the Bill in its current form, and are calling on the government to withdraw it from consideration in the Rajya Sabha and instead pass the private member’s bill drafted by Tiruchi Siva in the Lok Sabha.

Why should a community so vociferously oppose a Bill that is drafted in the name of the protection of its rights? For those who celebrated the passing of the 2014 Supreme Court judgement affirming the rights of transgender people (colloquially called the NALSA Bill), the answer is obvious.

Although the NALSA judgment was flawed in its own ways, it made some incredible strides in the judicial recognition of the fundamental rights of transgender people. It affirmed the self-determination of gender identity, which upended commonsense notions about transgender identities only being valid if certified by the medical establishment.

It recognised the intense discrimination faced by transgender citizens and called for access to education, employment, healthcare and protection from violence. It recognised that affirmative action is needed for trans people across the country and that reservations in education and employment were even more necessary for those transgender people who were marginalised on the basis of caste.

In spirit and letter, the Supreme Court judgment was a huge victory for transgender people, who face intense stigma, discrimination and violence across the country.

The passing of the current Bill completely shatters the hard-won victory of the Supreme Court judgement, both in spirit and letter.

How the Bill will harm trans rights

Here are only some of the ways in which the Bill will harm, rather than help, the transgender community.

Transgender people will be subject to certification by a District Screening Committee to be acknowledged as transgender, and those wishing to identify as either a man or a woman will need to go through gender affirmation surgery (popularly known as sex reassignment surgery, or SRS). This completely violates the Supreme Court judgment which states that the only thing needed to acknowledge a person’s gender identity is their word for it. The government’s Bill assumes that all transgender people either want to or have the ability to go through medical and surgical procedures, which is totally inaccurate.

The presence of screening committees and the need for medical certification open up a space where a transgender person’s very identity is subject to doubt until ‘approved’ by external gatekeepers, which is inherently problematic. It will also inevitably lead to more discrimination and harassment by people empowered to screen and scrutinise trans people’s lives.

Business Standard