India sees sense re transgender definition

[Ramblingnamechanger]

It seems that India’s Parliament has changed the transgender laws to exclude self identity. They also recognise that many young boys and men are subject to forced slavery and surgery in order to beg for older “transgender” males, with increased fines and penalties. Of course there is kickback, even in Parliament. The definition of those officially protected has now reduced and the documentation rules have changed. Good news.
https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/explained-law/transgender-bill-2026-self-identification-nalsa-explained-10584573/

The Hijra community in India you mean? Are you Indian? It is not the same umbrella as the trans issues and conversation in the West. India has a whole set of issues around the Hijra community and is not exactly a beacon for sex based rights and women’s rights. To say the very least.

Oh God. I read the header and was stunned to think that Willoughby had experienced a Damascene conversion. What makes it more ridiculous is that I'd already read an article on this story on Peak Trans, and I still didn't twig! I obviously spend far too much time on this thread..

(sorry, site, obviously!)

It seems clear in the article that the legislative changes are in response to the wider, modern conception of transgender, and the activism associated with it, @SittingNextToIt . It says that the 2019 act defines transgender in a way that makes "Persons with such sociocultural identities as kinner, hijra, aravani and jogta" just one subset of transgender. And the legislative changes appear to retain the protections for this subset whilst resisting some of the modern features of the concept of transgender.

I think there are definitely issues but as in the West, women’s rights and protections have been affected by the whole self identity problem. No not Indian.

I guess - as a born and bred Indian woman, I tend to take India’s declarations of anything to do with sex and gender with humongous dollops of doubt. I’ve experienced too much on India’s streets as a little girl, seen too much by way of female foeticide, female infanticide, dowry dousings, and just low level everyday nobody-mentions-it-really patriarchal brutality and such like I suppose. I visit my parents with my kids and DH yearly and whilst I soak up all the food sights smells and sounds of home - I always return with new yearly reminders of why I left.

I think that would be too much to ask!

For Indian women, very sadly, this self identifying issue is not what is one of the most pressing issues to sort. I’ve sat on public buses going to school. My little girl cousins do now. They take rickshaws home after tuition at dusk. It’s almost exhausting to list the issues at hand as an Indian girl teenager and woman in the course of everyday life - and self identifying isn’t up there.

I say this as an angry TERF I guess - living my life in the UK now - it’s just a different set of priorities and issues.

As we know misogyny takes many forms and of course women are always at the bottom of the heap. I am well aware of how men treat women, thank you.

Thanks, @SittingNextToIt, tht is very clarifying . I can certainly understand that the whole self-ID nonsense is far from being at the top of what Indian women have to deal with - and also that the Hijra community is probably very different from the version of it that Western TRAs have co-opted to form part of their propaganda.

What the article seems to suggest is that pressures to globalise the current Western-dominated form oftransgender ideology had added a whole new layer of problematic gender bullshit and erasure of women, which India is now resiling from, but that the home-grown issues persist in much the same way as they have done for a very long period.

Yes absolutely. And thank you for such a thoughtful and understanding response to what I shared.

Well at present I am in India and a group of these specially protected transvestite men surrounded us when leaving a temple demanding money and jostling us when we pushed through them. There was no mistaking them for women and no reason why they need protecting. Same aggressive behaviour as the West plus demands for money.