When one analyses the election manifestos of political parties both in India and the USA across 20 years, it is only in the last 5 years that gender has been a bone of contention among parties. It is not like queer rights have never been a topic of discussion, it’s just that one can notice the old bottle new poison formula – the onus of bearing systemic bigotry is now on the shoulders of the trans* community as opposed to the gay community. What was the yesteryear ex-gay phenomenon is now seen as the panic around detransitioners.
What was the yesteryear ex-gay phenomenon is now seen as the panic around detransitioners.
India has certainly been impacted by the fallacious “American Dream” right from the 1990s when multinationalism rose in the corporate sector. While it was seen as a “Wannabe” to know pop culture references and wear GAP Tshirts, the common dilemma was to maintain “traditional values” just the same. These traditions were largely patriarchal. While the USA was praised for its corporate culture and elevated standards of living, open relationships, living-in, and higher divorce rates were frowned upon by a section of dichotomous Indians, and why not?
After all, women were elevated from the position of baby-making machines to people with agency. One can recall Oprah Winfrey asking Aishwarya Rai what Indians think of the states and sheepishly enquiring if we think there are high divorce rates, while Rai maintains an ambiguous tone and remarks that it could be a topic of discussion.
While one section of the confused modernist-traditionalists struggled to maintain “the moral fabric and family values”, using Apple (then mac) and wearing Levi Strauss and having tacos and marinara for breakfast, while criticising the liberational ethos which they dubbed as “degeneracy”, there was not much attention paid to the trad-wife culture that parallelly existed in the USA, that thrived on heteronormative values, permitted marital rape, the anti-gay scare and pro-life values also haunted the underbelly of the USA under the superficial facade of liberation. Like Matt Berstein says, ‘it was all fun and milkshakes till someone got lobotomized…‘
The trad wife culture which started in the 1940s and still persists, now as an Instagram subculture, was based on the image of a perfect housewife, patriarchal to every bone, heterosexual to every cell, willing to have as many kids as the number of times she had copulated, looked down upon contraceptives and abortions, swore by patriarchal, binary gender roles and white supremacy and passed on the same obsequious values generation after generation. Some women even inhaled enough patriarchy to carry it off. It’s just that another section of women were seething through their teeth and eventually, the first wave of feminism that already existed dormantly back then, quickly fireballed into the second wave, and that’s the image of the USA that India was aware of from the 90s onwards.
While every aspect of progression in India has been begrudgingly looked at by Indians as something “influenced by the West”, even gay rights as late as 6 years ago, trans rights are the ONLY bone of contention that has unified the Sanghi and the MAGA. The tone is no longer that of “stop aping the West” or “don’t allow Western degeneracy in India”. The tone has shifted to, “Look even Donald Trump wants to end Wokeism” or “Even they are suffering due to wokeness”.
After years, one can see the Dracula Reinfield relationship of American MAGA Republicans and the Tradcell underground of Indian Twitter resurfacing in full force, making similar memes, only replacing Christian symbols with Indian ones and white folks with oppressor caste ones. In the novel Dracula, Reinfield is seen as a spiritual slave whose behavior changes around Dracula’s presence, and he turns zoophagous. This is a similar pattern of Stockholm syndrome and intellectual slavery that Savarna people enjoy with their white counterparts, and is finally witnessed in eroding trans rights.
What is the present status of queer and trans rights in the US?
The only community that has some respectable status in the LGBTQ acronym are cis gay men because marriage laws are legal throughout the USA, and because masculine gay men especially are bolstered by patriarchy. However, trans folks and all queer minors are going to have the most taxing four (and maybe more) years.
To begin with, conversion therapy is not banned in the USA entirely.
To begin with, conversion therapy is not banned in the USA entirely. The USA follows a federal system of governance and conversion therapy has not been banned because some therapists claim that bans on it are intertwined with the First Amendment to the Constitution in some jurisdictions.
Conversion therapy includes the pseudoscientific use of medication, electric convulsive shock “therapy”, beating and chaining as a part of exorcism, and even brutal forms of religious corrective rape to get rid of queerness. Needless to say, it is barbaric and inhuman.
Conversion therapy has been called out in court several times but they have consistently maintained that banning it doesn’t violate the constitution.
The loopholes to ban conversion therapy are
- The case of conduct- While harmful conduct can be banned, speech cannot, Which means mental health providers are free to discuss and recommend conversion therapy.
- Professional speech- professionals who practice conversion therapy could certainly advocate for it and can express this viewpoint, in the form of their personal opinion, to anyone they please, including their minor clients as long as it was not acted upon, again appealing to the right to free speech.
- Religious organisations- in 2019, Alliance Defending Freedom, (ADF) a conservative Christian organisation alleged that the ban infringes upon freedom of speech and religion. While they didn’t have the last word, the fourth loophole is indeed very powerful
- Parents’ Constitutional Rights Argument- This considers a parents’ constitutional rights to the care, custody, and control over their children under well-established substantive due process, and allows a parent to exert at least some levels of influence on their child’s lives.
The present scenario in the USA is similar to India in the sense that unlicensed providers (spiritual leaders for instance) and AYUSH (Ayurveda Yoga Unani SIdhha and Homeo) practitioners in India and Godmen have the freedom to practice conversion therapy. In India, the ban of conversion therapy has been declared by the Madras High Court and the National Medical Commission (NMC), but it does not cover practitioners who use ambiguous and/or religious means of conversion therapy.
What does Trump plan to do and what will be the impact on trans people?
The Trump administration this time is going to be disastrous for the queer community, especially where trans rights are concerned. Trump’s administration was already a disaster in the 2016 to 2020 tenure for the queer community with over 200 queerphobic attacks, pushing back on protection in schools and healthcare, and denying access to emergency shelter homes to trans people in unsafe conditions.
This term, the laws are going to be far more sinister, with a nationwide ban on gender-affirming healthcare for minors. While parents and children have already fled their home states, federal bans have caused many trans youth to migrate from the country altogether. Thousands will have their medication stripped away from them in a jiffy. Trained medical doctors who can provide gender-affirming healthcare to minors will be sued for doing so, and transitioning will now be referred to as “mutilation”.
Trained medical doctors who can provide gender-affirming healthcare to minors will be sued for doing so, and transitioning will now be referred to as “mutilation”.
Ironically, intersex infants born with ambiguous genitalia can certainly be “mutilated” indeed without consent because the American government will only recognise children who are male and female assigned at birth. Noted trans activist Erin Reed has given out certain helpful hacks to get passport gender updated before Trump admin comes to power.
While this erases trans and non-binary people, it will disproportionately erase intersex children. Unethical normalising surgeries are still legal in multiple states of the USA. These surgeries are usually done during infancy violating consent and include procedures such as reducing the size of the clitoris, creating or enlarging a vaginal opening, rerouting a working urethra, or removing the gonads which are medically unnecessary and serve no pressing need.
While the intentions are to destigmatise, these operations when performed on intersex kids can well lead to gender dysphoria, urinary incontinence, loss of sensation, hemorrhaging, permanent sterilisation, and death. These surgeries are permitted in some states while many others are waiting for clearance.
With only binary gender markers, it’s obvious that such normalisation surgeries will continue. The law is CLEARLY anti-trans kids and not pro-kids as a whole.
Moving on, teachers and faculty will be forced by law to inform parents if their kid identifies differently or uses different pronouns. This can especially be disastrous because of the lack of ban on conversion therapy throughout the nation. While conservative schools have already been practicing this, now it’ll become a nationwide mandate. Schools that affirm or hide student’s queerness will be under fire as well, forcing trans kids to lose critical childhood support.
Trump also wants to bring in a credentialisation system of rewarding teachers for spreading values glorifying straight relationships, nuclear families, gender essentialism, and patriotic values.
Shockingly, Trump has spent 50% of his election campaigning budget against the transgender community. Even housing and the economy which are of critical importance to the common masses haven’t been focused on as much.
Even to a bystander, the polarisation within the LGBTQ+ community with the trans community as a bone of contention is clear.
Since Trump is somewhat okay with the gay community and has made promises to decriminalise homosexuality, and has even omitted the letter T in the LGBTQ+ acronym, he has managed to create a loyal MAGA gay fanbase. Even to a bystander, the polarisation within the LGBTQ+ community with the trans community as a bone of contention is clear. To a trans person, most savarna gay men are no longer trust worthy. One can surely predict that the same scenario exists with white cis gay men abroad.
With the Overturning of the Roe VS Wade case, people on the transmasculine spectrum, queer cis women, and women of intersex experience who can get pregnant will have a difficult time juggling between queerphobia, gender dysphoria if trans and the constant fear of pregnancy. In 10 states out of 52, abortions are banned even in the case of rape. We can only imagine the trauma of a rape victim having to carry their assaulter’s baby.
How are these political changes playing out in India?
Earlier this year, the venomous reactions around the new TV show Krishna Mohini were out in the open, and the trailer of the show was accused of “wokism” and “brainwashing kids” as usual. Later during the Olympics, noted oppressor caste and white people piled on Imane Khelif while letting child rape convicted pedophile and Dutch Volleyball player Steven van de Velde off the hook.
About a week back, ex-cricketer and RCB coach Sanjay Bangar’s child came out as a trans woman, after about 10 months on Hormone Replacement therapy, and not only was the hate rampant but her name and deadname started trending within hours. There was also a comparison with Elon Musk and his trans daughter Vivian as noticed on twitter.
It begs the question, are right-wingers for child rights, or are they anti-trans? Ananya Bangar is a 24-year-old adult, so this isn’t a case of a child altering their body as right-wingers claim. Across religions and nations, some traditions include life-altering procedures on kids as long as it is done citing religion. Circumcision, for example, is done in American male and female children despite child rights organisations calling it out and is noted to have a 20-80% prevalence in USA.
Circumcision, for example, is done in American male and female children despite child rights organisations calling it out and is noted to have a 20-80% prevalence in USA.
In the Brahmin Iyengar community, there is a tradition called Samashrayanam where the conch and discus symbols are branded on the arm of a male-born person with a red-hot iron regardless of age. There are children as young as 9-11 who have the mark on their hands. Texas called out the Iyengar Jeer community for implementing this practice on an underaged child’s arm, and the parent also filed a case against the authorities. It is equally life-altering, but there was widespread support for this “tradition” within the Brahmin community. The double standards are for all to see.
While it is hard to predict the turn of laws against the trans community in India after the historic Nalsa Judgement, the trans community still bears the brunt of the problematic Transgender Protection Act of 2019. For one, trans people are forced to stay with their natal family till the age of 18, and there is no consolidated report on the impact of natal transphobic and intersex-phobic violence in India sadly despite the numerous daily reports. This natal violence is doomed to rise in the wake of the anri-trans panic abroad.
It could become harder to air queer content on OTT platforms like Zee and Jio Cinema that have openly shown pro-BJP bias in the past. As a teacher, it is obvious that LGBTQ sensitisation cannot be done in schools without a backlash and that undue parental control on children could likely tighten. Openly queer children in schools would possibly be advised to pull through in school, through volatile washroom conditions and bullying, as an easier alternative to sensitising cishet people.
Conversion therapy may have gotten harder to execute on majors, but minors are still powerless to the whims of several tyrannical parents across India.
Conversion therapy may have gotten harder to execute on majors, but minors are still powerless to the whims of several tyrannical parents across India. A lot of doctors are still not sensitised to queer issues regardless of how “meritorious” they think they are. Police brutality is still not in control, and the systemic issues might just worsen regardless of the laws that fall into place.
What can Indian queers do for our trans* and intersex siblings abroad?
- If you’re on social media, actively engage with their content and show solidarity.
- Voice out. Organise at least virtually. Find ways to create virtual communities at least in discrete platforms like discord and telegram. The trans community isn’t new to underground living, as painful as it sounds.
- Amplify resources and help in creating a database of gender-affirming resources.
- Encourage the good old pen-pal culture. Let’s connect with at least one queer friend abroad and check in on them regularly.
While transness is about the fun of dressing up and self-exploration, it should also be radical and globalistic to challenge the queerphobic status quo. The queer community needs to be far more geopolitically aware and inter-connected to stand up to vitriol.
This Transgender Day of Remembrance, the trans community sadly knows that more of them will be added to the list of people to pay tributes to. We can just earnestly try to limit the numbers to the bare minimum. The biggest legacy the marginalised wish to leave forward is a safer world for their future counterparts. To survive is to resist. One can only hope to wake up in a world of increased gender diversity. Let there be collective strength and resilience to fight another heightened round of scrutiny and hate.
