An Exploratory Study of Discriminations based on Non-Normative Genders and Sexualities

A Report 2019

ACWS TISS Mumbai

An Exploratory Study of Discriminations based on Non-Normative Genders and Sexualities

A Report 2019 An Exploratory Study of Discriminations based on Non-Normative Genders and Sexualities Advanced Centre for Women’s Studies (ACWS), Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS)

Research Teams Education : Chayanika Shah, Ditilekha Sharma, Chan Arun-Pina, Shals Mahajan, Mihir Desai, Chinmay Shidore, and Lekha Sawant

Housing : Gautam Bhan, Vikramaditya Sahai, Avantika Tiwari, and Chan Arun-Pina

Political : Akshay Khanna and Akhil Kang Formations

Public Spaces : Rumi Harish, Sunil Mohan, and Radhika Raj

Biomedicine & : Asha Achuthan, Akanksha Singh, Shruti Parthasarathy, Healthcare Durgesh Solanki, Roshni Chattopadhyay, and Poushali Basak Translators: Sreejani Malakar, Somdutta Mukherjee, Aastha

Healthcare : Vinay Chandran and Anurag P Nair Discrimination Bhuvana Balaji (in Phase I)

Published by : Advanced Centre for Women’s Studies (ACWS) Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai

Edition : September 2019

Supported by : Ford Foundation

Design : Vinay Chandran

This report is solely intended for non-commercial purposes and to enable further research. All materials extracted and reprinted are consistent with fair dealing principles. This book may be distributed and republished for non-commercial or educational purposes with due attribution to the research teams and authors. Contents

Acknowledgements...... 4

1. About the Study...... 9

2. Executive Summary...... 15

3. Studying the Normative and Discrimination based on Gender and Sexuality in Education Chayanika Shah and Ditilekha Sharma...... 39

4. Housing, Discrimination and Non-Normative Gender and Sexuality Gautam Bhan, Vikramaditya Sahai, and Avantika Tiwari...... 75

5, Gender and Sexuality in Political Student Organisations and Modes of Protest Akhil Kang...... 95

6. Non-Normativity and Discrimination in Public Spaces Rumi Harish, Sunil Mohan, and Radhika Raj...... 105

7. Questions on Gender–Sexuality and Discrimination: Perspectives from and on Biomedicine and Healthcare Asha Achuthan and Akanksha Singh...... 131

8. Healthcare Discrimination Experienced by Non-Normative Genders and Sexualities in Southern India Vinay Chandran and Anurag P Nair...... 173

Appendices...... 201 Acknowledgements

is nearly an impossible task, in an complete sense to you. Besides the names It undertaking of this magnitude, to that have been acknowledged as part of acknowledge all people and institutions the research team, a work such as this that have lent their support, space and involves many others who come with ideas to make this study and its report their critical and vital role in helping this a reality. We have worked with people become a project that it did. In particular, across cities and spaces as we shared we are grateful to the many translators in both the thinking behind the study and its our consultations, one-to-one interviews, several steps. Depending on the path that and transcripts, who made sure to be the research team took, we all sought help attentive to the perspectives in translating from various queer and feminist individuals, the vocabularies that emerged in the study, communities, collectives, and organisations. across languages. Sometimes, we approached people from our many intersecting struggles, and at We are grateful to those that helped shape other times we just reached out in the the research in its formative stages in early unknown. To these strangers and familiars, 2014 including Pawan Dhall, Santakhurai who were our comrades and co-travellers Thangjam, L Ramkrishnan, Pramada in this journey, who were part of the Menon, Vani Subramaniam, Reshma research as respondents, as co-producers Bharadwaj, Sabah Khan, Ketki Ranade, of knowledges, as people who helped us Shekhar Seshadri, Arvind Narrain, Mohit sharpen and build on the questions we Kaycee, and Pushpa. Apoorva Kaiwar was were asking—a mere thank you is not an early team member who contributed enough. We hope we have been able to heavily to building the research proposal. bring back much of this to you in ways that We thank Tata Institute of Social it helps our many struggles. Sciences, and in particular the Advanced Some of our work required us to go Centre for Women’s Studies, for hosting to practitioners in the field, experts this study and deeming it relevant. We in different areas of study, heads of also thank the administrative and accounts institutions, professionals, and other sections for making the arduous work researchers. Thank you for your of keeping the paperwork in order, a generosity and help in whatever way doable thing. Many thanks also to the that you could, even though at times our Institutional Ethics Review Board at languages and approaches did not make TISS for their inputs. We thank Ford Foundation, in particular with us; and, mostly, took the time to be Vanita Mukherjee, Aparna Uppaluri, part of the research. without whose trust in our abilities we The Political Formations team would would not have begun, and Heera Singh, like to thank Anant Maringanti, Shilpa without whose patient support we would Phadke, Akhil Katyal, and Navaneetha certainly not have finished. Mokkil for their generous comments We thank Sangita Thosar, Ketki Ranade, and participation in the “Gender and the Meena Gopal, Revathi, Santakhurai Sexual in Student Politics” pre-conference. Thangjam, Mary John, Anita Ghai, Shekhar We thank Sandhya Devesan Nambiar, Sheshadri, Anuj Bhuwania, Kalpana Dhiren Borisa, Vqueeram Aditya Sahai and Kannabiran, L. Ramkrishnan, Dipta Bhog, Papori Bora for their participation and comments in Methodology workshops. Ranjita Biswas, and Rakhi Sehgal––all We thank Dhiren Borisa for helping us members of our Advisory Board––for and our collaborative research projects their contributions when we began the understand cartographic methods and we study and support provided to specific thank Effie Makepeace for helping us and teams as and when required. our interviewees with Theatre workshops. The Education team would like to We thank Jaya Sharma, Sandip Kuriakose, thank the many people we met during Niyati Sharma and Skye for helping us this study. Our gratitude to each one develop the “Erotics of the Leader” art- of them for sharing with us different visual exhibition. We thank our “Erotics parts of their lives and providing us the of the Leaders” co-collaborators Subhajit opportunity to learn. Our methods Sikder, Jitender Narayanan Bhardwaj, allowed us to co-create and work with Aishwarya Mohapatra and Shaunak many of our research participants like Mahbubani. Lastly, we cannot name our those in the students writing workshops, interviewees because many of them chose in the teachers’ meeting, and in the group to remain anonymous, but we thank each and every one of them for their discussions around experiences of POSH extreme generosity and trusting us with committees. We would like to thank each their feelings, thoughts, inhibitions, and one of those who joined us in these for aspirations! This project wouldn’t have these very rich interactions. There are been complete without them. many people in each of the campuses that we visited who made it possible for us The Public Spaces team are very thankful to convert the thought of studying space to all the people we met during the study, and infrastructure to understand inclusive for the stories they shared and the many education into a full-fledged plan. Thank friends we made along the way, specifically you for guiding us through the actual our friends from marginalised sexualities and genders. We would like to thank nooks and corners and also the histories the Alternative Law Forum for lending and stories of inhabiting these campuses. us their library space for research and The team from Housing would like to writing. Sonu Niranjan, Astha Kalarikkal, thank all of those that spoke to us, shared Sreekanth Kannan and Sathyakala KK their stories, writing, art, and arguments helped tremendously with the organisation

5 of key workshops in Karnataka and The team working on Healthcare Kerala, opened their homes for meetings, Discrimination deeply appreciates the meals and conversations, and helped with unwavering support from Patrick Wilson, translations, and transcriptions. Several Suresh Jayaram, and Owais Khan. Arvind subject experts such as lawyers and urban Narrain and Shekhar Seshadri’s continued sociologists helped us frame our concepts. engagement in the battle for human We would also like to thank the cast and rights and the fight against discrimination participants of the play Freedom Begum. in healthcare is a source of constant And finally we would like to thank A inspiration. Lucinda Ramberg provided Mangai who gave form to our ideas and much needed guidance on developing a who brought our research to life through more empathetic reading of the findings. theatre. Thank you for the support. Good As You (estd. 1994), the Bangalore- The team working on Healthcare and based LGBTQIA+ support group, inspired Biomedicine reached out to self-identified much of our research and its members queer feminist LBT activists who not only supported us wholeheartedly. We thank agreed with the need for a document on the hundreds of people who gave their discrimination to be generated from within time and space, within their homes and communities and put out in the public organisations, to share their stories. And domain in times of renewed infringement finally, thanks to the volunteers, interns of lives and rights, but also made available and other supporters for helping translate, their homes, food, experiences, and transcribe, and build our research. conversation much beyond what interview Lastly, all the research teams feel we must protocols mandated. We are grateful thank each other. It has been an exciting, for their trust, and hope we have met at but also a tough few years working least some of it, as we took our work together. If we learnt much from each back to them before putting it down in this report. We are also grateful to other, we also disagreed on many counts, researchers and teachers who have been both theoretically and processually. doing HIV work for decades, and seen it The work of the study ran into difficulties, change from target-based approaches to some serious, during the course. Some something quite different today. We are of these difficulties were unfortunate in a grateful to the many teachers and students study of this nature, that was meant to be of medicine, women’s studies, health ‘naturally’ attentive to questions of justice. systems and other disciplines who gave of We learnt that the study objectives, their time, and came back to us again to however, or our individual commitments, ask for the document we are putting out did not automatically protect us from now, and hope we have represented their violations that some experienced during positions adequately. We are thankful to the course of the work. We have tried the practitioners who made time, even to respond to these, take responsibility, when they were not on the same page, to undergo process, and make amends. We share their impressions and experiences of have not been entirely successful, and that dealing with gender-sexuality questions in is something we carry with us into any the clinic. work we might do going forward.

6 Executive Summary

Study Brief and Summary of Research Findings An Exploratory Study of Discriminations based on Non-Normative Genders and Sexualities 1

About the Study

INTRODUCTION there is not enough work in relation to systems and structural contexts Discourse in the mainstream on lesbian, of discrimination faced by persons of gay, bisexual, transgender, hijra, queer, non-normative genders and sexualities. questioning, intersex, asexual, and other In addition to gender, caste, disabilities, (LGBTHQIA+ or queer) communities–– and other “recognised” marginalisations, what this report calls non-normative a discourse on discrimination has genders and sexualities––has often been to include the experiences of non- around direct violence, understood as normative genders and sexualities. episodic, visible, or in epidemic illness contexts. Discrimination by state and The aim of this study was to undertake non-state actors has not been looked research to create an extensive at seriously. The debate has shifted from document on discrimination faced de-criminalisation to anti-discrimination, by individuals on the basis of non- following the reading down of Section normative gender or sexuality. In doing 377 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). so, we looked not just at self-identified There is ongoing work on understanding queer individuals but also at actions, discrimination on the basis of other environments, and institutions where discriminatory practices are based on marginalisations [Ayyar 2013, Thorat enforcing norms of gender and sexuality. and Neuman 2012, Deshpande 2006, Siddique 2011, Deshpande 2011, Ghai of caste: Economic discrimination in 2001, Addlakha 2013]1. However, contemporary India. Oxford University Press. 1 Thorat, S., & Neuman, K. S. (2012). Blocked Ayyar, V., & Khandare, L. (2013). Mapping by Caste: Economic Discrimination in color and caste discrimination in Indian Modern India. Oxford University Press. society. In The Melanin Millennium (pp. 71- Deshpande, S. (2006). Exclusive inequalities: 95). Springer, Dordrecht. Merit, caste and discrimination in Indian Ghai, A. (2001). Marginalisation and higher education today. Economic and disability: Experiences from the third Political Weekly, 2438-2444. world. Disability and the life course: Global Siddique, Z. (2011). Evidence on caste perspectives, 26. based discrimination. Labour Economics, Addlakha, R. (Ed.). (2013). Disability studies 18, S146-S159. in India: Global discourses, local realities. Deshpande, A. (2011). The grammar New Delhi: Routledge.

9 We understood discrimination not just regardless of whether it is named as as incidents or moments of certain kinds such by any of the actors involved. of conduct or behaviour, but also the Further, we would be interested in perceptions of vulnerability that such terming it discrimination if a child is conduct could cause, and the structural fearful of discrimination because of conditions that implicitly or explicitly feeling “different” regardless of whether institutionalise such conduct. We were any such incident has occurred. Finally, equally interested in the presence, we would want to explore both what nature, and form of discrimination as structural conditions in the learning we are with the diverse strategies used environment exacerbate or mitigate by people to cope with and celebrate, the risk and actual incidence of despite discrimination. discriminatory practices, and also what strategies the child uses to cope An example makes this clear: if a child with them. perceived as “different” on the basis of their gender expression is bullied, this At the onset we wanted to understand is a relevant incident of discrimination and document discriminatory practices

AREAS SITES 1. Health 1. Family 2. Education 2. Community 3. Public and Private Institutions 3. Work 4. Public Space 4. Shelter and Housing 5. Government 5. Law and Law Enforcement 6. Criminal Justice System 6. Public Spaces/ Accommodations, 7. Judiciary Infrastructure and Services 8. Sites of Conflict (Sustained and 7. Identity and Selfhood Sporadic) 8. Political Formations 9. Media

AXES METHODS 1. Caste 1. Secondary Analysis and Review 2. Class 2. Incident Profiles 3. Religion 4. Race 3. Ethnography 5. Ethnicity 4. Individual Interviews 6. Age 5. Life Histories 7. Ability 8. Region 6. Community workshops 9. Language 7. Institutional Profiles

TABLE 1: Areas, Sites, Axes, Methods

10 across eight areas, each of which includes sexualities through various methods multiple sites of investigation that we as detailed by each team. Since a lot seek to access using a set of methods of information is not in print-form, a and across a set of axes. significant part of this phase was field visits, focus group discussions, and key The teams who produced this report informant interviews that attempted elected to study five of the areas listed to learn the nature of the discourse above (i.e., health, education, housing, within different communities. In this political formations, and public spaces). process we also identified areas in which Two teams addressed the health there is very little material available and area from different perspectives (one identified individuals and incidents whose studied healthcare and biomedicine in stories have not been told. institutions and the second recorded community experiences in healthcare). PHASE II STRUCTURE OF THE STUDY The second phase began with a national meeting of groups and individuals, Research is the main activity in this including advisors, that were in touch project. The outcomes of this study through the study to share some findings will be critical in crafting strategies on and materials from Phase 1. The meeting addressing discrimination based on non- helped the teams identify gaps and find normative genders and sexualities. ways of filling them through primary These preliminary findings were research in the second phase. This phase disseminated at a national-level meeting ended with a national-level dissemination hosted at the Tata Institute of Social meeting where the findings from both phases were presented. Sciences (TISS), Mumbai in June 2018. Subsequently several dissemination We hoped to identify the ways to take meetings and workshops have work in the field forward through these distributed the different study findings activities towards multiple ends such as to different audiences. The overall influencing policy, engaging in advocacy, objective of the study is to populate the and strengthening the work of organising, public domain with analyses and data to supporting, and changing social attitudes. further the anti-discrimination agenda Primary data was gathered from places by making this information accessible selected by each of the teams and to movements, sectors, and different included New Delhi, Gujarat, Karnataka, constituencies for campaigns, education, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, and action. Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal. PHASE I METHODOLOGY The study started with a review of existing literature on discrimination Each team used multiple methods to based on non-normative genders and ensure clarity of their chosen area.

11 Since this was an exploratory study ethnographic methods such as recording with a stress on qualitative data, the detailed field notes and other modes teams focussed on collecting narratives of recording events, including audio and using group discussions and in-depth visual as well as in-depth semi-structured interviews. Other innovative methods interviews with key participants. were also used and are listed below. Besides this, the team also conducted theatre workshops with participants The team studying Education focussed from the field using methods from on looking at discrimination around Theatre of the Oppressed, especially non-normative genders and sexualities Forum Theatre. Other tools used were in higher education and considered on-site photography and videography and two broad approaches to collect data. discourse analysis of the political leaders’ The first looked at collecting individual speeches, online photographs, and narratives in three instances: life-stories memes in circulation, campaign posters of people reflecting on experiences in etc. Student research and workshops education; experiences of youth were also used to understand gender who were currently students in and the sexual in student politics. campuses across the country; and experiences of teachers. The second The team studying Public Spaces approach used two methodologies to spoke to individuals explicitly study institutional influences on setting identified as LGBTHQIA+ in order and maintaining norms: geographical to understand how accessing public mapping of campuses to see how spaces affected them. The team shared institutions carve exclusionary spaces their own personal experiences with within them and studying redressal the participants in order to steer mechanisms in institutions. conversations. They used multiple informal interactions and discussions The team studying Housing chose to elicit data that not only records two important methods. First, they instances of discrimination in public conducted a legal discourse analysis but also outlines theories that the studying laws and Acts that by defining community themselves might have to the normative would, in turn, define understand what they experienced. the non-normative. Secondly, they collected life histories of people The team studying Healthcare and who lived in rental housing across Biomedicine used multiple qualitative Delhi. Using the life histories method methodologies. First, using institutional helped the team to not just document ethnography the team sought to get discrimination but also learn when it was insights into medical practice and into an insufficient framework to talk about the system itself. This also involved what was experienced. looking at: gender and sexuality within medical curricula; how medical students The team studying Political Formations manoeuvred around their institutional used participant observation and other learnings as opposed to their actual

12 practice; and the different degrees of The team studying Healthcare access into healthcare institutions. Discrimination used two basic Second, to further enhance the study, methodologies. First, they conducted the team developed and used an focus group discussions with various institutional journal to get medical LGBTHQIA+ activists and leaders to students to reflect on space, curriculum, elicit a broad understanding of the field and practice. Third, more traditional and how healthcare service is received. ethnographic methods including: in-depth Second, they conducted in-depth interviews with expert practitioners interviews collecting life history data that and other healthcare staff; and focus provided not just instances or incidents group discussions with medical students, of discrimination, but also contexts women’s studies and public health in which such experiences occur and students, and with queer medical the personal physical or psychological practitioners were also recorded. consequences of such experience.

13 An Exploratory Study of Discriminations based on Non-Normative Genders and Sexualities 2

Executive Summary

EDUCATION

FINDINGS major finding is around how education The two broad themes that emerged contributes to the making of the from the study of discrimination in masculine. The making of masculinity not higher education are: one, the idea of the only genders the “boys” it simultaneously normative in education and how defining constructs the feminine in which “girls” it creates the marginal and the exclusive; are nurtured by the teachers, the family, and two, the experiences of the non- and other significant adults. normative in understanding inclusion and access in higher education. Along with the monitoring of gendered behaviours there is also the closely Making of the heterosexual binary entangled sexual persona as well. through the schooling of the masculine Desire is also camouflaged like other undesired markers of identity. As much The study’s different methodologies as violence is an ever-present part of showed who the system is meant for— for whom is it truly and easily accessible, young boys' lived realities, there is also or who does not have to hide oneself interaction that takes place through and be on constant guard to be able to sexual exploration and sexual abuse. really “fit” in. The masculine most clearly Sometimes the exploration is fun and emerged as one of the definitives of the friendly but often it is linked to violence. normative. Masculine characteristics were Heterosexism also gets built into the ingrained and enforced through rejection, education system in this process. The ridiculing, and undermining of what is dominant discourse becomes that of seen as “non-masculine”. Everything objectification/sexualising of girls and else is termed feminine and bestowed women, their peers as well as teachers, on those not considered “men/boys”. If and sometimes even the feminine boys. the “woman/girl” acquires “masculinity” The taboo around talking about sexual it is not rejected in the same way as desire, along with the normalisation of the reverse is done to a “man/boy”, this sexual violence later leads to the unless of course it violates the code making of “toxic” masculinity. Thus it of heterosexuality which is another seems that school efficiently does the clearly present normative. So the first task of making the masculine man, the

15 feminine woman, and establishing a for many of these people living as their heteronormative discourse. The ones true selves is by itself a lot of work! who don’t fit get marked as deviants and Meaning of Success and Failure denied access. The competitive nature of examinations, “Inclusive” and “Accessible” Education and the limited understanding of merit Instead of detailing the nature of in education systems, mirrors some discrimination we are choosing to of the “masculine” violence reported highlight the systemic exclusions and earlier. Discrimination experiences get thereby build a framework for inclusive whitewashed in the pursuit of merit. The and accessible education. study records that merit appears directly proportional to the amount of time Different expectations from education and money that a person can spend in a preparatory class doing nothing other The respondent interviews highlighted than learning by rote on how to crack larger issues of education that included: the exam. Such a concept of merit does personal aspirations; desire for dignity; not recognise that individuals do not have quality and funding of local education equal opportunities and therefore their leading to migration; privatisation of individual success and failures cannot institutions leading to increased fees be measured on the same scale. In the thereby creating divisions based on class, context of queer persons, many of the caste, and access; a steady increase in respondents, students, and teachers, number of years spent for education escaped the penalty for their failure in leading to the exclusion of many; meeting standards of normative social implementation of trans-inclusive systems expression by succeeding in the education in institutions; and financial support for system. This kind of overcompensation to all of the above. These need to be flagged get noticed for what would be valued also and understood to explain discrimination served as a deflection from the difference based on any social marginalisation that may otherwise get noticed. For because all of these set up an essentially others, however, success was difficult to discriminatory system. There are achieve possibly also because the penalty persons marginalised because of gender of failure was so constant and everyday. and sexuality who may still manage to “succeed”, or who have already managed The gendered character of disciplines to do so. Yet their success has to be A mix of the paradigm of success and the seen in this landscape as happening making of the masculine is seen in how against all odds and may be due to other different fields of study are characterised privileges, but also because of their own within regular academia. Excelling in determination and effort. Any inclusive all disciplines is not equivalent. Some system has to think of ways in which it disciplines, especially the STEM (science, can minimise extra effort and help all technology, engineering, and mathematics), people achieve their full potential because are seen as more tough and people

16 managing to do well in these are seen who usually get excluded are facilitated as much more capable and intelligent. It with mechanisms that help their inclusion. is not just incidental that these are also Including all communities seen as “masculine”. Feminist science studies scholars surmise that as a result The study also found that status of of this understanding, not only are the non-teaching staff in HEIs mimicked the subjectivities in STEM ignored, but exclusionary practices in other systems. It moulds STEM education in ways that is essentially the exclusion of the labour restricts participation of others in the of care, sustenance, and maintenance discipline. Respondents in the interviews essential to the production of knowledge. spoke of the pressure that they were It is the traditional hierarchy of subjected to by families to choose intellectual labour over physical labour, of engineering, the “masculine” area of mind over the body. The caste and class study. Out of the 8 respondents who had backgrounds of teaching and non-teaching completed engineering education, only staff also mark the ways in which these one continued to work as an engineer, interactions happen on campus. that too in academia. Similarly, campus mapping illustrated many of the ways in Queer Bodies on Campus which institutions gendered their spaces The experiences of those who are clearly and bullying and violence reinforced the marked or read as queer bodies on “masculine” prerogative. campus were predominantly of loneliness and alienation. Even redressal mechanisms Heteronormative Campuses to address discrimination cannot address All higher education institutions (HEIs) this dissonance. And then there are the are heteronormative in their design and queer bodies that also get marked by the ideas. Not only are all people imagined separation and stigma of casteist violence to be either of the two assigned genders, within queer communities that they try they are also assumed to be heterosexual. to seek with trepidation. There are queer In addition, gendered inclusion is policed bodies that face misogyny but are also through dress codes, behaviour patterns, at times attacked with vengeance by residential, other spatial arrangements, cis women who are seen as the rightful and also policing of interaction between target of misogyny itself. And the disabled “men” and “women”. For those who are queer bodies that are aware of their gender non-conforming the everyday sexuality being rejected by those in their existence becomes a challenge in these families and communities but who also spaces despite the advances in creating feel undesired in a very ageist and beauty- transgender friendly spaces. This study conscious narrative of desire that at times endorses, based on its findings, that there exists even within the queer spaces. has to be neutrality as far as access to A NOTE ON DISCRIMINATION rights go. This means that all rights have to be accessible to everyone and the HEI Gender and sexuality are dynamic, self- must ensure that systems enable those determined identities and in that sense

17 are different from other birth assigned discussions in the teachers’ meeting. identities. Recognising discrimination (forthcoming) around these in individual cases hence n A detailed essay on the “Schooling becomes a difficult task. Being different into masculinity” (forthcoming) from all those around you, especially your own familiars, is in itself a lonely n An expanded version of this report discovery and till people find others on discrimination in education like them, loneliness is a companion for (forthcoming) most. And when education makes itself WAYS FORWARD opaque to different ways of being, it actually becomes a big obstacle in the The guiding principles that emerged process of self-discovery. Not only is the for us to address discrimination based system geared towards rewarding the on non-normative gender and sexuality normative, it also punishes and is violent within education at all levels are as here: to those that do not fit. n Give access to those hitherto Recognising systemic discrimination excluded and work towards and addressing it is as important as increasing access for all through spending time to understand the range systemic changes at all levels, of variance that is possible and which recognition to the myriad ways of already exists. Though this study attempts being for all people in our campuses to do both, it does not profess to have and classrooms, and developing a comprehensive understanding of the right kinds of mechanisms for discrimination, but does have a clearer addressing redressal at all levels. understanding of what needs to be n Redefine meanings of success looked at. The story may begin with and failure, particularly in the access to education but address the area of gender and sexuality, but ways in which the whole enterprise is also extend that knowledge to cognisant of its inherent normativity. pedagogy itself thereby queering education in some ways. OUTPUTS n Granting gender neutrality where n Blog posts on campus life, https:// it is a question of rights, and theglassclosetsblog.wordpress.com/ recognising power when it is a (The Glass Closet) question of gendered violence. n A poster exhibition on the study of Try and move away from gender campus architecture segregation that underlines the binary and move towards a more n A book on campus architecture to nuanced understanding of both be published by Yoda Press. gender and sexuality. n A book proposal “Queering n Recognise that discussions on Education” based on the gender and sexuality are dynamic

18 and have to change with time. These understand singular discriminations discussions have to be compulsory alone. Experience of multiple in an educational space, which is marginalisations is not merely a sum inhabited by people from different total of each, it is a different way in backgrounds, ages, and varied which discrimination itself works. So socio-cultural backgrounds and to understand any discrimination it where intimacy is part of many is important that all other axes of transactions. power that target specific sections n Individuals come with multiple of people are also incorporated in identities and it is foolhardy to the exercise.

HOUSING FINDINGS housing, it is pivotal in shaping precisely this everyday. Anti-discriminatory The team present their findings from language in law cannot just be about their study of the law as well as from an anti-discrimination statute as respondent interviews. commonly understood but must ask if Normativity, Discrimination and the Law the imagination of public institutions can accommodate anti-discrimination in Looking for discrimination and non- practice rather than just in principle. normativity within housing and the law is a challenging task. In this section, three The second key finding from legal analysis key findings are listed from the study of is to look at how individual and group legislation and policies. rights are a key struggle in thinking about anti-discrimination and the law. Case First, focusing only on the gender and studies show how anti-discrimination sexual identity of the tenant, while protection is not denied in Indian law but important, must be preceded by rather evaded through being subsumed understanding the institutional context under a debate on individual and group of housing policy itself. What forms of rights, using the contract as a legal discrimination exist and what practices medium between them. Looking at the institutions can imagine––let alone normative assumptions—many based on offer––in response are not just motivated notions of gender and sexuality—within by specific acts of discrimination but, in the notion of individual and group rights fact, by the institution’s understanding mediated through the contract helps both of housing itself. These are not just locate and understand these institutional discursive differences, however. The arrangements. This is essential both to intent of the state as defined in diagnose them correctly as well as re- legislation and policy then determines imagine them. what remedies citizens have on offer. However distant the rental housing act The final finding is the one that is may seem from everyday life in rental perhaps more predictable when one

19 reads rental housing law looking for was not explicit in invoking either of discrimination. This set of arguments these identities. Religion, particularly looks at assumptions of who can be a refusal to Muslim men and women, tenant, a subject, and a citizen within was the most explicitly voiced identity rental housing law. The answer gives to the point that a gay Muslim man the most direct and critical evidence we interviewed made it clear that he of how norms of gender and sexuality never anticipated facing problems due shape the possibilities and life worlds of to his sexual orientation but always citizens. The family is imaginable within due to his religion. Other categories law, and the word appears repeatedly that could be explicitly involved were within Indian rental law, but what being single, unmarried, a bachelor, a do not are equally conspicuous: the lawyer, or Kashmiri. Yet in most of these worker, the individual, and the student. cases, respondents still did not use the This means that categories of existing word “discrimination” in their own rental do not get counted, assessed narratives. Rental housing is a thickly or acknowledged, either within law or social field—it is a set of interactions within data. It also means that tenant- mediated between renters, brokers and landlord relations get framed in policies landlords where the “contract” is socially thinking about the “family” as the performed, orally enforced, and holds default, and then imposing those social little option for formal mediation of any expectations on all forms of tenants. kind. The first thing the study challenges is that explicit refusal—the simplest Discrimination and the thickly social form of discrimination—is also the least Looking at access to rental representative of accessing rental housing housing through life histories both in India. Discrimination was a legitimate, affirmed and challenged the study’s legible and useful category only in so understandings of discrimination. far as it offers a relative measure of There were three kinds of ways in difference. It is possible, however, that which discrimination manifested itself. this is a difference within thresholds—a transgender person may have a harder The first was explicit refusal. Here, a time relative to a cis-gender person, but person seeking housing was refused, and that still leaves the possibility that both refused explicitly on the grounds of their were discriminated against, if measured identity. This is the most evident and against an external threshold, but just to a commonsensical form of discrimination. different degree. Yet, none of the respondents who identified as being LGBT faced explicit One of the key learnings about both refusal on the articulated basis of their studies on discrimination as well as gender or sexuality. This is not to say anti-discrimination policy and law is that that their gender or sexuality could not while focus has, so far, remained largely have been part of the basis of refusal, on identities that one cannot discriminate but to underscore that this refusal on the basis of, the real need may perhaps

20 be to focus on the interactions and personhood. It is the tension between processes that lead to access or refusal wanting to be left alone and being fearful of desired outcomes (in this case, a house that no one would hear you fall in a for rent). Within the thickly social, it is rented home without neighbours who the interaction rather than the identity could ask after you, or families that would of the actors that anti-discrimination repeatedly call. practices must focus on. A NOTE ON DISCRIMINATION Discrimination as Everyday Life Within housing, discrimination is rarely The life histories revealed a range of explicit. Access to housing in India, effects that accessing rental housing in particular, is a negotiation with and living in it do to non-normative thickly social interaction. So formal lives. Many respondents made everyday law and policy cannot penetrate these life possible by misrepresenting interactions with current methods of themselves or their relationships. Other addressing discrimination. Non-normative respondents spoke of how one incident persons do not experience discrimination of discrimination in a house cast a long through violence, exclusion, or refusal shadow wherever they went in their lives, alone. The everyday life structures make leading, in different cases, for example, to these experiences occur. The category a heightened fear of intrusion, a constant of discrimination does not capture the mistrust of strangers, a feeling that one subtle forms of self-disavowal that occur had to be eternally vigilant even within in the everyday, the impacts of living one’s home. Many times, discrimination with prejudice around you, the shifts in within non-normativity means taking aspirations, and the notions of good life. the option off the table for ones’ self, redefining the terms of refusal towards OUTPUTS self-censorship and self-disavowal. Papers Asociality as a Queer Normative n Sahai, Vikramaditya; Tiwari, Avantika; Discrimination not only shapes the and Bhan, Gautam (2019) Houses, experiences of non-normative people homes and lives: Reflections on in accessing and living in rental housing, Discrimination and Non-Normative it changes their aspirations and values Gender and Sexuality in Urban India. about what kind of housing and life they want. Non-normative folks spoke of an n Arun-Pina, Chan (2019) Reading ideal housing arrangement as one that Normativity in Legal Documents on would allow a retreat, a being left alone, Urban Housing in India. an asociality. If asociality is a normative Exhibitions condition then the real cost of non- normativity and discrimination is not just n Arun-Pina, Chan (2018) Case Book: access or refusal, but in fact, a shifting of Annotations of Legal Documents

21 on Urban Housing in India. Mixed exclusion or refusal alone. It is in Media and print. the structure of everyday life that the consequences of the many n Upasana (2018) Queer Homes: Portraits of Queer Lives. Portraits, experiences we erroneously club Pen and Ink illustrations. under “discrimination” take place. Podcasts n Four, as a conceptual category, “discrimination” is not able to n Queer homes: Five podcast episodes hold or understand what prejudice on building queer lives in Delhi. or the expectations of it does to WAYS FORWARD everyday life. It cannot understand the subtle ways of self-disavowal, of Looking at rental housing as a key part the impacts of living with prejudice of the study of discrimination provides around you, the shifts in one’s several implications for policy, practice, own aspirations and notions of a and future research. Listed below are the principles that emerged from the work. good life. Other concepts will have to speak of this, and absorption, n One, anti-discrimination law or which allows both the presence policies that privilege a language of of prejudice but also its (non) law that locates discrimination in the resolution in multiple forms, has the identity of the person discriminated possibility of doing this. against risk losing the fact of discrimination in the interactions n Five, responses to discrimination towards desired outcomes. Within cannot simply be responses to housing, discrimination is rarely incidents. They must be structured explicit on the terms of identity. to address the consequences of n Two, in sectors where processes are relentless absorption within non- not formal, contractual, and legible normative lives. This implies that like housing in India, access to public the real target of our actions goods and services are informally cannot be limited to legal statutes negotiated within the space of or pronouncements but will what is described as thickly social have to be based on constructing transactions. The formal logics of spaces of solidarity. Freedom from law and policy cannot penetrate discrimination cannot require these interactions in the way they loneliness, as the increasing desire currently approach the issue of for asociality among queer folks discrimination. indicates. Breaking this cycle is then n Three, non-normative lives are to engage with the intimate as well not simply or clearly discriminated as the structural, the spaces of against in incidents of violence, support as well those of protection.

22 POLITICAL FORMATIONS The team2 sought to understand FINDINGS processes of discrimination and exclusion Understanding Discrimination as an Idiom on the basis of non-normative gender and sexualities in the context of Discrimination could be many things–– political formations. It is based on the an experience, an element of structure, an understanding that political processes are underlying logic, and an idiom to describe animated by, draw upon, and intervene in a range of experiences of injustice. eroticism. Political processes demand and In the context of studying political produce normative expressions of gender formations, where “discrimination” is a crucial element of the language and sexuality, and equally draw upon used to do politics itself, to demarcate and exclude non-normative expressions, ethical selves from unethical others, to bodies and subjectivities. There are three generate outrage etc. It is most often elements to the study: this last form—discrimination as an (a) Ethnography of Student Politics in idiom—that the team has come across. Delhi: In the ethnography of student Part of the challenge of researching politics in Delhi, we are primarily discrimination has been to trace the living history of its usage, of its concerned with the articulation of emergence, and its function as a vehicle gender and the sexual, which cannot for political processes and imagination. be understood without a keen understanding of caste, political The research (primarily in Delhi economy, region etc.; University and Jawaharlal Nehru University, but also through collaborators (b) Gender and the Sexual in Student in other universities around the country) Politics: To explore above mentioned has involved engagement with a range themes more, this element is a of ideological formations. Briefly, this collaborative series of 11 researches includes what in the field is considered looking at gender and the sexual the “traditional left parties” (such as in student movements around the SFI and AISA) which themselves have country; and multiple forms depending on where they are, the demography of their (c) Erotics of the Leader: A visual membership, their relationship with research section looking at the historical formations that they are part ‘erotics of the leader’ (tracing erotic of etc. Then there are Ambedkarite dimensions of the figures of political groups, groups that draw themselves leaders) with 5 collaborators. on continuity with political battles 2 Although the team had two members of a range of historically oppressed working on the research, only Akhil Kang has communities, Feminist groups, Queer contributed to the contents of this report groups, groups that resist arranging

23 themselves as organisations, groups with or government committees, fact-finding a commitment to constitutionalism, reports, or academic interventions. That those that are irreverent to established is to say that this idiom of discrimination political imaginations etc. In other travels beyond just a particular instance words, there are a range of ideological and becomes much more—to include and organisational forms that featured modalities around that instance, social in the research. and political structures around that instance, institutional motivations behind Each of these formations create, that instance etc. At the same time, employ, and engage a range of languages formations also tend to limit the language of politics. For none of them was of discrimination to literal demands of discrimination the beginning and end policy changes. of the understanding of injustice, but for each of them, equally, the idiom of In a broad sense, it might be said that discrimination was crucial to politics there is a double bind in the relationship itself. It was thus a matter of identifying between the idiom of discrimination the role of the idiom of discrimination and the ideological frames that animate in each ideological formation. Studying political formations: on the one hand the idiom of discrimination thus said is the imperative of using the idiom of much about forms of public speech, discrimination, i.e. it is as though it is slogans, and the deployment of instances (often, though not always) necessary to etc., and about the ways in which invoke the idiom in order to make an groups choose to articulate their ideas. instance of injustice politically legible. On Furthermore, it gives insight into how the other is the desire or need to not political formations choose to place be contained within the idiom, to resist themselves, rhetorically, ideologically, and the limitations that it implies on political collectively in relation to each other, in imagination and to populate the political relation to the ways in which they label landscape with other idioms. themselves politically (if they do indeed label themselves), and in relation to For instance, in the BAPSA (Birsa historical figures that they ideologically Ambedkar Phule Students’ Association) draw on. It must be added that the field story, one of the most concrete forms in itself pushed the team away from placing which its politics articulates publicly has discrimination as the primary object of indeed been the idiom of discrimination, research, and brought to centre, instead, for instance in the context of the the question of the structuring effects of uneven ways in which the weightage gender and the sexual in politics. given to viva voce in admission processes affects students from marginalised The idiom of discrimination does communities. The “unity of oppressed” not, here, denote only a suspended politics of BAPSA however, is broader experience or narrative but it often and includes addressing the historical takes a life of its own. A life that erasures of knowledge through control refuses to be fenced by bureaucratic over epistemology, the mechanisms of

24 monopoly over power within structures articulations, which are trying to get of the university, challenges to the public recognition by carving their own aesthetics of the campus, all centred on channels. For instance, “institutional an understanding of caste as a category murder” becomes one of the primary of experience and structure beyond ways in which many political formations violence and discrimination. Here again, try to voice their relationship with there is a complex relationship with institutions, which are actively pushing the idiom of discrimination––a strategic their students out of its structure. Thus, invocation that seeks to expand the institutional murder becomes an idiom political question beyond the instance, of its own, and takes a journey of its own and a resistance to being reduced to the through which many different experiences invocation itself. (including those of discrimination) take shape. On the other hand, even in The Relationship between Discrimination political formations’ connections of the and other Political Idioms local to the national/global, somehow, As mentioned above, looking at how all of these political articulations end different parties have their own ways up being seen through few lenses. For of defining their negotiations of politics instance, most articulation of sex within vis-a-vis different idioms, it becomes structures of hierarchy comes to be important to understand how these seen as harassment. Or any critique of negotiations take place. Through field the structure of power or status quo observations and interviews with comes to be seen as anti-nationalist. students, activists, and political actors, Or, in a space like DU, where bodily although there wasn’t a direct definition harm to people resisting, protesting, and of what they imagined discrimination campaigning is so real, most political to be or how they would go about articulations end up being seen as explaining it, there was a sense of confrontational or violent. Therefore, attachment to politics that is bigger there seems to be a struggle between than just their immediate context. expanding the lens to talk about politics There is both a burden and desire to infinite possibilities and yet addressing to connect local political instances all politics through a single plane. with larger narratives of national and Do idioms of harassment, confrontation, international political nuances and violence etc. come to be seen at par debates. For instance, political parties at with discrimination then? One could JNU connecting administrative hurdles argue that there is an almost obvious with fascist tendencies of regimes of assumption of use of “discrimination” power or constant effigy burnings to in student protests, fiery speeches, or signify anniversaries of an event of parchas (leaflets). But a deeper analysis of violent past atrocity. its reference reveals many questions. Is If these connections with grand narratives this referral to discrimination a constant? were to be broken down, it seems that Is discrimination being understood on one hand, there are many political by these political formations to draw

25 a bridge or a connection between an “discrimination” has lost its meaning? Or experience and a political demand? Or is that it has simply taken a different form? discrimination a medium through which OUTPUTS they address each other’s political and electoral failures? Or is this reference n The team primarily presented the to discrimination a call to a higher all- ethnography research for the first encompassing descriptive category of time at the national dissemination injustice and inequality? held in Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai, titled A curious moment to note here would “Discrimination, Gender & Sexuality: be how many political formulations, do Telling Stories, Making Connections” end up taking off from discrimination from June 27 to 29, 2018. and don’t return to it even though at the same time making reference to n The team brought together student it. Ambedkarite form of politics can papers as part of the Gender and never be crudely put down as politics Student Politics component. This of exploring discrimination. This was a one-day pre-conference connection drawn between Ambedkarite before the June dissemination held politics and discrimination, comes at TISS, Mumbai. Four sessions primarily from many accusations of covering twelve papers were “doing identity politics” falling on parties presented as the final outputs of the formed by lower caste individuals. year-long mentoring process with BAPSA, for instance, began its journey student researchers writing about by critiquing discriminatory practices their own universities. of JNU administration against lower n A regional dissemination titled caste students as well as negligible to “Discrimination, Gender, and zero representation of SC/ST/Bahujan Sexuality:Telling Stories, Making students in positions of power and Connections” was held in New decision-making in registered student Delhi on 28th July, 2018. The team bodies. This journey, gradually, shaped presented findings from the project into identifying and subverting the as part of the dissemination. very way of imagining politics on JNU campus and forcing every political n An exhibition on the analysis of formation to engage with questions of aesthetics and erotics of leaders taken for granted upper-caste mobilizing, and leadership was held on 28th kinship, and different shades of Dalit July, 2018 as part of the regional assertion. BAPSA, still continues to dissemination meeting in New Delhi. draw connections with discriminatory WAYS FORWARD practices against marginalised students, but has transformed the meaning of The collaborative papers on Gender discrimination through Ambedkarite and the Sexual in Student Politics will be understanding. Would this mean that supported to publication.

26 PUBLIC SPACES FINDINGS designs deliberately exclude the city’s poor and marginalised sections. Everyday The team studying public spaces public utility needs of working-class produced three main outputs based on people such as bathing, washing clothes, their research: a photo essay illustrating relaxing, sleeping are now replaced by diminishing public spaces and those that are inclusive where communities can the luxury needs of jogging, healthy living, access without fear; documentation of leisure and so on of the upper-classes public spaces as spaces of resistance; and castes. In the history of the queer and a play-script based on some of the movement in Bengaluru, parks have played stories shared in the research. Some of a critical role in building communities, the concerns raised by the study of public networks, and solidarities. Several spaces in Bengaluru are shared below. respondents spoke of parks playing an important role in their personal journey Mapping Desire and Discrimination in or in the movement. the Parks of Bengaluru Accessing Public Spaces for Resistance Bengaluru city has a large number of green spaces, gardens and parks within Bengaluru has a long history of protests its municipal limits. Since the early 2000s, organised by different movements such the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike as women’s movement, dalit movement, (BBMP) started a drive to beautify marxist women’s movement, socialist Bangalore’s parks by planting manageable women’s movement, labour movements “show plants”, building large gates and and many more. Political parties have fences, constructing pavements and also occupied the streets for protests. jogging tracks, adding lights, introducing While issues like equal wages, dalit restrictive park timings, and increasing rights, violence against women including security and CCTV cameras. In 2005, dowry and domestic violence, women’s under its “Adopt a Park” scheme, BBMP education, women’s autonomy were invited corporate bodies, educational spoken of, questions of sexuality and institutions, clubs, residents’ associations, gender were never publicly addressed hospitals, hotels, retail showrooms and until the late 1990s. By the early 2000s, other such organisations to maintain and the sexuality rights movement had develop Bangalore’s parks. Since then, started raising its voice and demanding to parks across the city have turned into be heard. Initially, the presence of trans highly monitored, exclusionary, enclosed, and queer bodies in a public protest was and restricted spaces. In recent times a seen with skepticism and caused great nexus of brahminical, upper- and middle- discomfort among many. Many protests class activists, real estate developers and by the sexual and gender minorities the state has mobilised the discourse of for the demand for rights and as acts “public interest”, “women’s safety” to of resistance for atrocities against the appropriate parks in a way that their new community were held for years before

27 the Bangalore Pride was first organised This erasure of community spaces, in 2008. However, because of the wide neighbourhoods, and histories was not media coverage it receives and its recorded with the same fervour by connection to similar Pride marches people who document the city’s colonial across the globe, the Bengaluru Pride heritage. The stories of many trans remains one of the more popular events people’s lives were lost or ignored. In in the collective memory of the city. interviews with the trans community in Bengaluru, the team heard about a Loss of Spaces woman called “the Begum” who owned Today, gathering of non-families and a large piece of land in the city. There resistance protests are seen as “public were several stories and rumours about nuisance” obstructing public flow in the Begum and the house she lived in with her son, but no records or physical the form of traffic or the pedestrians’ site remained. Speaking to people who movement. The restrictions in the form lived in the bylanes around the property, of regulation from the state not only the study team uncovered a remarkable reduced the space physically but also history of what the Begum was like, emotionally in the mind spaces of people. and how she protected and nurtured Now protests are only allowed at a few an entire community of autowallahs, places in the city. For the mainstream tongawallahs, hijras, sex workers, public, who are used to seeing these mechanics, scrap dealers and many others. repeated protests at one spot, every Rumours about the burning of her house other day, the issues mean little. Also, after her death led to conjecture about opposing groups use the same spaces to how to re-build a community’s narrative register their group’s point, diluting the around rumours or hearasay. This led to impact of the issues somewhat. the development of a play, scripted by the members of the team. Freedom Begum The story of Begum Mahal is not just Bengaluru has gone through drastic the story of Bengaluru’s transformation, changes, and spaces that were built but the story of every Indian city by the working-class trans and queer that has lost several open, inclusive communities have been snatched away or spaces of expression, conversation, demolished. The new developments have resistance, and freedom. not only erased and displaced histories, neighbourhoods, and communities but A NOTE ON DISCRIMINATION destroyed an entire way of living and our Discrimination in public spaces occurs relationship to the city. The kind of urban in multiple contexts. Non-normative “development” is also very telling of how bodies and expressions routinely face the city has changed and in whose favour, varied forms of violence such as lynching, by excluding all working classes and beating, sexual assault, general assault, those marginalised by gender, caste, and and murder, for merely occupying these sexuality. spaces. In many cases, the public have

28 taken it upon themselves to punish, agencies refuse to register complaints. reprimand, and teach a lesson to those They are often turned away as there is who are non-normative all in the name no dignity for the non-normative bodies of morality, fundamentalist prejudices, and expressions. On the other hand an effort to show the depressed caste persons with normative bodies and their and class their “right place”, or even expressions somehow gain legitimacy to corrective punishments. Apart from regulate the non-normative. visible forms of violence, the queer and OUTPUTS trans communities also face humiliation, n verbal abuse, insults, and ridicule in public Research Report spaces. When queer and trans persons n Freedom Begum – The Play (based face public harassment, the police or state on findings from the study)

BIOMEDICINE AND HEALTHCARE

FINDINGS to understand terms of inclusion, and by extension, forms of discrimination. The team studying non-normative genders and sexualities in biomedicine The study also demonstrated that expert and healthcare, outlined several themes behaviours that supported these codes of emerging from their research. “marking” also stemmed from an absence of perspectival training on gender-­ On meanings of access sexuality, that ill ­prepared practitioners to The methodological impulse for the study notice and understand the gendering and began with the absence of discrimination inequalities of power along other axes as an analytic in biomedicine and that informed clinical situations. healthcare, with terminologies of “bias” Standard Training vs perspectival or stigma instead to denote any sense training and who is a “Good Doctor” of injustice, inequality of access, or error. Access has traditionally been understood The study therefore questions the in terms of distance or unavailability of impacts and meanings of standard medical treatments or practitioners, but we found training rather than point to simple that in the field and in the vocabularies of omissions, and asks whether this form of practice, it could be coded in many ways, training actually enables discrimination. ranging from overt denial of treatment, Standard medical training is meant referral as a mechanism since “other docs to “arrive at a diagnosis”, as making or hospitals” are now available, or codes connections with social determinants of “marking” within hospital settings for of health as “risk factors”, not as social those who came for HIV treatment, for context, and is not seen as discriminatory example, or those who looked a certain or ghettoising. Most training is also way and were then treated as “at risk”. instructor-centric, with the consolidation Failure of access, then, becomes a way of the teacher-doctor­ as icon-expert,­

29 while the text is a distant but constant privileged caste and class locations. point of reference. This iconicity meshed This has a direct impact on practice as well with forms of hegemonic masculinity, student interns are more likely to ask with a symbolic mobilising of the “ascetic about sexual history if a “truck driver” knowledgeable singular” figure, both or “prostitute” comes into an outreach scientific and Brahminical. clinic than if a married, pregnant woman Gender-sexuality in medical curriculum comes in. Medicalised language was found to have somewhat replaced pathologising The study attempted to undertake critical language in medical texts. In expert curriculum analysis, taking direction from naming and categorisation of persons, that workshops with students of medicine, which gets left out like self-identification public health, and women’s studies. During and social distress that is not medically these workshops, questions around the legible – does not get entertained as valid. entry of gender-sexuality into curricula The use of medicalised language gives provided vignettes from specific texts and legitimacy to expert naming of identities clues into pedagogy and context within in ways that are often out of touch with which analysis could be framed. The team reality. Medico-legal language in medical found that mention of non-normative texts dictates not only what is legal and sexuality and gender are absent or rare in “normal” but also what is “natural”. textbooks. In these prescribed textbooks Rape, incest, and adultery are classified there is no distinction made between sex as natural offences while sodomy and and gender and there are no discussions tribadism (or lesbianism) are classified on sexual orientation or gender identity. as unnatural offences. It also categorizes The content and language of texts centres “transvestism” as a sexual perversion reproductive heterosexuality and gender along with sadism, masochism, and binarism, as discussed in detail below. masturbation, putting them in the same Language of medical texts classification as necrophilia.Museumized The language of the medical text can language of medical texts spatially and have repercussions on the ways in which temporally displaces queer bodies and practitioners speak to, speak about, and identities. Terms such as transsexualists speak with others. The team found that or transvestitism are neither consistent the appearance of gender and sexuality with currently established standards in medical texts generates notions of nor respectful of lived realities of normativity and delineates that which trans* people who have been fighting it marks as “unnatural” in several ways: for the right to self-determination and centring of demographic language in recognition by the state. The distance medical texts where personal biases of between curricular language and clinical the author and outdated epidemiological experience forces curricular learning to data produces a clear demarcation of stagnate and the chasm between learning those who are “at risk” and those located and practice becomes normalised, while some distance away from risk– married, the textbook continues to serve as a heterosexual, monogamous people from reference point for what is abnormal

30 and creating contexts for many micro-­ drivers” or other “at-risk” categories. discriminations (see report for details). However, these categorisations, and the stereotyping following them, was not Earlier histories of gender-sexuality in merely a simple instance of institutional the clinic and the rise of community authoritarianism, but a generation of Several participants in the study had practices and shared terminologies been part of the early HIV work that between institution and community – in created not only frameworks within other words, a shared language of the which bodies and identities were meanings of and exhortations to health. produced in the clinic, but also the With the extension of surveillance/ idea of “community” that involved both diligence/ vigilance across drop-in- extended sites of institutionalisation centres (DICs), peer educators, etc., and the sites of collectivisation and the institution follows the at-risk political consciousness. There is extensive identity outside too, in the shape of literature on the specific contexts and moral injunctions to “good behaviour” histories within which we see the entry and safety if not complete reformation of what are broadly referred to as non- as a prerequisite to a good life. This normative genders and sexualities into proliferation of sites of institutionalisation the modern western clinic and healthcare helped thicken meanings of discrimination system in the Indian context under the and access – the institution not only limits rubric of what has been termed the entry, it also sets terms of entry and exit. “HIV/ AIDS epidemic”. Here we see the And yet, in these very spaces fraught with healthcare system as representative of surveillance and hypervisibility, aspirations the biomedical model, and the discourse flourished. The study participants of public health as the framework within spoke of the DICs as a space where which we see the entry and production of the “community” flourished, where these bodies. We might suggest, also, that people who led otherwise closeted lives these are almost the first vocabularies of found an affirmative language of gender gender-sexuality outside the reproductive expression, who found livelihoods, who that exceed, somewhat, the merely found an opportunity to accept risk as a demographic within healthcare, although manageable entity that did not entirely that is where they begin. Radhika define them. Ramasubban (1998, 2007), Nambiar (2012) and others have detailed some The idea of the “community” is what of these histories, and talked about the we were able to thicken here, through overlaps and conflicts between languages an understanding of how both distress of sexual and health rights. Conversations and aspiration live alongside each other. with members of “community” produced We understood, also, that for marginal several understandings. One, their groups, the relationship with and within reflections on HIV work in the 90s community, as well as the presence of helped mark that period as the one the state, were different from the way in of consolidation of behaviour-identity which the same played out vis-à-vis more connections – whether it be “truck privileged groups.

31 Languages of collectivisation A NOTE ON DISCRIMINATION Study participants spoke of ways in Discrimination here is used as an analytic which they challenged the vocabulary to understand access to healthcare of HIV interventions, moved from from within. Difficulty of access has developmental to political work, adopted traditionally been understood in terms alternative directions and strategies, of distance or unavailability of treatments focussing on rights and care work instead or practitioners. But in the field and in the vocabularies of practice, access and of targets, making systems accountable. discrimination are coded in many ways: Those who identified as queer feminist ranging from overt denial of treatment; activists in this work also critiqued the referral as a mechanism since “other docs romanticisation of “community”, pointing or hospitals” are now available; codes of to how public-health interventions or naming within hospital settings that are work around HIV provided a route to different from before and yet are more or collectivisation, but also new forms of less universally recognisable (for example, discrimination against women within and from having red markers that used to be outside of the “target groups”. hung on the beds of those who were HIV- positive, to the present context where From marking to crafting there are no red markers but the files and The mobilising of both distress and other documents of HIV positive patients aspiration emerged in and through carry “USP” (universal safety precautions) interviews with practitioners involved in bold letters; existence of double gloving with gender affirmative work in the or autoclaving of instruments as a practice study. Practitioners appeared as both for particular patients and so on. This is the frame, alongside discrimination as an arbiters and allies in this work, in a analytic, that is useful to understand both seeming shift from earlier ways of incidents and contexts and it was not “marking” particular bodies or identities exclusions within the frame, but in its very as risky, to a heady collaborative crafting constitution, that discrimination can be of bodies and gender in the clinic. In understood. the study findings across public and private healthcare settings, however, the OUTPUTS continuing standards of gender binarism, Towards research reproductive sexuality as norm, of this 1. An edited volume or special crafting being a non-vital exercise, and journal issue on Feminist Queer most importantly, the role of the “genius understanding of Healthcare surgeon” as arbiter, served as a useful discrimination is proposed with commentary on the links between contributions from health activists, masculinity and medical fields, and an feminist queer activists, medical attitude towards gender and difference practitioners who have worked on that determine the nature of bodies HIV programmes and researchers in crafted in the clinic. social sciences and public health.

32 2. Two articles, namely – “Gender advocating for diversity in the pool Affirmative Technologies and the of medical practitioners. contemporary making of gender 5. Curricular material on gender- in India”, Achuthan (2019), as part sexuality and health for women’s of an edited collection on Affective studies courses in 2 non-English Technologies; and “Appearance languages has been designed. of Gender-Sexuality in Medical Curriculum in India: A critical Advocacy analysis of the language of medical 6. Advocacy handbooks in 4 non- texts”, Singh and Achuthan (2019) English languages to take findings have been submitted and prepared back to organisations that work respectively. on gender, sexuality and health, 3. Workshop modules for social queer groups and communities, science students have been student groups, and women’s conducted to translate some of the movement spaces. project findings into interdisciplinary WAYS FORWARD learnings and dialogue. This will provide frameworks for inter- In talking about revisiting the normative, sectoral dialogue across queer or asking the question again of “what is to feminist and healthcare disciplines. be done”, training is one of the responses. Is training for standardisation? The study Towards curriculum tries to ask if provisional, revised models 4. A workshop was conducted at of history-taking,­ taking into account NIMHANS, Bangalore with the not just gender–sexuality but thickening healthcare discrimination team symptoms in particular, are possible. in collaboration with medical These are different from learning-on-the- practitioners and professors on 10th job. From the histories of collectivisation August 2019. Medical practitioners, and critiques of institutionalisation, as students of medicine, and social well as emerging vocabularies from within science researchers attended the community activism, the study also asks workshop that helped practitioners, the question of these models needing students, and teachers reflect on to be collaboratively built with persons existing curriculum, training, and named as clients, with other knowledge practice. It included presentations communities including academic on experiences of bringing gender- disciplines and campaigns, including sexuality into medical practice, terminology used. Terminology has to be developing protocols for gender based on self-identification rather than affirmative procedures, advocating expert naming of persons or behaviours for terminologies developed or disease, and needs to be acknowledged collaboratively between communities as such. Some case history formats have and doctors, advocating for shifts in been developed in this regard and are perspective on mental health, and represented in the report.

33 HEALTHCARE DISCRIMINATION FINDINGS to clients who wish to convert from homosexual to heterosexual or offer The team studying healthcare treatments to those who do not identify discrimination experiences of non- with the gender they were assigned at normative genders and sexualities birth. Almost all such offers of treatment communities listed the following themes conflate identity and behaviour. The emerging from their research. treatments themselves tend to be violent “Experiencing” Discrimination and degrading. The study found that while healthcare Non-normative Origins professionals don’t view their own The study found that healthcare actions as being discriminatory, the professionals continue to have an community accessing it speak about their experiences with language and emotions obsession with proving the aetiology that can be understood as discrimination. of the non-normative. Rather than Healthcare spaces are designed to be safe, understanding the source of the distress but for the “client” from the community making clients access healthcare, negative emotional reaction renders the professionals spend more time decoding space unsafe. Respondents agree that to a why the client is non-normative and large extent healthcare spaces tend to be trying to link it to some psychological violent to those who are perceived to be damage or behavioural pattern that can non-normative. be corrected. Judging Bodies, Appearance, and Identities Power The study found that the obsession of In recent years, healthcare delivery has healthcare professionals with establishing transformed the doctor from a god- “normal” bodies, genders, and sexualities like figure to a service provider. But produce with it the privilege to decide most non-normative communities have who gets to be “normal” and who does not experienced that transformation. not. One important finding from the Respondent narratives indicate that study was that both gender appearance many doctors use their position of and performance had a significant power to claim knowledge about the negative impact on the healthcare client’s concerns even if they have experience. In fact, this stood out in the no experience with non-normative data regardless of education, occupation communities. In addition, actual exhibition or age of the participant. of power by healthcare professionals such as withholding treatment or pushing Conversion Therapies the client to accept their advice or The study found that many respondents diagnosis are still practiced. The study had experience with conversion found resemblances with casteist and therapies. Medical spaces reach out classist practices when a few healthcare

34 practitioners deal with gender non- judgmental than most mainstream conforming clients. The study also notes healthcare services for HIV treatment. that doctors who provide healthcare Violence service without judgment impress community members by doing their job The study collected many narratives from efficiently, even if they do not talk and are respondents for whom the healthcare asocial to clients. system has been violent. Respondents shared experiences of healthcare Families and Access professionals refusing to touch and treat Parents of non-normative persons tend community members, verbally abusing to make their living situation and health them, isolating them, refusing access to seeking experience worse. In addition, doctors, physically hurting them, and even healthcare education as well as practice sexually harassing them while providing reinforces the family and marriage as a medical assistance. In addition to refusal life achievement, so LGBTHQIA+ people to provide treatments, ridiculing the find that their lives are considered client’s self-expressed gender identity, unimportant or their opinions are ignoring the client’s own experience and dismissed because they don’t have familiarity with their journeys, conflating all illness and even road accidents as parental support. Agency over body, being consequence of their identity or gender, or sexuality is always in the immorality are also reported. hands of families, especially in female- born gender and sexuality communities. Surgeries The same standards are followed in the The study found that safety was the context of gender expression and the primary issue in gender affirmative “normal” body. surgery. But there are still not enough HIV and Access medical institutions offering safe surgeries for transmen. However, “corrective” HIV treatment is still an area of concern surgical intervention on intersex peoples’ for affected non-normative communities. bodies is conducted before adolescence The double stigma of sexuality and HIV or before they develop a gender and are still bound together for sero-positive sexuality identity of their own. In some respondents. Privacy at treatment centres cases where surgeries are offered by is not valued and stereotypes about inexperienced or insensitive surgeons, people accessing these treatments are experiences of violent side-effects, body common. Respondents crave anonymity, parts falling off, and other health concerns but in these treatment spaces, it is hard are also reported. to be anonymous when you are non- normative. In this context, respondents Privacy and Dignity say that practitioners of complementary The team noted that concerns around and alternative medicine (CAM) were privacy and dignity are repeatedly far less intimidating, and more non- brought up by respondents. Medical

35 college or teaching hospitals stand as a developing a better understanding of repeated source for violations with most healthcare discrimination. community members, mostly because the Dissemination programmes and reports doctors force them to undress and reveal their bodies and/or infections to students 1. Preliminary report dissemination randomly called into the room without 28th-29th June 2018 in TISS, Mumbai asking for explicit permission leading 2. Preliminary report dissemination to embarrassment and humiliation. The 4th November 2018, to medical experience is exacerbated when the “case students, Kolkata is unique” (when intersex or transgender people visit these institutions). 3. Preliminary report submission (this document) A NOTE ON DISCRIMINATION 4. Detailed analysis final report Social perception sees healthcare (forthcoming) practitioners as persons with higher Continuing Medical Education (CME) public moral standing. But respondent Programmes narratives have shown that personal prejudice and traditionalist gender and 5. Presentation at CME on “Gender sexuality frameworks continue to play a Identities: Medico-Socio-Legal part in professional healthcare practice. Aspects”, at M. S. Ramaiah Hospital, The result is that healthcare professionals 18th August 2018, Bengaluru become part of socialisation processes 6. Presentation at CME on that enforce gender and sexuality norms. “Adolescence: Contemporary And, within such practice, the non- issues in the clinic and beyond”, normative person can experience every 15-16th March 2019, Department comment, look, touch, diagnosis, and of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, treatment as discriminatory. Feeling NIMHANS, Bengaluru unsafe in healthcare spaces, being Conference Papers and Workshops judged for their appearance or identity, receiving conversion therapies aimed at 7. “Hegemony of the ‘Normal’: making them “normal”, forcing normative Healthcare Discrimination of expectations on them, prioritising LGBTQIA in Southern India”. procreative family units, or facing Presentation at 14th World outright violence, persons who have Congress of Bioethics (WCB) and non-normative genders and sexualities 7th National Bioethics Conference experience all forms of discrimination. (NBC), 6th December 2018, St. John’s National Academy of Health OUTPUTS Sciences, Bengaluru This study continues to interview 8. “Experiencing Medicine as participants and hopes to build an Discrimination: LGBTQIA archive of experiences that can help with Narratives of Healthcare

36 Discrimination”. Presentation at a deconstruct how prejudice is taught panel titled “Transforming Gender and/or practiced in healthcare. and Sexuality Teaching in Medicine: An LGBTQIA Perspective” at 14th n Healthcare practitioners have to WCB and 7th NBC, 6th December understand the impact that their 2018, St. John’s National Academy of stereotyped understanding and Health Sciences, Bengaluru assumptions about gender and sexual behaviours or identities have 9. “Experiences of persons with non- on non-normative persons. normative genders and sexualities”. Presentation at 5th Public Health n Any medical intervention on non- Symposium: LGBTI Health, 9-10th normative bodies, genders, and/ March, 2019, Department of or sexualities, has to accompany Community Medicine and School of sharing of knowledge about Public Health, PGIMER, Chandigarh procedures and possible outcomes, 10. “Community Experiences of to obtain full and informed consent Discrimination in Healthcare”. of the client. Presentation at Sexual and n Family input has to be understood Reproductive Rights in India: Social only in context and cannot take Movements and Legal Battles, 14th- precedence over the client’s own 15th April 2019, Centre for Law and priorities. Policy Research, Bengaluru n Healthcare professionals are 11. Presentation at Workshop for medical students, healthcare obligated to build networks with practitioners, social science community groups and other researchers, and others “Building service providers through regular Perspectives on Gender and collaboration and build confidence Sexuality –– LGBTQHKIA+ in healthcare delivery systems. communities and Healthcare” on n The language and experiences 10th August, 2019, NIMHANS, within the gender and sexuality Bengaluru (collaboration between spectrum evolve quickly and indicate ACWS, TISS, Mumbai; Department a need for healthcare providers to of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, NIMHANS, Bengaluru; and keep up-to-date. Swabhava, Bengaluru). n LGBTHQIA+ support groups WAYS FORWARD cannot be undercut due to the benefits they provide. Traditional Using the study narratives, some ways families must also be encouraged forward are suggested below. to access support systems to help n The complexity of discrimination understand their loved one’s gender experiences highlights the need to or sexuality.

37 An Exploratory Study of Discriminations based on Non-Normative Genders and Sexualities 3

Studying the Normative and Discrimination based on Gender and Sexuality in Education

Chayanika Shah and Ditilekha Sharma Studying the Normative and Discrimination based on Gender and Sexuality in Education Introduction

ducation plays many roles in our and non-discrimination are not part of Elives. When Dr Ambedkar gave the most of our lived realities. Hence they slogan of “Educate, Organise, Agitate”, need to be inculcated, learnt, and evolved he referred to the potential of acquiring as part of our thinking process so that knowledge beyond the immediate we respond differently and more openly experiential, that every human being to the spaces and people we encounter, has access to and constructs through their lifetime. He believed in the vision especially to those realities that are of learning to know more, having a different from our own. world view that expanded beyond The target of education is primarily the the immediate and also participating young. The formal education process then in this process of knowledge is also the space that they inhabit building to create a different world. By connecting educate to organise and where they get acquainted with the agitate he completely underlined the larger society and its processes and transformative potential of education. interactions outside of the natal or the “home” where they grow up. While this This potential of transformation at the process could and probably should lead individual and the collective level that to knowing of different ways of being education provides, however, comes with the other agenda of a nation – that from what they see in their immediate of making good citizens educated into surroundings, most often the education a worldview that the powerful and the system is used to groom them into dominant decision-makers want for all accepting prevalent norms around all the people. Education thus also becomes social codes. Normativity, in the name of necessary and important for everyone, collective socialisation, hence gets woven and particularly for those that do not into the process of education. It is this fit in, to be “successful” in the world, to tension of “what can be” and “what access and achieve one’s aspirations. is” that makes education a particularly The society we grow up in is hierarchical interesting site to study “discrimination” and unequal and the tenets of equality and “non-normativities” of all kinds.

41 Narrowing the Field

This study was made more specific that were earlier excluded from formal in its scope by making its main focus, spaces of knowledge-making and sharing. higher education. The public University The principle of inclusive and State is a space which is more representative supported education led to the creation of the diversity in society as compared of the public University and subsidised to a school in present times. It is this education for a few was made possible. diversity and the possibility of exposure Affirmative actions like reservation to different kinds of people within of seats, specifically for those outcast higher education institutions (HEIs) and because of their caste backgrounds, the system of higher education itself and for inclusion of tribal populations which lends to help make any study within the mainstream were some of discrimination more complex and such steps. At the same time separate rich. And yet, this aspect of the public women’s universities and colleges or University system is rapidly changing right even protected introduction of women before us. students in co-educational spaces were While the modern University claims similar steps to ensure that the University to have moved far away from its early became a space open to all. In reality, antecedents like the centres of education however, equality and access are not easy of the European nobility or, as in our goals to achieve in a hierarchical society context, the gurukuls and other centres such as India. made primarily for Brahmin men, it has In 1989, the Mandal commission report remained dominated by the able bodied, brought back the attention of the nation “sound mind”, dominant caste, upper- to the continuing caste hierarchies class men, and everyone other than these and the systemic and systematic dis- have been consciously brought in through privileging of the marginal populations of active interventions. Dalit and Bahujan communities. While In post-independence India, with the the report itself highlighted the plight vision of inclusion and justice enshrined of those from the margins, the strident within the making of this democracy, Brahminical voices, that rose in ferocious efforts were specifically made to provide anger against the Mandal report, raised access to those sections of society a rabid sentiment against the affirmative

42 action granted through reservation in religion, and gender create multiple rifts education and employment. Since then amongst the student populations as well. reservation in admission especially to So while there are more seats and more coveted programmes and Institutions has people from marginalised sections of been constantly opposed under the bogey society can access higher education, of “merit” and “ability”. Almost as if to it also comes at the cost of an openly camouflage the anti-caste sentiments of discriminatory rhetoric against affirmative the upper-caste Hindus, this is also the action of any kind emphasised as time when the larger and louder voice the argument of merit in academic of right-wing Hindutva forces unleashed institutions. And yet, the larger numbers their attacks on Muslims (and later of those who have made it against all the Christian populations) the largest odds, has helped build strong opposition religious minority in the country. and resistance to this nominal inclusion. Alongside all of this, the 90s also saw a This is evident from the fact that during change in the nature of the State itself. the period of the study (from June 2016 The economy was liberalised leading to June 2018) a number of protests and to a shift from the promise of a welfare actions reverberated in campuses across the country demanding that public funded State to a clearly capitalist and corporate education be accountable to the needs State with immense surveillance and and realities of those that it has included. military power. And alongside grew the So in a sense complex conversations on consistent and strident reassertion of the discrimination have been ongoing in these Brahminical patriarchy through Hindutva spaces, and we used that in our study. motivated right-wing politics gaining political and social power. Since we were concentrating on non- normative gender and sexuality in One of the ways that Mandal got particular, there was another aspect implemented in policy is by providing which indicated that higher education entry to more people from marginalised would be more appropriate for our communities through a systematic exploration. The University caters to increase in the number of seats available young adults and provides for spaces in any HEI. This increase in seats gave rise for exploration of the self. In that sense to the mushrooming of a huge number then, the clash between the disciplining of private institutions, which are not and the explorations also acquires a new subsidised by the State and also led to dimension as far as gender and sexuality an increase in the intervention of private expressions go. By the time people enter or unaided education even in the public the University, as young adults they are University system because of reduction in a better space to find the language to in budgets for higher education. This speak about their gender and sexuality has changed the very character of public as well as the nature of the normative, education and created a situation in systemic and individual discriminations which complex hierarchies of caste, class, that they may face.

43 Methods Used

The first question that we are faced with the experience of negative discrimination when trying to understand education is at all levels of access, accessibility, that of access and accessibility. Both of alienation, as well as the positive of these happen in multiple ways – from celebration of difference and diversity. In how institutions are made and where the process we attempt to unravel the they are located, to actual rules and layered marginalisations across multiple regulations that control those admitted, axes as well as document some of the the classroom transactions and the very ways in which not being able to fit in core content of the materials taught. actually contributed to making an impact They work for some magnificently and on the normative itself. for some others these same processes could lead to pushing them out—either The following two broad approaches as active discontinuation or alienation at have been used in this study. multiple levels. QUEER NARRATIVES Along with this there is also the Queer1 Narratives which includes possibility of freedom and liberation narratives of people who are currently in again in both the material and an higher educational institutes and people intellectual sense. This could be through who had been able to access higher being able to master the normative education in the past. This includes narrative and the demands of the system. narratives of queer students as well as But it could also be due to that leap of imagination which may just happen or 1 Queer here is being used in the widest sense of the word. It is essentially a be triggered by anything in the process challenge to the normative from the of education. These together could lead perspective of gender and sexuality. At to anything—to creation of normative times our respondents used it to describe selves even when there is the possibility themselves or their work, but they could of being different or the blooming of the also use more specific identity-based terms like hijra, gay, lesbian, trans, etc. For non-normative. us it is the way to describe the non- normative and this open-endedness also In mapping discrimination around non- helped us understand the multiple ways in normative genders and sexualities, hence which normative and non-normative are we paid attention to all of the above— constructed.

44 Queer PAGMB Interviews

Personal Narratives Teachers Consultation Writing Workshop Current Students Blog Writing

Campus Mapping and Architecture Campus Geographies Informal Conversations

Conversation with CASH Committees Redressal Mechanisms Conversation with Student Groups

Image 1: Methods Used teachers who are queering education. As part of this we have done 22 detailed The methods of collecting these non-structured interviews collected in narratives also vary across different the cities of Bombay and Kolkata. We groups of people. chose Mumbai because we were based here but Kolkata was chosen because Qualitative Life History Interviews we had access to a group there and These were done with persons assigned the larger project did not have a team male at birth to understand their in the East of the country. The Kolkata navigation of the education system along respondents were contacted through an with their other experiences of growing organisaton working with transwomen up and finding ways to understand their there while the Mumbai respondents gender identity and sexual orientation. were contacted through snowball Through this reflexive exercise our sampling. respondents reflected back on their life We conducted 8 interviews in in school and college. In this study, we Kolkata and 14 in Mumbai. A lot of looked at only the narratives of those the participants, especially the ones in assigned male at birth because there Mumbai, have migrated across various exists another study of those assigned towns and cities in the country and female at birth which does some of these explorations.2 Understanding concerns and realities of queer persons assigned gender female at 2 LABIA – A Queer Feminist LBT birth across a spectrum of lived gender Collective (2013) Breaking the Binary: identities. Mumbai.

45 some outside the country. So the Closet” which can still be accessed.3 The experiences are of different kinds blog has been active since November of educational institutions across 2017 and we have uploaded 66 posts different parts of the country. Of since then. the 22 participants, 9 identified as transwomen and around 5 identified Teachers’ Narratives as trans* or other than men. The age To collect teachers’ experiences of both group ranged from 18 to 42 years. Their sides of the classroom (as students and highest qualification ranged from as teachers) we organised an intensive the 1st year of undergraduate study consultation which had 15 teachers to completion of Ph.D. from across disciplines and universities. Their diverse disciplines were also Narratives of those Identifying Queer important because along with their and who are Currently Students personal experience we were trying To capture the daily experience of to collate their efforts at queering being queer on campus, we decided not only the space of the HEI but also to ask some students who identify as the transactions in the classroom. queer to write about their experiences We initiated discussions on how we on campus. The idea here was to talk understood education itself, how we about what they perceived as relevant understood queering in each of our to them. Initial efforts at getting them disciplines, as well as our interactions to write a journal were later supported as teachers in the classroom, in the staff with writing workshops with some room, and with the Institution itself, of them in two locations, Kolkata and and found a lot of resonance across Mumbai. These were done with 14 disciplines and institutions as well as students who were then studying in across time. campuses across Bombay, Bangalore, Kolkata, Bhuveneshwar, Banaras, and LOOKING AT INSTITUTIONS Guwahati. These interactive workshops THEMSELVES helped create a space where those Besides looking at the direct experiences attending shared some of their of those considered different, we also experiences and concerns. wanted to study the basic institutions In the discussions and the subsequent themselves to better understand how writing, what came up was what they normativity is part of the way in which considered relevant to their queer Institutions structure themselves. This presence on campus. This approach gave is an important part of the study of a larger scope to understand their broad discrimination of any sorts because lived experience and not confine it to studying what is prevalent also points the limited area of explicit discrimination to the structural ways in which this and injustice. An outcome of the writing exclusion happens. We used two very workshop is a blog called “The Glass 3 https://theglassclosetsblog.wordpress.com/

46 limited and yet unique approaches to a campus was in its structure, we got study this. some very interesting insights into the ways in which the plan and design of the Campus Mapping campuses themselves were exclusive and Student housing has been very gender meant for certain populations. segregated and has been a point of Redressal Mechanisms contestation in recent times. A lot of the times segregation on the basis of The anti sexual harassment committees gender is an in-built part of rules and are seen as a form of an anti- regulations in the Institution. Besides discrimination mechanism available to the policies that may and can change, we all work spaces. Besides this, it is one decided to study how the imagination kind redressal mechanism available of the Institute gets reflected in the to all members of the campus whose ways in which it is planned and designed. mandate also makes them discuss and The question that we asked of the deal with gender and sexuality issues. We infrastructure and the built environment had conversations with some of these was, “How accessible is the campus and committee members as well as student its infrastructure?” groups involved in advocacy on some of Our primary method of analysis was these issues to understand the ways in looking at plans and designs and walking which gender and sexuality get framed through the campuses ourselves. along with other marginalisations of Besides this we spoke to some groups power hierarchies within the Institution of residents on each campus depending as well as those of caste, ability, religions, on how accessible they were. We and so on. These discussions were held chose somewhat single discipline five in Delhi, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Mumbai, campuses across three cities. These and Pune. The conversations were either were IIT (primarily technology) and TISS one-on-one interviews or free flowing (primarily social sciences) in Bombay, group discussions trying to understand IIM (management) and NID (design) how internal mechanisms work and in Ahmedabad, and NLSIU (law) in what are the pitfalls of accepting similar Bengaluru. In trying to see how inclusive mechanisms for other kinds of targeting.

47 Experience of doing a Multi-Method Study

Since this study was exploratory, we these found reflections in our work as well used a multi-method approach to study since the two of us from the team also different parts of the whole. While each of occupy activist locations within the larger these parts deserve independent output queer, trans and feminist movements. by themselves, and some are complete So our outputs also reflect some while others are in the pipeline, together of our wider engagements they gave us some insights which we share Our starting question was never around here. Since the idea of the whole study is discrimination. In any part of the study essentially to understand discrimination when we looked at narratives, we tried and normativity, we share here what came to ask people to engage with the larger to be understood as the nature of the question of their experiences of being normative in our field and also the broad queer people in the education system and nature of the exclusion and discrimination speak of it as a whole. We did not want in higher education in particular. to only look at the larger exceptional We would also like to note that this study incidents and events, our attempt was period was of great churning as far as HEIs to understand the quotidian. The daily were concerned. The field as it were was experience of being this queer body constantly being challenged and changing. on campus is critical because it has not The #MeToo and the LoSHA, which both been spoken of and it also gives a better began in the academic spaces and also context within which to understand other struggles by students on inclusive the more identifiable incidents of education were happening alongside as discrimination. These broader narratives we carried out these discussions.4 Many of also helped understand non-normativity better because it changed from person 4 Me Too (or #MeToo) is a movement against sexual harassment and sexual assault. While to person and also in a person’s life as the tag “MeToo” was first used in 2006, in they lived it. Looking for inclusion in the October 2017 it spread virally as a hashtag architecture and understanding the CASH on social media across different countries (Committee against Sexual Harassment) and successfully demonstrated not only the widespread prevalence of sexual assault and mechanisms helped us understand the harassment, especially in the workplace, but limits of what was possible, while also also the systemic apathy towards redressing place gender and sexuality in the larger it. In India on October 24, 2017, Raya Sarkar context of other marginalisations. published a list of well known academics in India accused of sexual harassment, either Later this came to be known as the LoSHA publicly or in more private conversations. (List of Sexual Harassers in Academia) and They put it out on Facebook with the sparked much conversation and debate consent of the persons who were harassed. although not enough action.

48 Image 2: At the dissemination meeting in TISS, Mumbai in June 2018, as part of the campus architecture poster exhibition, we placed a model of an area in TISS which has maximum footfall during the day. We asked passers by, students and others, to give suggestions of how the open spaces could be used.

49 Findings of the Study

In our work while we did get however, we would like to highlight the some concrete examples of how two broad themes that emerged. discrimination works and is perceived n The idea of the normative, what by those facing it, what also emerged, at practices and systems hold it up, times quite insistently, however, are the and who and what all does it then mechanisms and broad processes that marginalise and exclude. uphold, and in a way, maintain the very n Understanding inclusive and structures that lead to discrimination. accessible higher education as we The various outputs that emerge from look at the system from the lens of this work will deal with the details of those not included in the normative each of these findings. In this report, as understood above.

The daily experience of being this queer body on campus is critical because it has not been spoken of and it also gives a better context within which to understand the more identifiable incidents of discrimination.

Looking for inclusion in the architecture and understanding the CASH mechanisms helped us understand the limits of what was possible, while placing gender and sexuality in the larger context of other marginalisations.

50 I. Making of the Heterosexual Binary Through the Schooling of the Masculine

Various bits of our work showed us who this begins at school and also how this the system is meant for—for whom schooling into masculinity takes place is it truly and easily accessible, or who through normalisation of violence and does not have to hide oneself and be bullying. What was striking for us was on constant guard to be able to really how violence was the way of being in “fit” in. The masculine most clearly schools, particularly for “boys”. And emerged as one of the definitives of this violence is perpetrated by both the normative. Most horrifyingly, we teachers and peers. In a way, disciplining found from our work that the masculine through violence that the teachers did characteristics were ingrained and became a way for peers too. Not only enforced through rejection, ridiculing, did they police each other but bullying and undermining of what is seen as “non- itself became a way of making bonds masculine”. While in the imagination of and interacting with each other. Bullying the binary this leads to making of “good is directed at those perceived as “non- boys/men” and “good girls/women”, masculine” and “soft”, and hence “weak”. it is clear that it is the masculine that To an extent this finding was not new is revered. Everything else is termed but that this was done by boys as feminine and bestowed on those not young as seven or eight years and was considered “men/boys”. If the “woman/ condoned in school, revealed to us how girl” acquires “masculinity” it is not this making of the masculine was clearly rejected in the same way as the reverse a project of the school as much as it was is done to a “man/boy”, unless of course of the larger society. it violates the code of heterosexuality which is another clearly present Many of our respondents had tried normative.5 So our first major finding dressing in more feminine clothes as is around how education contributes to young kids at home, but this kind of the making of the masculine. expression was totally condemned and disallowed in school. Not only clothes, Our reflective narrative interviews with mannerisms too were very closely those assigned male clearly indicate how scrutinised and monitored. It could 5 Shah, C, et al (2015) No Outlaws in the be the way people talked, walked, ran, Gender Galaxy. (p. 69-88) Zubaan: New Delhi. laughed, or even the games that they

51 chose to play. Violence is the norm even bullies, making friends with them, and if the degree of violence varied from joining in or silently encouraging them name-calling to hitting. And there are in bullying someone who is seen as no redressal mechanisms anywhere, “less masculine”, thereby saving oneself. either in the school, the family, or the Yet others make friends with nerds or neighbourhood. In fact, complaining is sometimes find others like themselves or actively discouraged by teachers and end up isolating themselves and finding parents as they also agree with this solace in books or fantasies. Some schooling of unacceptable behaviour. So learn very young that they have to over neither the home nor the school were compensate by being good in studies or spaces where young people could be sports or extra curriculars. who they wanted to be. Thus without explicitly talking about Gender coding seems to be worked out it, but at the same time by tacitly very clearly and any “boy” seemingly encouraging it, masculinity is nurtured. doing “non-boy”-like things is subjected And in its very imagination it is derisive to bullying to such a degree that most of the “non-masculine”, all lumped people admitted to self-censorship together under the label of “feminine”, as a method of coping and surviving. looked down on, seen as worthy of They start “hiding” or “lying” or “over- ridicule and bullying, deemed less compensating” and those who cannot worthy, and recognised as an easy drop out from the system itself. Those target for violence. So the making of who survive, do so often at the cost of masculinity not only genders the “boys” a lot of harm to the self. Sometimes it it also simultaneously constructs the is that one compassionate teacher or feminine in which “girls” are nurtured a few friends who help. Often though by the teachers, the family, and coping is done by joining in with the other significant adults.

“The school was extremely good in terms of the teaching and other standards but sadly by the time I reached the 4th standard I remember the bullying had started. I was called bailya which means a sissy. And essentially I was called this because I was girly, I talked in a certain way, I walked in a certain way, played like a girl. So by the time I hit puberty my negativity had grown on me so much that I found it very difficult to hear my own voice because I thought it was an unhealthy mix of a man and a woman and it was not good also. And I did not like my shadow. I had really issues at looking at my shadow. I did not like to look at myself in the mirror.”

A, a gay man respondent in the qualitative interviews

52 Along with the monitoring of gendered of both, desire and sex, and some times behaviours there is also the closely even romance! The dominant discourse entangled sexual persona as well. Desire becomes that of objectification/ is also camouflaged like other undesired sexualising of girls and women, their markers of identity. As much as violence peers, as well as teachers, and also is an ever present part of young boys’ the feminine boys. The taboo around lived realities, there is also interaction talking of sexual desire, along with the that takes place through sexual normalisation of this sexual violence exploration and sexual abuse. Sometimes later leads to making the making of the exploration is fun and friendly but “toxic” masculinity. often it is linked to violence. The same The dominant paradigm in society is boys who beat up the “non-masculine” heterosexist and so this is a part of boy or call him a chakka when they are school planning and education. Due to with peers, also share sexual intimacy this, boys and girls get segregated from with him. One of our participants shared their adolescence. Sometimes they may that there was a group of boys who be separated completely through being would regularly beat him up and later educated in boys and girls schools and rub his thighs in a sexual manner and at other times it maybe in the seating he himself naturalised and justified the arrangement in co-ed classrooms. beating at that age as a form of intimacy. Segregation, which is otherwise seen Sexual abuse by teachers, close family as discriminatory and non-inclusive, in members, people who are trusted this case is seen as a positive step for and loved is an ever present reality in the protection of the “girls” and to children’s lives. There is no space to enable them to access any education speak about it or recognise it as violence at all. This segregation leads to more and a lot of these behaviours also toxic masculinity and a higher degree possibly get replicated amongst peers. of violence for those who do not fit While in adolescence and early teenage into the normative. It also leads to when the boys start sexual explorations, self loathing amongst those that are perceived as “feminine” when they ought the object of their desire and sex are to have been “masculine”. the “non-masculine boys”, and as they grow older, for at least some of them, Thus it seems that schools efficiently the object of desire shifts towards do the task of making the masculine the girls. And this narrative is also put man, the feminine woman, and thereby in place pretty much by the ways in establishing a heteronormative discourse which heterosexism gets built into the wherein the gender–sexuality duo is well education system. This leaves many a established within the binary opposites “non-heterosexual” desiring person in of heterosexual desire. Making success of complete turmoil and confusion at being this project is part of education as much left as solely the object of sex, while as removing all defiance and crushing for them their peers being the object any effort at even small deviances.

53 Resembling external society, deviance internet. Surviving these campuses and from the norm is allowed only as much HEIs is another story altogether. as the larger society permits it. A result of this is that those who are cis and All bodies that do not fit the binary heterosexual, their gender and sexuality perceptions of how “men” and markers get totally framed by this “women’s” bodies look like, find it normative. The ones who cannot fit get very difficult to be present in HEI completely marked as the deviants by campuses because even though these are apparently spaces where young the system and even denied access to it. adults are free to be, the freedom comes It is because of this that trans persons couched in certain well established whose identities cannot be hidden find it norms. Many people manage to survive extremely difficult to continue with their through self censorship in different basic education. Those who do not fit forms, a learned behaviour built as a in their assigned gender expression and way of dealing with the bullying. Some of roles often face tremendous violence these people try and erase all markers from families and neighbourhoods and for which they were bullied and start many of them even leave home and everything afresh in a new place in the migrate. Narratives of transwomen in college. To avoid being marked and our study underlined the ways in which noticed, the persons try to erase parts families deprive them of food and money of themselves, thereby doing violence on and subject them to such violence that their own being. Others survive by being leaving home seems to be the only alienated and finding their own worlds option. So for most trans people there of nerds and fantasy. There are a number is a loss of social capital and inability to of narratives from different people which pursue education even before school but clearly say that they survived because definitely after school. they were good in their studies or later in their work. Many of these people may Some people who do not fully comply not be fully out to peers or to families with expression and behaviours and live the duality in their everyday. expected of them, survive school and manage at times to enter higher These people may not be out and education. They manage to do this using open and so may not be able to make various survival mechanisms. Some complaints as well. Till they realise manage by escaping from the city or what they are going through, till they getting far away from their family into are comfortable with who they are, the a new city. Some of our narratives are dominant discourse also forces them to about how moving into a bigger city self-inflict pain. Addressing their issues gives them the freedom to be able to that are not immediately perceived explore themselves. A lot of people talk as discrimination, is also an important about finding the internet and making task for any educational institution. It friends over the internet and coming to demands that the system be made as terms with their sexuality through the diverse and open as possible so that

54 We never had these words like, yeh gay hai, yeh kya hai. It was always an attraction which was unnamed. It was always there but not named. Haan alag naam the. Chakka hai, baki naam hota hai woh sara the. So it was the same people who would come and sleep with you (at night), in the light of the day would be teasing you. That was again a conflict for me, that how are you not chakka, if I’m chakka. Because both of us were in bed right. (R, a gay man respondent in the qualitative interviews) all people feel safe to be who they and HEIs. It does not end and in some are without the pressure of being out ways also gets entrenched in the overall and open. structure, thus furthering the normative in subtler and sometimes more coercive So the making of the masculine or the ways. Education does not give up on the project of moulding everyone into the project of engendering people in the normative prototypes of gender and acceptable normatives. The normative sexuality gets a little more subtle and becomes part of the whole system in covert when we come to the University ways that are difficult to call out as well.

After my 12th I decided to take admission in a college. I supported myself through tuitions. Because my parents refused to support me. They used to hit me and tell me to leave the house. They told me to go live with the hijras and clap and earn money. I told them that i didnt want to do that. i wanted to live well just like all the other people. So my parents used to beat me. Pull me by the hair and bang me against the wall, kick on my stomach. Father used to hit more. Mother used to say but not hit. Did not give me food to eat. Tortured me mentally and physically a lot. (P, a trans woman respondent in the qualitative interview)

55 II. ‘Inclusive’ and ‘Accessible’ Education

Instead of detailing the nature of Trans women’s narratives from our study discrimination, here we are choosing to emphasised the fact that for many of highlight the systemic exclusions and them accessing higher education was thereby build a framework for inclusive a way to access a life of dignity. And and accessible education. While this is yet there were also others who were primarily being done from the lens of in a position to explore beyond their the normative as defined in the previous immediate individual aspirations and section, we also acknowledge that no could look beyond it. Both aspirations axes is a singular axes and so wherever were present. The need to get the possible we invoke the intersections respect of a “well educated” person with other marginalities as well. with a “decent” job to compensate for an individual’s perceived difference 1. DIFFERENT EXPECTATIONS and also the urge to create different FROM EDUCATION ways of looking at existing knowledges Everyone comes to education itself with and creating a larger discourse around aspirations that are usually two fold. One queerness itself so that inherently is to improve one’s own access to the education becomes more inclusive. world, to get a job, to succeed, and make While both these impulses required place for oneself in the larger world— access, meanings of accessibility were very different for both. each person’s meaning of what is better being differently defined depending on Physical access to a HEI was dependent their other locations within society. on where the person came from. We The other aspiration especially when found migration from small villages one gets to higher education, is also to nearby towns and smaller colleges to be part of the knowledge making and universities, to larger towns and enterprise, to challenge existing ways cities and bigger more established state of understanding the world, to include and central universities, as a definite hitherto not included knowledges in the movement in most of our respondent’s world, which could also translate for a lives. Few people from amongst those few into doing more with one’s life than that that we spoke to, accessed the more just be part of the usual. “elite” institutions for undergraduate

56 “We are from the SC community but in our family I know of many people who have reached good positions. We have reached here because of education. Or it would have not been possible for a person like me to come to a place like Bombay for my Ph.D or go to Europe to study. It would have been impossible if there was no education.”

T, a Ph.D student in Bombay who grew up in Koraput district, Orissa study but we spoke to many more programmes. Entry into most of these people who had moved to these for programmes means higher fees and postgraduate study. Part of the reason different infrastructure. This has meant for this was of course our own locations a division of class and access within the in a metro city but also because many same space of the University. This also of these so called “elite” institutes means that those from the dominant had out and open queer collectives castes and class choose to not come and groups thus making our access to regular courses in State Universities. to queer voices easier. These courses then seem to have lower status and demand and become The time in which we were doing the more accessible to members of those study also marked for us the turmoil communities that are late entrants into within the public education system. higher education. Questions of access and inclusion were being raised from many quarters and For example, for a few decades now, these mingled with the specific demands a regular bachelor’s degree in arts, being made by our respondents. commerce, or science does not really There is a steady privatisation and count as enough education to qualify internationalisation of state universities for a decent life. But of late we find the where more and more universities from same happening to bachelor’s degrees other countries are finding space either in professional courses like medicine as collaborators or through exchange and engineering as well. This means

I just need a job, whatever I study. I think if I get a job today also I would not want anything else. I want to study, get a job and look after my mummy– papa. And then people who are born in circumstances like mine, I will help them as much as I can. This is all the dream that I have. First dream is to get a job, then everything else.

A, a young transwoman from a village in West Bengal answering why they want to study

57 that the undergraduate courses then system. There are persons marginalised become stepping stones for what is “real because of gender and sexuality who education” at the postgraduate level. may still manage to “succeed”, who have Those who cannot afford that many already managed to do so as many of years of study naturally lose out and still our conversations showed. Yet their stay excluded from the “real” domain of success has to be seen in this landscape education. Added to this is the constant as happening against all odds and maybe withdrawal of scholarships and freeships due to their other privileges, but also or the multiple restrictions on them as because of their own determination and time goes along. Thus while the numbers effort. Any inclusive system has to think of students in HEIs from different of ways in which it can minimise this margins may be increasing, the access is extra effort and actually help all people far from being equitable. achieve their full potential because for An open acknowledgement of inclusion many of these people living as per their of trans students within the university true selves is in itself a lot of work! system that got announced in 2015 2. MEANING OF SUCCESS hence has to be seen in the light of these AND FAILURE changes. It is a step towards inclusion but in the larger picture actually just The access to higher education begins a promise of it. Before getting access with a story of success. Succeeding in itself the terrain has changed in a way exams has become a measure of success that real accessibility and inclusion seem in education. And this cannot be ignored like distant goalposts. Take for example since this success determines who can the case of one of our trans woman get what education. And between the respondent. She has been thrown out shift from school to a university course of her parental home with no financial of choice is the junior college or high support, is trying to manage to study school, 11th and 12th class. This has up to her postgraduate degree by almost become like a break in education conducting tuitions that are hard to or at least a major disruption. There get, constantly faces abuse and violence seems to be a jump in the meaning of from her peers, faculty, and in the education itself as we go from school to neighbourhood, and lives with hardly any class 11 and 12 and then to University/ support other than a few friends she has college/ professional course. Preparing managed to make through all this. How for the coveted professional courses or far though can she hope to go in this the top notch colleges is one of the aims changing landscape? of these two years in any one’s life. And These larger issues of education need to achieve it there is need to get good to be flagged and understood if we are marks in the competitive examinations studying discrimination based on any that have become uniform and social marginalisations because these standardised and are critical for entrance set up an essentially discriminatory into any of the institutions that matter.

58 This is where most often education right, over emphasis on it excludes the takes a back seat, acing the exam is the possibility of anything else from being meaning of what is done in the name recognised as success. of education in these two years. This These discussions get an interesting turn competition is aggressive and cut-throat. when we see it from the standpoint of These become additional qualities “queer persons”. Embodying queerness for the normative. This aggression is is a complex story of success and failure. in fact valourised. We heard heart- While there is a failure at becoming the rending stories of the ways in which body that is normative and acceptable, coaching classes that have mushroomed there is also success at challenging as spaces to help prepare for these the dominant structures in more exams, advocated and encouraged a ways than one. Hence success and masculinity that was even more violent failure, the ways in which education is and aggressive. This is what competition usually evaluated and assessed, become does. It does not allow anyone to dwell interesting concepts to understand the on values because the path to success navigation of the queer life in HEIs. In the is not important so long as the exam existing system this negotiation is done is cracked and the admission got. It by the individual because the system is further teaches young adults that there focussed on making everyone succeed. are very limited ways in which merit is understood and these exams are the Many of our respondents, students best measure of it. In this framework of and teachers, apparently escaped the merit, discrimination gets whitewashed. penalty for their failure in meeting standards of normative expression by This has led to a public discourse that succeeding in the system. This kind of pitches affirmative action for social over compensation to get noticed for marginalisation against a very narrow what would be valued also served as and limited argument of merit. This a deflection from the difference that merit is directly proportional to the may otherwise get noticed. This is also amount of time and money that a person a strategy to make oneself feel needed can spend in a preparatory class doing and indispensable in some ways and in nothing other than learning by rote protecting oneself. how to crack the exam. It is far from a measure of merit that looks at the For others, however, success was difficult capabilities that an individual possesses to achieve possibly also because the while also addressing the social reasons penalty of failure was so constant and for these not being nurtured for every everyday. Yet others with the capacity person equally. A concept of merit that to make such choices, defined success recognises that all individuals do not for themselves in different ways. So after have equal opportunities and so their basic education in a discipline, they chose success cannot be measured on the another field. In doing so, they possibly same scale. If success is not defined did not attain “success” as normatively

59 defined, but found space for being who 3. THE GENDERED CHARACTER they were and a greater resonance with OF DISCIPLINES their selves. In this very assertion they broke the often normative career and A mix of the paradigm of success and education choices that they were often the making of the masculine is seen forced to make. Needless to say most of in how different fields of study are them did have access to other privileges characterised within regular academia. to be able to do this. Success in education is very curiously connected with the idea of intelligence Our queer teacher respondents and there is an inherent hierarchy in how were concerned about using this this intelligence is understood. Excelling understanding of success and failure in all disciplines is not equivalent. Some as a pedagogic tool. Well aware from disciplines, especially the STEM, are seen their own life experiences and also from as more tough and people managing seeing their students struggle in their to do well in these are seen as much learning schedules and routines, they more capable and intelligent. There is recognised the importance of assessing obviously on the one hand a greater individual learning curves and rethinking emphasis given to logical reasoning, teaching from taking failure as a measure abstraction, and objectivity and on the along with success. This meant changing other these values are seen as essential assessments but also teaching and to the “hard” sciences within STEM like learning methods. It also means finding maths, physics, and chemistry. It is not different means of communication. just incidental that these are also seen as Unfortunately, these are not discussions “masculine” characteristics. that teachers in higher education find spaces to engage in. Each teacher often Feminist science studies scholars have seems to individually struggle to find further explored this connection answers. The disciplinary boundaries between “masculine” traits as being also do not shift easily to make space for seen as essential to certain sciences all of this. and STEM being culturally seen as “for and by men”. They have asked In the current system the only way in questions further of what does this which failure is addressed is through thrust on so called “masculine” values helping to succeed. Looking at failure may do to science. They surmise that as a help figure the different ways in which result of this understanding, not only success itself could be defined for each are the subjectivities in STEM ignored, individual and may also help redesign but it moulds STEM education in ways courses keeping in mind the needs of that restricts participation of others the learners rather than a thrust on in the discipline. the established requirements of certain courses. This could help make the whole In the larger enterprise of education, system differently inclusive and the success in these areas, and these values discipline itself epistemologically richer. themselves get more appreciated and

60 rewarded possibly also because these areas of interest. All seven of the rest are considered “masculine”. Is science had shifted to disciplines very different valued because it has “masculine” values from what they were trained in. These or is masculinity given importance included film-making, theatre, education, because it stands for characteristics that policy, social science, and so on and are associated with science? This is not a seemed to be more in consonance question that can be answered but both with what they felt worked for them of them add on to each other’s power. individually but also did not fit in as At the same time, other disciplines and careers for “men”. subjects are once again defined in the negative, not considered critical enough, The interesting thing as far as education treated as softer subjects. goes is also that these are people very engaged with their work and what The narratives that we heard in our they are currently doing, but did not study gave more ways to understand really have much to share or remember this. Most of our respondents in the about their engineering training. There qualitative interviews spoke of the wasn’t anything in their syllabus that pressure that they were subjected to they remembered or that mattered to by families to choose the “masculine” them as young persons becoming aware areas of study which essentially meant of themselves, nor did they remember engineering. From the family’s point many teachers who made any kind of view this is done because they are of lasting impressions on their mind. interested in their wards doing “well” in This is in contrast to the answers that their careers. The extent they went to we got from others who had chosen do this many a times pushed some of their subjects carefully and as per their our respondents to study engineering. likes, as well as the ways in which the Others who were very certain that “engineers” spoke of what they chose they could not do it had to fund and to study or train in, after quitting finance their own education. Withdrawal engineering. In a sense then, engineering of support was the best method of education was seen as something that blackmail that the family tried to make did not connect to what they were their ward see “sense”. facing in their personal lives. While this can be explained off as In the teachers’ meeting also there were families being pressurised also to make complex discussions around disciplines. a decent “career” choice, what shows Different disciplines lend themselves to the gendered and “masculine” character different kinds of interventions. Some of these is the fact that from the subjects from the humanities have direct eight of our 22 respondents who had connection to many of the questions of completed engineering education, only society and can easily help make direct one continued to work as an engineer, connections with questions of societal that too in academia and in areas that normativity. Others like law, medicine, combined the engineering with other psychology, and life sciences in fact

61 Image 3: IIT Bombay students hostels. Part of the poster exhibition panel

Many of our respondents, students and teachers, apparently escaped the penalty for their failure in meeting standards of normative expression by succeeding in the system. This kind of over compensation to get noticed for what would be valued also served as a deflection from the difference that may otherwise get noticed. This is also a strategy to make oneself feel needed and indispensable in some ways and in that protecting oneself.

62 become the authoritative voice to often not masculine enough face due to this reaffirm the normative as natural and adverse sex ratio is not even considered acceptable. These hence directly connect as an issue worth discussion. Thus at to questions of non-normativity. It is the various levels there is an underlining of others like maths, physics, engineering who really belongs—once again thereby that are about the non-living that seem creating systemic discrimination which to not lend themselves to an encultured gets normalised and common place. And reading of them. In fact this is the way in even if we take this as the case of an which these subjects have been taught IIT, this becomes the normative culture forever—without ever underlining their of most engineering departments and cultural connections. institutions. Our mapping study of the IIT campus as 4. HETERONORMATIVE an elite technology institution, showed CAMPUSES us further how the discipline was imagined to be a masculine domain. The Even if all HEIs may not be as masculine, many students hostels for “men” are in all of them are heteronormative in their and around the other facilities meant for design and their idea. Not only are all students and occupy maximum area on people imagined to be either of the two campus. The women’s hostel is located assigned genders, they are also assumed far away from this area, and is in fact to be heterosexual. Entry of women to located in the staff area and has been HEIs has happened in recent times and built and rebuilt in the same little plot unlike other inclusions segregation and to accommodate more women as their protection of women here has always number increased steadily over the last been seen as the best method for doing four decades. Inadvertently, there is a this. The physical and actual segregation message to everyone that the IIT student has been marked through dress codes, is the male student and all others are behaviour patterns, residential, and other interlopers of some kind or should stay spatial arrangements. Not only are there in their peripheral locations. single gender hostels but also strict policing of interaction between “men” The narratives of our respondents and “women”. who had been in such campuses (also specifically from this IIT campus) were The Pinjra Tod movement asking for full of incidents of the rampant bullying, relaxing of curfews for women’s ragging, and objectifying of bodies that hostels and other agitations in different were seen as non-masculine. In the campuses have been as much about official writing and speaking of IIT too, opposing restrictions on “women’s” there is this constant bemoaning of the mobility and freedom, as they have been adverse sex ratio and what it means for about moral policing to ensure that the students (men of course) to not have women do not make friends with men. a reasonable number of “women” on Women have for long, however, also campus. The violence that those who are bought into this narrative of protection.

63 This was evident in every campus where between anyone else. The enforcement some students tried to ask for inter- of such spatial arrangements, however, hostel mobility between men’s and allows many people to survive as women’s hostels, because the opposition interlopers in this completely enforced is from the administration and parents binary segregation. The two large non- and also from some of the residents of intersecting sets allow for some people these hostels. to stay within these without being named or called out. Those identifying It is in rare campuses that this nature as hijra whose bodies are marked by of segregation between women and margins of caste and class as much men is seen as discrimination. It has as gender and sexuality (and yet very been understood by everyone as the differently from the Dalit woman), have way to be. Very few have challenged the been actively denied access to HEI and assumption that friendships between have just been allowed in. But there women and men would necessarily lead are others who have survived through to sex. And even fewer people have camouflage and often at great individual probably seen this as also a restriction costs in these institutions on the basis of on young peoples’ freedom to choose other privileges. their friends and sexual partners. And we heard a lot of these difficult Absurd as it sounds this frame also survivals in our interviews and conversely says that there can be no sex discussions. Being hidden constantly

Image 4: Sign outside women’s hostels in National Law School, Bengaluru

64 means living with the fear of being normative frame of gender that exists. outed. This self-imposed violence to If the inclusion is not through complete stay within the system is just one part separation then it is in a neutral manner of the story. Not being open and visible through negation of the gendered power does not necessarily mean that abuse itself—”objective” neutralising inclusion and violence does not happen. The under a false assumption of equality. This difference is marked and noted, and could be through rejection of affirmative the person bullied. The hidden person steps as well as targetted violence and does not even have the space to speak discrimination. The systemic manner of up and claim redressal. Alienation, inclusion hence is an interplay of the dual doubt, loneliness become constant concepts of gender segregation and ways of being. gender neutrality. For those who are gender non- From this study and its various arms conforming the question every morning we see a clear picture emerging. We is, “How should I present myself? Do believe that there has to be neutrality I want to challenge others, do I want as far as access to rights go. This means to fight or ignore? Do I want to be that all rights have to be accessible to noticed or not?” Not easy answers everyone and in fact the HEI must do and not thoughts that allow learners all in its power to make systems such to concentrate on living their life that those who usually get excluded are on campus. Again it is the larger facilitated with mechanisms that help systems that normativise a way of their inclusion. This in our understanding presenting oneself through hidden is real equitable access—a cornerstone and unspoken dress codes that others of affirmative action. Similarly, in cases get discriminated in ways which may of violence there has to be recognition not even reach for redressal. It is of targeted violence because of the this everyday that then becomes the gendered power that permeates through nature of existence and which can only all systems of the normative brahminical be altered by questioning the overall cis hetero-patriarchies that control lives framework itself. on campus. Of late HEIs have been directed to And yet, since we are also speaking of open up and give entry to transgender an educational institution whose main students. In the binary separatist mode purpose is to offer an imagination of adopted till now, naturally, inclusion is another way of being and also a space to being suggested through transgender learn to negotiate these complex social spaces being created—hostel and toilets. relationships, inclusion means that there Through our study we come to the be as little space for segregation of any conclusion that this kind of creating kind. All people should feel as much a yet another gender marked space is part of the system as possible and that absolutely not a solution because it does requires more and more spaces where not address the basic question of the gender does not get underlined in ways

65 that it is today. In the present times, it in HEIs. And yet, as we studied campus would mean starting with gender-specific architecture and spoke to different and gender-neutral spaces accessible to groups on campus, their presence and all depending on their comfort and ease importance could not go unnoticed. at least as far as housing and toilets go. It In fact an exclusion of them from the also means making gender-specific areas discourse is encoded in multiple levels. also more porous so that the separation This is discriminatory in itself because is not as rigid and there is movement in that silence is an inherent ignoring towards an integration. of the contribution of the services This would obviously mean pedagogic that this whole section of people make interventions as much as change in rules, without which no education could take systems and infrastructure. Negotiating place. It is the ignoring of the labour power is not something that can be of care, sustenance, and maintenance automatically learned. All people need that are essential to the production of to be schooled in democracy where knowledge. It is the traditional hierarchy there is respect for rights of all and of intellectual labour over physical at the same time there is protection labour, of mind over the body. An issue of the rights of the marginalised. that all higher education campuses It means learning how to interact underline and thus undermine years of across differences. It also means taking work and epsitemes of the caste, gender, responsibility and specifically learning and labour movements. There can be no about physical, sexual, and emotional inclusive education which is premised on intimacies. All CASH committees such exclusions. that we spoke to underlined these as The caste and class backgrounds from important aspects of creating gender and which the teaching and non-teaching sexuality affirming spaces for all. This staff come from further mark the ways is what we heard from teachers who in which these interactions happen on were sensitive to their students’ needs campus. With jobs getting precarious and demands. for everyone in HEIs we are also seeing 5. INCLUDING ALL these tensions escalate. More and more COMMUNITIES of these tasks are being contracted out. So the number of employees itself is One of the things that we realised constantly decreasing. In the campus at as we went about our study was the IIM, which is a larger residential campus, presence of three distinct communities we were shocked to see that employees on campus—the students, the teaching who were lowest in the hierarchy had faculty, and the non-teaching staff. This houses on campus but these opened third is often forgotten in any study of away from the rest of the campus—a education. We also made that same modern way of creating caste based mistake as we had no specific inputs and segregation between the savarna faculty study geared towards this community housing and the Dalit employees.

66 In such spaces there is again no they disclosed it themselves, or they recognition that students come from did not have a choice of hiding, or were different backgrounds. Lack of respect forced to come out for whatever reason. shown to any employee on campus Many of the campuses that we went to could be a signal to others who may had queer collectives on campus. There have reached there from similar was also an access to virtual queer backgrounds that they were also not spaces for most of our respondents who respected and not considered worthy of were currently in campuses as students the University. This is essential to also or as teachers. This meant that they understand that the queer presence on had some access to information and campus is not just a body marked by “community” of some sort. And yet the their gender and sexuality alone. They dominant feature was of loneliness and also come marked by other margins of alienation. We speak of all the above society and there can be no inclusion systemic changes because we do believe that takes into account one margin alone that without these there is no way that while being derisive of the others that this queer person, and/or many others coexist in the same person’s life. who may be still managing to not get noticed, can ever feel included. Redressal 6. QUEER BODIES ON CAMPUS mechanisms to address discrimination And finally we come to the specific cannot address this dissonance, an experiences of those that are clearly essential feeling of being askew, of being marked or read as queer bodies on watched, of being marked, and of being campus. They are thus identified because monitored.

You sit in the classroom, in the same first bench for 5 hours straight with your hoodies on, just glad that today nobody else came up to you to talk or interact. You could imagine people sitting in the adjacent seats staring at you, making fun of your life and you not being able to do anything about it. All you want is the classes to get over and you to go back to your recluse and feel safe, no you might not feel safe but just not anymore like the demons are making you outrageous inside out anymore.

You remember how your new friends in college still look at you with questioning eyes and those eyes haunt you enough to put you back to room and skip 5 days of college straight.

Blog post by Ritwik, an engineering student, writer, blogger, bibliophile, and Transman. https://theglassclosetsblog.wordpress.com/2017/11/29/depression-and-anxiety/

67 It could be the teacher’s body wondering queer bodies that face misogyny but are how to dress or not dress to underline/ also at times attacked with vengeance hide the queerness. The queer teacher by cis women who are seen as the and the queer student trying to rightful target of misogyny itself. And the negotiate this interaction of noticing disabled queer bodies that are aware of but not really emphasising the connect their sexuality being rejected by those in to maintain their teacher–student their families and communities but who interaction as any other. It could be also feel undesired in a very ageist and the student who came to be known beauty conscious narrative of desire that as the queer icon because they were at times exists even within queer spaces. the face of an invisible population, they were made into a hero at one level, but As is the case with all margins, a also faced rejection and disgust and a margin can have several centres shut-down as a result. They also got (Sushruth Jadhav, in an interview with suspected of being the sexual predator S. S. Jodhka6). And so, discrimination especially if they were clearly speaking of cannot be seen as singular as well. It their non-normative sexual desire. has to be seen in the complexity in which it is experienced. At the same And then there are the queer bodies time there is no way that individual that also get marked by the separation discrimination can be addressed and stigma of casteist violence within the queer communities that they try unless systemic discrimination is to seek with trepidation. At the same understood and rectified. time they might also feel alienated 6 Jodhka, S. Surinder (2012) Caste, Culture from those with whom they combat and Clinic: Interview with Sushrut Jadhav, the dailyness of caste violence because Psychiatrist, University College, London. In Seminar. Issue No. 633. Titled– Caste heteronormativity is becoming Matters: A Symposium on Inequalities, normativised in similar manners across Identities, and Disintegrating Hierarchies in many different communities. There are India. New Delhi.

68 Conclusions

Our explorations in this study masculine traits, make them “tomboys” for meanings of normativity and who are not censured in the same way discrimination, especially from the till they reach adolescence, and are at context of marginalised gender and times even indulged.7 sexuality in the field of education, led us to a fairly clear picture of the So actually as far as gender goes, the normative and opened up many ways normative in the field of education is in which structural discrimination the masculine. Girls who excel “like could be read as in-built within the boys” are seen as smarter, subjects that enterprise of education. are seen as “masculine” are considered more important to excel in, careers NORMATIVE that are “masculine” are more coveted As expected, the enterprise of education and so doing well with those skills is to school young people into society’s makes you more successful, the list is multiple ways of being adults, and gender endless. And without doubt it is the is one of the earliest lessons that is able bodied, upper-caste masculinity taught. Our study clearly indicated that that is most encouraged, because all while in schools the process was of those who are not, are subjected to making “good girls” and “good boys”, similar ridicule and bullying as those (with good not being defined in the same explicitly non-masculine in their gender way in both cases), the normative was presentation and/or identity. This early actually what is read as masculine. One indoctrination through violent means of the stark indicators of this for us was is what sets the path for the nature of the ways in which the policing of the non masculinity in society and is encouraged masculine in those seen as “boys” that and normalised through both overt and constantly happened by school systems, subtle ways. teachers, and even peers from ages as low as four to five years. There is no 7 Nevatia, S., et al. (2012) Bound by Norms parallel targetting of girls in the same and Out of Bounds: Experiences of PAGFB (Persons assigned gender female age group who also may transgress the at birth) within the formal education norms of gender that are prescribed for system. Contemporary Education Dialogue, them. Their transgressions of acquiring 9(2), 173–196.

69 The other very strong normative like them, loneliness is a companion for structure that is constantly present most. Being able to understand what in the formal school system, as it is in is it that one feels and to arrive at an other spheres of life, is heterosexuality. acquaintance with oneself is in itself a Through strict enforcement of gendered journey and an effort very often done spaces and segregation of students along by the individual as they are also making the binary assigned genders in ways that sense of the world around them. suggest protection of the “girls/women” And when education, which is one from the dangers of sexual assault of the most important ways to make in any space where they are present sense of the world, makes itself opaque with members of the “other” gender, to different ways of being, it actually there is a constant message also of the becomes a big obstacle in the process of normativity of heterosexuality. This self discovery. At the same time a space protection is also of the woman from opened up in some course or the other, any sexual behaviour that may go a perceptive teacher, an understanding against the norms of societally accepted set of friends, an atmosphere that allows norms of “heterosexuality within for independent thought even if in a marriage”. This is something that has small way—all of these become the gone unchallenged for many years and small chinks, the little footholds in the has resulted in a lot of restrictions on longer journey of discovery of the self. women students. Unfortunately, as much as these may be If these are the ways in which the available for a few people, most people normative is defined, naturally all those find, instead, a lot of hurdles in their path. who do not fit in, especially within the Not only is the system geared towards two spaces allotted for the “men” and rewarding the normative, it also punishes “women”, are treated as outliers. Some and is violent to those that do not fit. are not allowed access, while others, So often people try to fit in to survive. who can somehow occupy the space They hide by going into their shell of but stand out for their difference, get anxiety or by over-compensating and targeted and discriminated against. doing so well in some acceptable thing DISCRIMINATION that other transgressions go unnoticed. The hiding means they do not tell about Gender and sexuality are dynamic, self- their own gender and sexuality. But determined identities and in that sense deceptions are never complete and are different from other birth assigned so they land in situations when they identities. Recognising discrimination are seen, noticed, and abused for their around these in individual cases hence difference, but they cannot speak about becomes a difficult task. Being different it because it also means that they will from all those around you, especially have to disclose what they have been your own familiars, is in itself a lonely hiding. Unless systems change and discovery and till people find others become accepting of all kinds of gender

70 Image 5: A screen shot of the blog The Glass Closet https://theglassclosetsblog.wordpress.com

71 and sexuality expressions and identities, of mechanisms for addressing understanding this discrimination redressal at all levels. and redressing it is going to be n Redefine the meanings of success extremely difficult. and failure, particularly in the area So it seems that recognising systemic of gender and sexuality, but also discrimination and addressing it is extend that knowledge to pedagogy as important as spending time to itself thereby queering education in understand the range of variance that some ways. is possible and which already exists. n Granting gender neutrality where Currently we are at a very early stage it is a question of rights and in both these processes. Through this recognising power when it is a study we have attempted to do both and question of gendered violence. while we do not have a comprehensive Try and move away from gender understanding of discrimination, we do segregation that underlines the have a clearer understanding of what binary and move towards a more all needs to be looked at. The story nuanced understanding of both may begin with whether all people gender and sexuality. can access education but goes on to n Recognise that discussions on address the ways in which we make gender and sexuality are dynamic the whole enterprise cognisant of its and ways of doing them have inherent normativity—in its disciplines, to change with time. These in its pedagogy, in its design of space discussions have to be compulsory and buildings, in its rules and regulations, in a space such as an educational and in the ways in which it understands space which is inhabited by people gender and sexuality itself. from different backgrounds, ages, and varied socio-cultural We conclude with the guiding backgrounds and where intimacy is principles that emerged for us part of many transactions. as important markers to address discrimination based on non-normative n Individuals come with multiple gender and sexuality within education at identities and it is foolhardy to all levels. understand singular discriminations alone. Experience of multiple n Give access to those hitherto marginalisations is not merely a excluded and work towards sum total of each, it is a different increasing accessibility for all way in which discrimination itself through systemic changes at all works. So to understand any levels, recognition to the myriad discrimination it is important that ways of being for all people in all other axes of power that target our campuses and classrooms, specific sections of people are also and developing the right kinds incorporated in the exercise.

72 Outputs

n A blog “The Glass Closet”: https:// n A book on campus architecture to theglassclosetsblog.wordpress.com/ be published by Yoda Press n A poster exhibition on the study of n A more detailed essay on campus architecture “Schooling into masculinity” n A book proposal “Queering (forthcoming) Education” based on discussions n An expanded version of this report in the teachers’ meeting on discrimination in education (forthcoming) (forthcoming)

Image 6: The poster exhibition on campus architecture used in the dissemination meetings and in architecture colleges like KRVIA, Mumbai

Other team members Writing Workshop Facilitator : Shals Mahajan Campus Mapping : Chan Arun-Pina Chinmay Shidhore Lekha Samant Mihir Desai 73 An Exploratory Study of Discriminations based on Non-Normative Genders and Sexualities 4

Housing, Discrimination and Non-Normative Gender and Sexuality

Gautam Bhan, Vikramaditya Sahai, and Avantika Tiwari Housing, Discrimination and Non-Normative Gender and Sexuality Introduction

hat does it mean to think about produced, and draw a set of implications Wdiscrimination as well as non- and findings for understandings and normative gender and sexuality from the practices of discrimination. We do lens of housing? so as follows. Section 1 details our Our team drew on three bodies of work understanding of methods across the through the project: three work streams. Section 2 presents findings from the analysis of rental n The study of laws and policies on laws, acts, and key case law in India and rental housing from the lens of gender and sexuality. comparative legal frameworks in South Africa, France, and the United States. n Life histories of rental housing Sections 3 to 5 present findings from in Delhi and understanding how life histories of acquiring and then living gender and sexuality shape access in rental housing in Delhi. Section 6 to housing as well as everyday life summarises our key findings for future within housing. work on discrimination within housing n Understanding the building of queer on the basis of non-normative gender homes as spaces of inclusion and and sexuality. Section 7 directs readers safety in response to discrimination. of this report to the detailed, free- In this final report, we present an standing outputs from which this report overview of methods, detail the outputs draws its findings and conclusions.

...Anti-discriminatory language in law cannot just be about an anti- discrimination statute as commonly understood but must ask if the imagination of public institutions can accommodate anti-discrimination in practice rather than just in principle.

77 1. A Note on our Methods

Before we speak of our learnings on reads and smells like? Can we then go discrimination itself, a note on two main find it in our research? If not, then what methodological approaches taken by do we look for when we assess legal the team. One of the key questions that documents? What questions do we ask faced us was the definition of our two in interviews? key terms: “discrimination” and “non- In the detailed outputs in each work normative gender and sexuality”. The stream, we define the choices we challenge with research like this is that made and approaches we took within these terms are both the outcomes of these questions. In this overview final our research (we seek to understand report, we mark only that we insisted them through our work) as well as in not closing understandings of non- entry points to begin the research (what normativity or discrimination at the and who are we looking for). Put very beginning of our study. This meant that simply: how do we understand non- we could not interview people about normative gender and sexuality? Is it their experiences of discrimination people of a certain sexual orientation? while living on rent. Instead, we shifted Does the definition of “normative” then to life histories of finding and living on follow prevailing social norms? What rent, leaving it to our analysis to later are those norms? Do LGBT people analyse what should, did, and could in India become more or less “non- count as discrimination. The question normative” before and after the repeal thus wasn’t “Did you face discrimination of Section 377? Are all LGBT people when you lived in this house”; it became non-normative in the same way—is “tell us about everyday life when you lived a queer dalit person non-normative in this house.” The field had to broaden, just as a queer brahmin person? Is and then if the word “discrimination” non-normativity held in identity of was or was not used by those we spoke persons? Or is it about actions, events, to told us something in itself about behaviours, and spaces? Are we looking the social life of this category. It also for individuals or practices? A similar meant that we interviewed both people set of questions arises when we think who described themselves as “non- about discrimination. Do we know normative” and those that didn’t; who what discrimination looks, feels, sounds, identified as LGBTQ and those that

78 didn’t. In legal discourse analysis, it meant histories across neighbourhoods, age, reading acts and laws not just for their gender, caste, religion, and sexualities in punitive and enforcement outcomes but Delhi. We use the term life history to reading them as artefacts whose own indicate that these were not directed language had a legal and social effect. interviews about rental alone, but We read laws between the lines to long accounts of the experience of see how they constructed ideas of the seeking rental housing through one’s normative and the non-normative, not life. This method, we argue, allows simply on whether they “allowed” or us to understand not just incidents of “prohibited” discrimination. We believe what could be called “discrimination” this methodological shift is critical in but instead fold in the latter to hold a assessing these questions and it is one of much more complex and layered set of the core findings of our work aside from meanings that line all of everyday life. out conclusions. As argued above, this was one of our Our first work stream read a set of laws key entry points and understandings of and cases on rental housing. The full set discrimination. It cannot be, as it often included the Model Draft Tenancy Act is in the study of law, for example, just (2015), The Delhi Rent Act (1995), The an incident, event, utterance, action, Karnataka Rent Act (1999), Cape Town or behaviour. It is not just something Tenancy Act, France Tenancy Law and that someone did at a point of time Housing Policy, Fair Housing Act and to another person. Especially in lives the Policy of Neutrality in the California deemed “non-normative,” it is often Tenancy Law, as well as the Zoroastrian inseparable from everyday life. Co-operative Housing Society Case Life histories helped us speak of (ZCHS), Supreme Court Judgement moments that often the respondent from 2005 that is one of the most also didn’t think of, at first, as cited cases in defending the rights of “discrimination.” It also helped us housing societies to rent or not rent to distinguish when discrimination was people on the basis of group identity. As invoked as a category and used by a outlined in the method note above, our respondent, and when it was insufficient intention was not to read these as self- to talk about what was happening, felt, evident statements of law but as spaces and experienced. These distinctions where understandings of “normativity” have offered us a lot in our own and “discrimination” are directly and contribution to the project’s main aim of indirectly constructed, including through understanding, and not just documenting, understandings of home, family, tenant, discrimination. Sections 3, 4, and 5 privacy, as well as the intentions and present an overview of our core findings imaginations of the state. Section 2 from the life histories that are germane presents an overview of these findings. to the rest of the project’s collective In the second work stream discussed in thinking on discrimination beyond each this report, we conducted over sixty life of our individual fields of inquiry.

79 2. Normativity, Discrimination, and the Law

Looking for discrimination and non- tenancy Acts, presents itself: “an act to normativity within housing and the law establish a framework for the regulation is a challenging task. In this section, we of rent and to balance the rights and describe three key findings from our responsibilities of landlords and tenants study of legislation and policies. These and to provide fast adjudication process are argued in detail in the full report for resolution of disputes…” Contrast listed in Section 7. this with Cape Town’s policy that lists one of the roles of government “to First, we argue that focusing only on provide for the facilitation of sound the gender and sexual identity of the relations between tenants and landlords tenant, while important, must first and for this purpose to lay down general be preceded by understanding the requirements relating to leases…”, institutional context of housing policy and craft “rules in relation to the itself. What forms of discrimination control, management, administration, exist and what practices institutions can use and enjoyment of the rental housing imagine—let alone offer—in response property” [emphasis added]. As Chan are not just motivated by specific acts argues, the words of the law indicate of discrimination but, in fact, by the the intention and field of possibility of institution’s understanding of housing the state’s approach. The shift from itself. This is particularly important for the Delhi and Karnataka Rent Acts to public institutions and the state. An Cape Town shows a shift from a framing understanding of rental housing, for “of conflict and disputes, therefore to example, that sees the role of the state be managed, in the former; to one of as simply facilitating access in terms possibilities and offering, therefore to of affordability cannot accommodate be created in the latter.” As we shall meaningful concern about everyday life see later in this note, when interviews within rental housing. Let us detail this by and rental life histories confronted comparing the language of rental housing discrimination in and as everyday life, policy in India with that in France. interviewees often were surprised As our team member, Chan Arun-Pina, when we asked them if they thought shows in their analysis, the Delhi Rent any remedy could come from the state. Act, like Karnataka and model draft Universally, they had little expectation

80 that public policy could play any role use our research to argue that the in mediating their experiences of absence of these practices stems from discrimination within rental housing. Our the difference in how policy and laws work argues that this stems from the imagine housing and the role of the state. very structure of how the state imagines However distant the Rental Housing its role within housing, as shown through Act may seem from our everyday life in its legislative intent and policy framing. rental housing, we argue that it is pivotal in shaping precisely this everyday. We These are not just discursive differences, argue further that anti-discriminatory however. The intent of the state as language in law, therefore, cannot just defined in legislation and policy then be about an anti-discrimination statute determines what remedies citizens as commonly understood but must ask have on offer. In France, a desire to if the imagination of public institutions create what Chan calls “possibilities and can accommodate anti-discrimination offerings” means a further delineation of in practice rather than just in principle. a supplementary document of Tenant’s In the exhibition style output—Case Rights Brochure Questionnaire within Book—that Chan made from this work, the Tenancy Law and Housing Policy. Figure 1 below marks this dilemma. This document provides “a list of allowable questions a potential tenant The second key finding from our legal can be asked during their house-hunt, analysis is to look at how individual and as well as during their stay, therefore group rights are a key struggle in thinking protecting the tenants’ right to privacy.” about anti-discrimination and the law. We can imagine clearly what impact Chan argues that the Zoroastrian Co- such a document would have had in the operative Housing Society (ZCHS) lives of those we interviewed for this Supreme Court case, one of the most project. Yet our intent is not to simply cited within housing discrimination transplant this as a “best practice” case law in India, exemplifies how anti- from France to India. Instead, it is to discrimination protection is not denied

26. It is true that in secular India it may be somewhat Horizontal V/s Vertical retrograde to conceive of co-operative societies Anti-Discrimination Laws confined to group of members or followers of a particular religion, a particular mode of life, a particular persuasion. But that is different from saying Legal Framework Protection can be claimed that you cannot have a co-operative society confined to of the persons of a particular persuasion, belief, trade, way of Constitution against the STATE, of India life or a religion. A co-operative society is NOT A STATE not the CITIZENS. ...The fundamental rights in Part III of the Constitution are normally enforced against State action or action by The STATE cannot be other authorities who may come within the purview of biased. Its’ CITIZENS Article 12 of the Constitution.... can be (?).

Figure 1: State and Citizen

81 in Indian law but rather evaded through One of the main arguments contended being subsumed under a debate on by the Senior Counsel representing individual and group rights, using the the Society was that the respondent contract as a legal medium between cannot argue he is denied his right to them. This is in line with a long history alienation because “He exercises his of argument about feminist engagements right of association when he becomes a with the law in India, and we add to member of a society by entering into a this history of argument showing its contract with others” and “submerging contemporary manifestation within his rights in the common right to be enjoyed by all.” This is well argued rental housing. Zoroastrian Co-operative legal terrain. Yet Chan brings our lens Housing Society (ZCHS) registered of gender and sexuality to this legal itself pre-independence under Bombay argument and argues that it must be Co-operative Societies Act, 1925 read from a different root. They draw when members of Parsi community, a a parallel to the notion of an individual minority religious group, asked the State giving up their rights when choosing to allocate them land for residential (or simply being) part of a collective by use under the right to protection of comparing it to the understanding of cultural heritage. Post-independence, marriage as a contract. They argue that it came under the purview of Gujarat this thinking is not different from the Co-operative Societies Act, 1961. When way in which Indian courts have refused the land was allocated, society allotted to recognize both rights and violence plots to members of the Society. The within a marital relationship. They reach case was filed by a son of one of the back to English Common Law and the members of the Society (who became Hindu Marriage Act, showing parallels in a member himself upon the death of legal reason which considers marriage his father and had the property of his as a sacred relationship and a private father transferred to him) against the premises, where state has no role to Society for disallowing him to sell or play beyond acknowledgment of the contract. Feminist debates followed develop his plot to anyone outside of the since and continue towards reworking Parsi community or for non-residential the legal framework of rape within purposes. He was also further denied marriage, an on-going struggle rooted in permission to develop his plot into a the same conception of a union, where multi-occupant apartment building open “…a husband cannot be guilty of a rape to non-Parsi people. While he argued committed by himself upon his lawful this denied him his fundamental right wife, for by their mutual consent and to alienation, the Society argued this contract the wife hath given up herself failed their fundamental right to form in this kind to her husband which she an association the primary purpose of cannot retract.” [emphasis added]. In the which was to protect their otherwise Exhibition, this provocative juxtaposition marginalised and vulnerable culture. was shown as Figure 2.

82 21. Under the Indian Contract Act, a person...has the freedom to enter into a contract. The bye-laws of a ‘in lieu of advantages derived co-operative society setting out the terms of membership to it, is a contract entered into by a person when he seeks by that person by to become a member of that society. Even the formation of the society is based on a contract. This freedom to ACCEPTING a contract available to a citizen cannot be curtailed or curbed relying on the fundamental rights enshrined in Part III of the Constitution of India against State action. A membership in the right to enforce a fundamental right against State action, cannot be extended to challenge a right to enter into a Society...he had placed contract giving up an absolute right in oneself in the interests of an association to be formed or in the interests of the members in general of that association. ...The on himself restriction imposed, is generally for retaining the identity Form of of the society and to carry forward the object for which Voluntary [RESTRICTION] by the society was originally formed. It is, therefore, a fallacy Association to consider, in the context of co-operative societies, that & entering into the the surrendering of an absolute right by a citizen who Freedom of becomes a member of that society, could be challenged by the said member by taking up the position that the Contract compact...and restriction he had placed on himself by entering into the compact, is in violation of his fundamental right of free- SUBMERGING his rights dom of movement, trade or right to settle in any part of the country. He exercises his right of association when he in the common right to becomes a member of a society by entering into a contract with others regulating his conduct vis-a-vis the society, the members constituting it, and submerging his rights be enjoyed by all and he in the common right to be enjoyed by all and he is really exercising his right of association guaranteed by Article is really exercising his 19(1)(c) of the Constitution of India in that process. His rights merge in the rights of the society and are controlled by the Act and the bye-laws of the society . right of association.’

36. The restriction, if any, is a self-imposed restriction. ENGLISH COMMON LAW ... Moreover, it is not as if it is an absolute restraint on alienation. Respondent No.2 has the right to transfer the property to a person who is qualified to be a member of the Society as per its bye-laws. At best, it is a partial restraint on alienation. Such partial restraints are valid if Co-operative ‘...a husband cannot be guilty imposed in a family settlement, partition or compromise Societies Act of disputed claims... So, when a person accepts member- discriminatory of a rape committed by himself ship in a cooperative society by submitting himself to its privileged bye-laws and secures an allotment of a plot of land or a Membership upon his lawful wife, for by building in terms of the bye-laws and places on himself Legal a qualified restriction in his right to transfer the property Uniformity their mutual consent and contract by stipulating that the same would be transferred back & to the society or with the prior consent of the society to a Social person qualified to be a member of the society, it cannot Hierarchy the wife hath given up herself in be held to be an absolute restraint on alienation offending Section 10 of the Transfer of Property Act. He has placed this kind to her husband which that restriction on himself in the interests of the collective body, the society. He has voluntarily submerged his she cannot retract.’ rights in that of the society.

Figure 2: By Contract

Once again, we argue for an approach within law that protect and promote in law to anti-discrimination that does discriminatory practices. Looking at the not focus on the presence of an anti- normative assumptions—many based discrimination statute but instead on notions of gender and sexuality— looks at the institutional arrangements within the notion of individual and group

83 rights mediated through the contract appears repeatedly within Indian rental helps us both locate and understand law, but what words do not are equally these institutional arrangements. This conspicuous: the worker, the individual, is essential both to diagnose them the student. This means that categories correctly as well as re-imagine them. of existing rental do not get counted, The final argument we wish to mark assessed, or acknowledged, either within in this report is the one that is law or within data. It also means that perhaps more predictable when one tenant-landlord relations get framed in reads rental housing law looking for policies thinking about the “family” as the discrimination. This set of arguments default, and then imposing those social looks at assumptions of who can be a expectations on all forms of tenants. tenant, a subject, and a citizen within As Chan asks, can we think about what rental housing law. The answer gives privacy rights “tenants” have if the law the most direct and critical evidence imagines tenants as families only, rather of how norms of gender and sexuality than individuals? shape the possibilities and life worlds of citizens. As Figure 3 from Chan’s work All of these arguments are detailed in asks: who can be a tenant? The family the separate report on the legal analysis. is imaginable within law, and the word Details are in Section 7 of this note.

22. Protection of tenant against eviction. (1) Notwithstanding anything to the contrary contained in any other law or contract, no order or decree for the recovery of possession of any premises shall be made by any court, Tribunal or Rent Authority in favour of the landlord against a tenant Who is an urban tenant? save as provided in subsection (2). (2) The Rent Authority may, on an application made to it in the prescribed manner, make an order for the recovery Within the Area of Operation of possession of the premises on one or more of the following grounds only, namely:-- of rental premises, can we (a)... (d) that the premises were let for use as; a Protection re-define relationships, and residence and- against (i) neither the tenant nor any member of his family Evication: therefore legal definition of a has been residing therein for a period of six months; for tenants and tenants’ ‘tenant-family’ or ‘related by (ii) the tenant has not been residing therein, without familiy a reasonable cause for a period of two years, occupancy’? immediately before the (date of the filing of the application for the recovery of possession thereof: Provided that the landlord may, on request in writing Do we need landlord/tenant of the tenant, permit occupancy of the premises profile as a census data? by a person other than the tenant or his family not exceeding the period of tenancy. Explanation.- For the purposes of this clause and clause (r),” family” means parents, spouse, dependent sons and daughters or such other relatives as are ordinarily living with the tenant and are dependent upon him:

Figure 3: Who can be a tenant?

84 3. Discrimination and the Thickly Social

We now turn to describing details of So what categories could be the basis the arguments emerging from our life of explicit refusal? Religion, particularly history interviews. Sections 3 to 5 will refusal to Muslim men and women, was focus on three main arguments. Looking the most explicitly voiced identity to at access to rental housing both affirmed the point that a gay Muslim man we and challenged our understandings of interviewed made it clear that he never discrimination going in. We found three anticipated facing problems due to his kinds of ways in which discrimination sexual orientation but always due to his manifested itself. The first was explicit religion. It was the latter that he had to

...Focusing only on the gender and sexual identity of the tenant, while important, must first be preceded by understanding the institutional context of housing policy itself. refusal. Here, a person seeking housing cloak to access housing, not the former. was refused, and refused explicitly on Other categories that could be explicitly the grounds of their identity. This is involved were being single, unmarried, a bachelor, a lawyer, or Kashmiri. Yet in the most evident and commonsensical most of these cases, respondents still form of discrimination. Yet, we found did not use the word “discrimination” that, for our respondents, none who in their own narratives. They simply identified as being LGBT faced explicit described housing that they could not refusal on the articulated basis of access. In many ways they expected their gender or sexuality. This is not many of the refusals that came their way. to say that their gender or sexuality Finding a house, they argued, was about navigating refusals until someone said could not have been part of the yes. This is one of our first realisations basis of refusal, but to underscore about discrimination: it is not a category that this refusal was not explicit in that people use to describe structural invoking either of these identities. inequality that they have, often,

85 normalised simply as “the way things faces the world over: discrimination are.” This is also partly, as we will argue rarely announces itself as such, and later, because there is no absolute refusal without such articulation, proving even on the basis of identity. Even all the an intent to discriminate becomes folks that belonged to the categories we that much more difficult. stated above eventually got homes, and many got them in neighbourhoods they This problem is exacerbated in the had initially thought were impossible. structure of our rental housing market The oddity about rental housing markets that is the basis of our second insight. is both the truth of its strict spatial Only 2% of rental housing in urban India segregation as well as the limits of that is through registered, written contracts. narrative of segregation. As rational This implies that rental housing is what actors, our respondents were right to we have called a thickly social field—it is think that they would not get a house a set of interactions mediated between most of the time and also right to renters, brokers, and landlords where think that, as long as they kept meeting the “contract” is socially performed, landlords, they would get a house orally enforced, and holds little option

The first thing our study challenges is that explicit refusal—the simplest form of discrimination—is also the least representative of accessing rental housing in India.

eventually. This made it both impossible for formal mediation of any kind. Access to feel confident in a search but also to rental housing is not determined impossible to decide that it was not by an economic determination of worth it. willingness and ability to pay measured through objective criteria. Access to a These are an important insights when it comes to thinking about laws on anti- house is navigated through a physical discrimination. First, to reflect on the meeting between renters, brokers, and idea of explicit refusal based on identity. landlords that is itself a performance, a Any anti-discrimination law would site of complex meanings and discursive prohibit discrimination on the basis of exchanges. It is in this thicket of known identity categories. Yet, other interactions—the thickly social—that than on being Muslim, our life histories we must anchor some meaning to did not suggest that the explicit refusal discrimination and, equally, to the idea such legislation imagines would play out of anti-discriminatory practices, laws, the way the law would require it to be and safeguards. The first thing our study mobilised as evidence. This is a problem challenges is that explicit refusal—the that anti-discrimination legislation simplest form of discrimination—is also

86 The family is imaginable within law, and the word appears repeatedly within Indian rental law, but what words do not are equally conspicuous: the worker, the individual, the student... the least representative of accessing Further, even this pattern of unequal rental housing in India. and differentiable treatment cannot be understood only in a single interaction So where is the category of with a particular landlord. It has to be “discrimination” actually used? rooted in patterns of more structural Interestingly, discrimination is invoked as and everyday patterns of behavior and a word and framework most often when experience. Many respondents talked it is either comparative or within an about discrimination as the difference interface with institutions. Respondents in how they had been treated relative were likely to find and call something to their siblings, for example, through “discriminatory” when they could their childhood that shaped all of their compare two kinds of behavior directly behavior, including their approach against each other. LGBT respondents to rental, their structural position spoke about their vulnerability versus in the rental market, and their own a heterosexual family; women spoke perceptions of their desires for forms of life and housing. about relative inequities vis-à-vis men; transgender folks spoke of the difference The real issue, however, is that what between them and cisgender renters.The dominated the experience of most of category is equally powerful in other our renters, was not these more legible forms of public life: in dealing with banks, understandings of explicit refusal or trying to get a housing loan, dealing clearly differentiated but comparable with service companies. Here, again, behavior. Mostly, rental proceeded discrimination understood as differential through the thickly social transactions treatment is a useful category and one that just as often led to refusal as to that respondents use. Discrimination getting a house. These are instances when the refusal (when it occurs) is therefore a legitimate, legible and is neither explicit, nor structured. useful category only in so far as it offers Furthermore, similar interactions with a relative measure of difference. It is similar landlords could lead to success possible, however, that this is a difference in one instance and failure in the next. In within thresholds—a transgender person other words, a framing of discrimination may have a harder time relative to a where people of a particular identity cisgender person, but that still leaves the consistently struggled with one type possibility that both were discriminated of landlord who could then be called against if measured against an external discriminatory does not actually play out threshold but just to a different degree. in our life histories.

87 In fact, rather than being narrowly read documented instances when a landlord for their identities, our respondents that while speaking in generic yet deeply were often not sure how they were negative terms about a community (Jats, being read or seen, and often tried to Northeasterners, Muslims) would also perform an interaction between the continue to rent to precisely people landlord and themselves that would from these communities. This has meet tests that they themselves weren’t led us to step away from a notion of clear of. Respondents would often say discrimination based on explicit refusal that landlords would never say “no,” or articulated prejudice, and instead but still, in the interaction, make it clear ask a different question. Using the that they would not give the house. Yet conceptual category of absorption, we this thickly social interaction, till the ask: what determines whether or not a very end, held the possibility of working particular person of identity x, y, or z can out, of bringing access to the house. get a house? What can be absorbed in

...Our first realisation about discrimination: it is not a category that people use to describe structural inequality that they have, often, normalised simply as “the way things are”.

Clear identity markers did not lead, a transaction with a landlord, and what in other words, to explicit refusal that causes refusal? Absorption challenges could easily be called and understood a clear line between behaviour that is as discrimination. In the space of the discriminatory versus one that is not thickly social, discrimination is a tacit because it shows us that access can category, one that can’t be pinned come with prejudice just as often as down. Respondents described trying to prejudice leads to refusal of access. emphasize different aspects of identity One of the key learnings about both or appearance at different times, trying studies on discrimination as well as to emphasize or hide different parts anti-discrimination policy and law is that of their CVs, histories, or locations, while our focus has, so far, remained constantly trying to guess what would largely on identities that one cannot get them access to the house. discriminate on the basis of, the real need may perhaps be to focus on the This complicates any clear understanding interactions and processes that lead to of what discrimination looks like when it access or refusal of desired outcomes (in occurs. Indeed, in many of these thickly this case, a house for rent). Within the social interactions, the respondents got thickly social, it is the interaction rather the house despite deeply conflicting than the identity of the actors that anti- interactions. In many cases, we discrimination practices must focus on.

88 4. Discrimination as Everyday Life

... A respondent spoke about how she and her girlfriend told the landlords they were cousins even before the landlord asked. In recounting the story to us, she wondered why she did that, musing out loud that the expectation of the question was, in fact, often as bad enough as being asked.

We suggested earlier that discrimination was, in fact, often as bad enough as in lives considered non-normative must being asked. Other times it was smaller be understood not as isolated incidents things—an assumption that one didn’t that happen to some people, but in fact correct, a question answered evasively as the structure of their everyday life. neither truthfully nor untruthfully. Yet Here, we wield absorption in its second what this subtle or explicit evasion conceptual valence: what can we absorb does to our respondents is not an and what does it do to us? This again easy question to answer. It made their takes us beyond just the incident in everyday life in rental housing a lie— thinking about discrimination and, within the risk of being found out aside, what rental, beyond the fact of getting or not it does to live with parallel narratives getting a house. about oneself remains an unmeasured toll of non-normativity. Our life histories reveal a range of effects that accessing rental housing and Other respondents spoke of how one living in it do to non-normative lives. incident of discrimination in a house Many respondents made everyday life cast a long shadow wherever they possible by misrepresenting themselves went in their lives, leading, in different or their relationships. Sometimes cases, for example, to a heightened this was intentional—one of our fear of intrusion, a constant mistrust respondents spoke about how she and of strangers, a feeling that one had her girlfriend told the landlords they to be eternally vigilant even within were cousins even before the landlord one’s home. You don’t, one of our asked. In recounting the story to us, she respondents said, even fully know why wondered why she did that, musing out you are so suspicious, or guarded, but loud that the expectation of the question you just are. Often this shadow is not

89 even of an incident that has happened This sense of eternally being on to someone personally—the stories guard, of constantly finding the right circulate. An evicted queer person in framing of one’s story, of anticipating another city, a cousin told off by the the next question eventually becomes landlord, a friend that never found a unsustainable. Absorption, as we saw it house, a newspaper report of violence. in the cases above, takes one kind of toll. The closest way to describe the effect is Yet it also has thresholds. These are also a sense of heightened awareness of one’s the mainstay of our narratives: moments self and surroundings at all times. Can when all the negotiations, the liquidity, such a sense of being eternally on guard, the ability to absorb stops where there eternally aware, eternally performing, be is exhaustion, violence, harassment, and considered “discrimination”? It certainly fear. These are very much what we is the everyday of non-normative lives. expected to find when we went in to hear stories of non-normative lives. They Structurally, the full outcomes of this are present without doubt, structurally fear of not being able to absorb has a and fundamentally. Moments of panic logical end—to simply not even let it everytime the bell rings; brokers and happen. Many respondents spoke to landlords making disparaging, sexist, us of houses, neighbourhoods, options, homophobic remarks; neighbours that and indeed lives that they simply didn’t police and harass; and landlords that even consider. It was not that they were felt a complete sense of impunity in refused—they just never even asked, violating the privacy of tenants that did fearing refusal, or, in indeed, fearing not have the sanction of heterosexual access that they would then have to marriage to make their desire for privacy navigate. Many times, discrimination legitimate. In the world of everyday life within non-normativity, means taking once one did get the house, therefore, the option off the table for one’s self, the everyday was lined with all that one redefining the terms of refusal towards could absorb, and the violence that one self-censorship and self-disavowal. couldn’t. Within this absorption lies It means limiting the choice set we the full spectrum of what lies under the allow ourselves. simpler category of “discrimination.”

The closest way to describe the effect is a sense of heightened awareness of one’s self and surroundings at all times. Can such a sense of being eternally on guard, eternally aware, eternally performing, be considered “discrimination”? It certainly is the everyday of non-normative lives.

90 5. Asociality as a Queer Normative

...Wonder what it means for a set of lives to want asociality as an ideal form of life. Does it mean that the cost of non-normativity, its real meaning, lies in this—in an expectation of the world that can be manifested only in wanting to be cut off, to retreat to one’s own interior? Is the cost of being free of discrimination being lonely? Being socially isolated? Indeed, narratives of loneliness haunted our life histories...

The final articulation that we wish to is to wonder what it means for a set of contribute to the project’s understanding lives to want asociality as an ideal form of discrimination is that it not only of life. Does it mean that the cost of shapes the experiences of non-normative non-normativity, its real meaning, lies in people in accessing and living in rental this—in an expectation of the world that housing, it changes their aspirations can be manifested only in wanting to be and values about what kind of housing cut off, to retreat to one’s own interior? and life they want. When we asked our Is the cost of being free of discrimination respondents what a good landlord would being lonely? Being socially isolated? be, the answer wasn’t that this would Indeed, narratives of loneliness haunted be someone accepting, queer friendly, our life histories, threading through open-minded, or professional. The ideal them tacitly and explicitly. If asociality is landlord/neighbor was, in fact, someone a normative condition, then the real cost who didn’t exist. Someone never seen, of non-normativity and discrimination someone never present. Time and time is not just access or refusal, but in fact a again, non-normative folks spoke of an shifting of personhood. It is the tension ideal housing arrangement as one that between wanting to be left alone and would allow a retreat, a being left alone, being fearful that no one would hear you an asociality. fall in a rented home without neighbours Our intent here is not to say that the who could ask after you, or families that desire for non-interference is not valid. It would repeatedly call.

91 6. Reflections on Moving Forward

Looking at rental housing as a key part the many experiences we erroneously of the study of discrimination has left club under “discrimination” take place. us with several implications for policy, practice and future research. These are Four, as a conceptual category, detailed in individual reports. Here, “discrimination” is not able to hold in this framing document across our or understand what prejudice or the approaches, we mark only the principles expectations of it does to everyday life. that emerged from the work. It cannot understand the subtle ways of self-disavowal, of the impacts of living One, anti-discrimination law or policies with prejudice around you, the shifts in that privilege a language of law that one’s own aspirations and notions of locates discrimination in the identity of a good life. Other concepts will have the person discriminated against risk to speak of this, and absorption, which losing the fact of discrimination in the allows both the presence of prejudice interactions towards desired outcomes. but also its (non) resolution in multiple Within housing, discrimination is rarely forms, has the possibility of doing this. explicit on the terms of identity. Five, responses to discrimination cannot Two, in sectors where processes are simply be responses to incidents. They not formal, contractual, and legible like must be structured to address the housing in India, access to public goods consequences of relentless absorption and services are informally negotiated within non-normative lives. This implies within the space of what we have that the real target of our actions described as thickly social transactions. cannot be limited to legal statutes The formal logics of law and policy or pronouncements but will have to cannot penetrate these interactions in be based on constructing spaces of the way they currently approach the solidarity. Freedom from discrimination issue of discrimination. cannot require loneliness, as the Three, non-normative lives are not increasing desire for asociality among simply or clearly discriminated against queer folks indicates. Breaking this cycle in incidents of violence, exclusion, or is then to engage with the intimate as refusal alone. It is in the structure of well as the structural, the spaces of everyday life that the consequences of support as well those of protection.

92 7. List of Outputs

Many times, discrimination within non-normativity, means taking the option off the table for one’s self, redefining the terms of refusal towards self-censorship and self-disavowal. It means limiting the choice set we allow ourselves.

Written Papers Exhibitions a. Sahai, V., Tiwari, A. & Bhan, G. c. Arun-Pina, C. (2018) Case Book: (2019) Houses, homes and lives: Annotations of Legal Documents Reflections on Discrimination on Urban Housing in India. Mixed and Non-Normative Gender and Media and print. Sexuality in Urban India. d. Upasana (2018) Queer Homes: Portraits of Queer Lives. Portraits, b. Arun-Pina, C. (2019) Reading Pen and Ink illustrations. Normativity in Legal Documents on Urban Housing in India. Podcasts e. Queer homes: Five episodes of podcasts on building queer lives in Delhi.

93 An Exploratory Study of Discriminations based on Non-Normative Genders and Sexualities 5

Gender and Sexuality in Political Student Organisations and Modes of Protest

Akhil Kang Gender and Sexuality in Political Student Organisations and Modes of Protest Introduction

he beginning of this Discrimination the every-day. That is, one is looking Tproject (in 2016) was marked for not just tokenistic representation(s) by a series of political eruptions all of women and queers in the decision- over the country. The simultaneous making positions but also for how rise of student-led movements across people occupying these spaces come to several university campuses and those understand their own personal stakes movements emerging as important sites in the broader feminist understanding of dissent and protest provided the of gender and caste roles. Over the Political Formations team of the project period of two years (2016 - 18), I spoke a rich resource to understand gender with and interviewed several student and sexuality in student movements. movement leaders, (then) current party What started as attending and observing members, ex-party members, and other student elections in Jawaharlal Nehru students who were regularly attending University (JNU) and Delhi University party events and protests in New (DU) soon turned into a deeper investigation into broader questions of Delhi. The following analysis includes how different forms of representations thinking through issues of gender and understand caste, gender, and sexuality sexuality with these individuals as together. In order to understand these well as personal reflections on what it elements playing out in the protest meant, ethnographically, to be reading spaces, student-led rallies, and speeches, and studying these places. The students it is important to note how gender and (many of whom have now left the sexuality was specifically being addressed university) were very generous with in these spaces. Additionally, it is equally their reflections, doubts and hopes about relevant to understand the interplay protest spaces and broader politics of of politics and gender and sexuality in the country.

97 Gender, Caste, and Campaigning

One of the most significant sites to different than men using these spaces to understand gender and sexuality in express their desires. For instance, many student movements and parties was students who study in North-campus the time when the party members DU noted that campaigning months/ campaigned and mobilised new, incoming weeks leading up to the main election students at the start of the term. Several became insufferable for them because interviewees noted how the few days they would face constant harassment when new students are getting used in the name of voting. For instance, to the university spaces and the city, several women spoke of how “these jat the student party plays a crucial role in man” (indicating a specific kind of caste facilitating that process of establishing group which affiliates itself with either familiarity. Many women interviewees ABVP or NSUI in DU electoral politics) expressed how they had to be clear would repeatedly ask for their phone about setting boundaries around numbers in the pretext of sending them socialising with other students during information of upcoming party events. this time of persuading new students Could this socialising and techniques of to join their respective parties. Their mobilising also tell us about interplay of friendly approach towards students caste and class? Several men who were would often be mistaken as flirtatious campaigning in DU campuses indicated and create awkward situations wherein to me that being a student in Delhi students would pursue these women was the first time they were not living leaders and students throughout the in small towns or villages. And that college academic year. While many volunteering for these campaigns was women students spoke about how the only way they could approach girls clear they were in setting boundaries because otherwise their Hindi-speaking between their party members and background and non-urban aesthetic students, others spoke about how wouldn’t give them access to particular campaigning became spaces where cliques in their classrooms. These they could also explore intimacies instances inform us of complicated with people through casual flirtations. ways in which gender occupies However, it is important to note that public spaces and plays itself out in the dynamics within which openly queer campaigning settings. The negotiation students and women operated is much over entitlement over public spaces and

98 campaigning moments, evidently, differs itself to comforts of talking to strangers across caste, class, and gender lines. of the same surname, caste status. What seemed like almost a grand, Another important factor through strategic ritual in JNU around which gender became obvious during campaigning on the day of admission— campaigning was the division of labour these moments were quite telling of the in terms of dissemination of party’s fact that acts such as helping each other information about events and motto. out fill several admission related forms, For instance, younger men inductees running with students from one building and volunteers would be given the task to the next all over the campus (the JNU of pasting posters across campuses, campus is widely spread over 1,019.38 as opposed to women who were acres, as the university statistics indicate) expected to not do this “hard” labour. would establish a certain solidarity Many parties, women interviewees among experienced students and the noted, would purposefully place women new ones. One student also indicated in the forefront when it came to how clear caste boundaries were convincing new students to join the established the moment students would party. One could note that there was enter campuses. For instance, a person also an obvious play of masculinity in with a surname of ‘Sharma’ would terms of what counted as a “good” immediately be attended by another candidate. Well known faces in the student with the same surname. Or media, particularly men, would often use when a person came from a particular their positions to gain currency among location from a non-urban context, it young/new students. Some, in fact, in my was automatically understood what kind interviewees, acknowledged that because of caste socialising they would be familiar they were aware of the power imbalance, with. Therefore, a person from that they would on purpose not approach region and also belonging to a particular new students during campaigning. caste would be expected to put that new Nevertheless, if not them, other party person’s parents at ease. Thus, playing members, candidly admitted to using with anxieties around the new university their name as a leverage to increase as well as a new urban city would attach their member share.

99 Gender and Masculinity in Protest Spaces

The display of caste and power was In DU, the bigger the entourage around quite dominant, more so in DU than a potential candidate, the better would in JNU. Before talking about display of be his chances to (at-least appear or money and masculinity through cars hope to) win the election seat. These in DU, I want to highlight how JNU, performances of masculinity were often as a space, though quite different than deeply tied with land politics, and the North campus colleges in DU, had a amount of resources that would go into different kind of logic vis-à-vis class and fielding these candidates into the DU caste. Many student interviewees and election race. Many candidates would former party members noted an almost see this opportunity not just to stand for obsessive surveillance over each other’s local college elections but also establish choice of clothing and the pressure to their caste-class power and hope to gain “look” progressive. Often, this meant mobility within their own party. Both that students would consciously choose JNU and DU include several examples not to wear “Fabindia, Anokhi” brand of of students entering mainstream politics. clothing because those clothes would However, through the obvious display of indicate their class status. So much so muscle power, investing in resources to that once, while interviewing a student get volunteers from districts surrounding party member in a restaurant, when she New Delhi by individual party members saw another student from her campus (and not the party per se) indicated coming into the market, hid inside the how the stakes in DU politics operated toilet till they left because she didn’t differently. This is not to say that stakes want to be seen hanging out in a place were higher in one institutional space which that student couldn’t afford to get as opposed to the other, but I am in (but she clearly could!). This notion interested in how the interplay between of particularly performing a stereotyped gender and politics is visualised through notion of aesthetic would be these tactics. It is to be noted here, that complicated further along lines of caste these are not broad generalisations location because many dalit, lower-caste across all registered parties in JNU and students indicated that the meaning of DU, but instances of caste and gender appearing a certain way gave them the through specific contextual instances of mobility which caste rigidity couldn’t. local university politics.

100 Many women interviewees also note too bothered about such comments that they are hyper aware of the clothes but a woman coming upto a man to they choose to wear in protest spaces. say the exact same thing would carry Several of them told me about specific very different implications. For instance, instances when men approached them women’s relationship with security in and commented on their choice of a city like New Delhi, in light of such clothing. One interviewee spoke of how once, a man, came up to her after comments, also means that they have her speech and said that he comes to to take higher precaution after the her party’s protests only to look at her. protest spaces are dispersed as well as She observed how she tried not to be before them.

101 Queers in Politics

The two-year period (2016–18) voters. The simultaneous distribution witnessed some significant changes of lip balms and other “safe” products in terms of the queer representation. (as opposed to sanitary pads, for An important change that one could instance) also spoke volumes of how notice in these student political settings parties often operated within the logic was that “gender” was being engaged of misogynist protectionist tendencies with beyond merely allocating seats to “help” women. for cis-gendered women in the party The presence of openly queer, committees. In JNU, gender came to be LGBTQIA+ individuals was quite crucial seen as a “deprivation point” (a point in understanding how parties were allocation system implemented in JNU responding to questions of sexuality. to benefit students from marginalised In JNU, a few queer interviewees backgrounds and under-represented mentioned the involvement of specific social locations) which parties actively homosexual-identifying individuals campaigned for. In DU, presence of with the left parties since late 1990s Pinjra Tod, in particular, created new(er) and how the parties’ involvement with methods of women’s engagement with issues of sexuality wasn’t necessarily the university. The presence of women proportional to number of openly gay students was not just about number individuals associating with political of seats allotted to women in various parties. However, one could see that, colleges but about safety, increased particularly in the JNU 2016 presidential surveillance and mobility within and elections, that parties were trying to outside the campuses. There were many actively talk to openly queer individuals instances of “first woman candidate” on campus and asking how they, as a across left- and right-wing student party, could help them. The terms of that parties and they equally stressed on how engagement, no doubt, differed. Many important “the woman question” was interviewees noted the condescension for them. The meaning of this “woman with which few parties assumed their question” of course differed across party experiences and went about “including” lines. Instances of distribution of pepper them in their talks of deprivation point spray with Modi’s picture highlighted as if they were just another entity that how ABVP tried to reach out to women needed to be added in order to gain

102 more votes. Some also noted how many and sexuality are constantly shifting still saw issues of sexuality as an elite across student political parties and one and that parties needed to deal with yet, in few cases, seem to be frozen in much “larger, more important” issues. By heteronormative understanding of sex the end of the project, however, many (as opposed to gender) binaries.The parties included openly LGBTQIA+ presence of queer/LGBTQIA+ identifying individuals who spoke of their sexualities students is changing these structures of vis-à-vis broader questions of caste, class, disability etc. The engagement engagement but it is important to note of student politics with sexuality still that these identities are not operating remains an ongoing one. The aim of this in isolation and are being understood short reflective piece was to highlight in broader structures of power and how terms of engagement with gender systemic oppression and violence.

103 An Exploratory Study of Discriminations based on Non-Normative Genders and Sexualities 6

Non-Normativity and Discrimination in Public Spaces

Rumi Harish, Sunil Mohan, and Radhika Raj Non-Normativity and Discrimination in Public Spaces Introduction

ublic space is one of the most normative bodies and their expressions Pcontested sites for non-normative gain legitimacy to regulate non- bodies and expressions. Non-normative normative expressions, even if it means bodies and expressions routinely face breaking the law. varied forms of violence such as lynching, beating, sexual assault, general assault, The non-normative body, and its and even murder for merely occupying expressions, is accepted only to these spaces. These forms of violence an extent that its presence can go occur due to the prejudices and stigmas unnoticed in public spaces. On the that people have about these bodies. other hand, the normative body can be In many cases, the public take it upon carefree and anonymous if it chooses themselves to punish, reprimand, and to be. However, because of who we are, teach a lesson to these non-normative the way we are, and the work we do, bodies. This happens for a variety of we get noticed at the first instance we reasons––in the name of morality, step out of our homes––our dress, voice, fundamentalist prejudices, religious gait, behaviour, walk, mannerisms––every discriminatory prejudices, to show single move we make gets noticed the depressed caste and class their and can attract all forms of responses “right place”, or to provide corrective including humiliation, ridicule, and punishments of gender expressions etc. violence. Sometimes just the act of Apart from visible forms of violence, sizing up by the public gaze can be very the queer and trans community also humiliating. It is not just what the public face humiliation, verbal abuse, insults, does to the non-normative bodies and and ridicule in public spaces that are expressions but also how normativity often not visible but are endured. starts regulating the non-normative. Our experience has shown that when Non-normative existences are bogged queer and trans persons face public down with the pressure of “becoming” harassment, the police and state agencies normative. Starting from uncomfortable refuse to register complaints. They are gazes and leading to questions like: “Are often turned away and there is no dignity you man or woman?”, “Why are you provided for non-normative bodies here?”, “No entry into this place”, and and expressions. On the other hand many more. All these try to force the

107 non-normative bodies and expressions were lathi charged.2 Until 2008, the into the tight frame of normativity. police were commonly arresting hijras under The Karnataka Prohibition of The existence of non-normative bodies Beggary Act, 1975. However, after the and expressions in public spaces is drive, hijras were arrested for extortion. also almost always seen in the context Unlike begging, “extortion” is a non- of crime. For example, in Bangalore bailable criminal offense under the after 2008, the hijras’ cultural act of Indian Penal Code (IPC) section 383. begging in the streets, which is also Similar “Bangalore Clean Up” drives their means of livelihood, was seen as have been renewed at short intervals. In “extortion” by the police. Around this December 2010, the police started a time, Bangalore was witnessing the rise campaign against “aggressive begging” by of new elite forces that collaborated hijras. In May 2011, a similar campaign with the government to pursue a vision was initiated with a three-day deadline of turning Bangalore into a “world-class to curb the “eunuch menace” at various city”. In July 2008, the Yedyurappa-led traffic signals. BJP government along with an elite task Studying public spaces in the context of force initiated an objective to “revive non-normative bodies and expressions and rebuild Bengaluru”. In this wave of for us has also meant documenting reviving Bangalore, several “clean-up” the varied experiences of different drives were undertaken. On October 20, identities of the non-normative genders 2008, Bangalore’s Deputy Commissioner and sexualities, what kind of responses of Police (South) said (derogatorily each of these identities get, what kind referring to the hijra community) that of apprehensions do we always carry the police had started a “drive against within ourselves, and so on. How do we 1 the city’s eunuch menace”. On the same understand “public” spaces not just as day, the police randomly picked up five opposed to the private but also in terms hijras begging at a traffic signal near the of what is and how we are public? It Girinagar police station and physically has also meant documenting, discussing, and sexually abused them in custody. analysing, debating, theorising, and Following the arrests, the police called learning from each other of the possible for an intervention and arrested the recourse of how we as non-normative first team of activists who arrived at the genders and sexualities can address the station as a part of a crisis team. Report visible and invisible acts of violations of co-author Rumi was a part of this team. rights. How do we address and combat The arrested activists were beaten and acts of discrimination? How do we fight abused. Sunil and others who were both visible acts of violence and the protesting outside the police station more subtle forms of discriminations in a public space? As a community we have 1 http://www.dnaindia.com/bangalore/ report-arrest-of-five-eunuchs-leads-to- 2 http://samarmagazine.org/archive/ clash-1199691 articles/271WW

108 wanted to build campaigns for the public We are not arguing that the queer and to understand and accept non-normative trans community has had no access to expressions. But we all know that these public spaces. We are arguing that the campaigns have to be multi-pronged and few public spaces we access without inclusive of all forms of non-normativity. fear, have not existed naturally but have It is not easy to bring together all been built, nurtured and cultivated the issues under one campaign at the under great risk, with great compromise same time, even if we do, there will be and creativity. In these public spaces abuses and violations on non-normative we have also found love, friendships, bodies and expressions as the hetero- and solidarities. We have expressed patriarchal, brahminical, upper-class our genders freely, sexualised, and normativity is deeply rooted in people eroticised these spaces for our desires. for centuries. We have also actively used public spaces to protest against a range of rights Sometimes people from our community violations. However, our interactions have also thought that the answer lies in with the community shows that these creating new stringent laws to protect spaces are increasingly coming under us. For example, in the present context, threat and are being destroyed in the the judgment decriminalising Section guise of development, beautification, 377 of the IPC in September 2018 gentrification, safety, and transformation. by the Supreme Court has had wide At the same time, the access to public impact for the public to begin accepting spaces is not the same for all non- homosexuality, or the judgment on normative genders and sexualities the National Legal Services Authority from different locations, identities, and (NALSA) in April 2014 by the Supreme expressions. The experience of “being” Court recognising the legitimacy of trans in public is not the same for those who individuals and their identities. There are male-assigned at birth, those who are are also many suggestions for a law that female-assigned at birth, persons with protects against discrimination faced intersex variations, and other sexual and by the queer and trans community. Of gender minority communities. As one course if there is a law only to protect of our friends, a person with intersex the discriminatory acts against queer and variation, shared with us long ago that trans community then all these phrases: “they” (their preferred pronoun) would “discrimination” along with “queer” and keep a distance of more than three metres with any person in public so “trans community” have to be defined that they will not be identified and they legally, which can become very limited. would therefore always avoid going to Most times we have felt the burden crowded places due to the fear of being of the responsibility to change public recognised as “strange”. perception, as if our only need was to be part of the very social fabric that The hijra communities as part of their discriminates against us. traditional role of mangti (begging and

109 giving blessings) are out in public for driver asked, “Why are you dressed their survival and their experience in this way? Are you man or woman?” of handling public harassment, gaze, Sunil, who identified as gender non- ridicule, and rights violations is different conforming at that time, was dressed in compared to the female-assigned sexual his usual pair of shirt and pants. When and gender minority community. With he received no answer, the driver probed the trans and queer community that is further, fought, humiliated Sunil, called assigned female at birth, the moral and him an “immoral woman”, and asked social conditioning by the family would him to get out of the rickshaw. Even always restrict mobility and they are if people are not non-normative the forced to be “decent” and “proper” public spaces have restrictions for in public which is a direct result of different genders in different manners. patriarchal control. To quote our own For example, the way cis men are able example, once when Rumi and Sunil to express their sexuality in public is not were travelling in an auto-rickshaw, the the same with other people.

We are not arguing that the queer and trans community has had no access to public spaces. We are arguing that the few public spaces we access without fear, have not existed naturally but have been built, nurtured and cultivated under great risk, with great compromise and creativity. In these public spaces we have also found love, friendships, and solidarities. We have expressed our genders freely, sexualised, and eroticised these spaces for our desires. We have also actively used public spaces to protest against a range of rights violations.

110 Methodology

Our research practices are strongly of friends, or fellow-activists. We have influenced by our politics and activism. been a part of some of the struggles and When we use the term “community” incidents we write about in this report. we are specifically referring to the non- Hence, this report is as much about normative genders and sexual identities us as it is about the people we have that we have worked with over the written about. last two decades. We have also been a part of this community. This includes In an effort to do away with the identities such as hijras, kothis, panthi- “researcher” and “researched” binary, satla-kothis, satla-kothis, mangalmukhis, we have tried to keep our interactions akwa-kothis, nirvan kothis, DDs, bisexual informal and open-ended. Instead of a men, bisexual women, lesbians, gays, focused, pre-decided questionnaire, we women-identified partners of female- offered our experiences and stories as to-male transpersons, transmen, trans- conversation starters. Most of these masculine individuals, people identified discussions were led and steered by as gender non-binary, genderqueers, the person we were speaking to, and queer women, persons with intersex often turned into long debates and variations, and many more. We arguments. Since we have been a part understand that non-normativity can of the community for several years be expressed in different ways without now, we have played both roles—of the avowedly identifying oneself as queer, researcher and the researched. We have but we chose to work with people who realised that the research processes and clearly identified themselves as a part of methods itself have been discriminatory the queer community, because publicly to the very community they have tried asserting your non-normative identity to study. A marginalised community is not only difficult but potentially is only expected to give testimonies dangerous. Since we have largely worked of pain, sorrow, rights violations, with working-class sexual and gender violence, discrimination, and only on identities, this research has also focused rare occasions, stories of triumph. specifically on their experiences, politics, The researchers or academicians take and struggles. Many of the people we on the role of theorising, defining, interacted with are our friends, friends constructing discourses, and labelling.

111 Research processes and methods itself have been discriminatory to the very community they have tried to study. A marginalised community is only expected to give testimonies of pain, sorrow, rights violations, violence, discrimination, and only on rare occasions, stories of triumph.

Our backgrounds have shown us that 1. To look at diminishing, inclusive the theorising that happens from within public spaces that the community the community never gets heard in can/ could access without fear. mainstream discourses. Hence, our Our research has mainly focused report very consciously does not refer on parks in Bangalore. This part of to any theoretical texts and instead takes from books written by the community the research was also presented in and relies wholly on our interactions an exhibition using the form of a in the field. The effort of this report photo essay. is to convey and communicate the community’s analysis, debates, and 2. To look at public spaces as arguments. We also decided to produce spaces of resistance. This a range of outputs that would reach sections documents the history a varied audience. We are using our of community protests in public findings to produce tools and creative spaces and how these spaces of products that can be taken back to protests have come under threat. our sites of research, and used by the community for redressal within their 3. The final section of this report immediate surroundings. summarises the play that was one This narrative report focuses on three of our most cherished outputs of main aspects of our study. the research.

112 Mapping Desire and Discrimination in the Parks of Bengaluru

Bengaluru (erstwhile Bangalore) has city’s poor and marginalised sections. been known as India’s “Garden City” Everyday public utility needs of working- thanks to the large number of green class people such as bathing, washing spaces, gardens, and parks within its clothes, relaxing, and sleeping are now municipal limits. However, in the past replaced by upper-class, upper-caste two decades, the parks in Bangalore luxury needs of jogging, healthy living, have gone through drastic overhauls— leisure etc. The “development” of these especially since the IT boom when public spaces is very telling of how the Bangalore started aspiring for a “world- city has changed and in whose favour. A class” urban aesthetic. Since the early person’s access to these spaces depends 2000s, the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara on how well they adhere to dominant Palike (BBMP) started a drive to beautify norms of social morality. Any deviation Bangalore’s parks by planting manageable from these social norms may invite “show plants”, building large gates and varying degrees of exclusion, banishment, fences, constructing pavements and surveillance, and violence. Along jogging tracks, adding lights, introducing with new designs and developments, restrictive park timings, and increasing restrictive timings and increased private security and CCTV cameras. In 2005, security were also introduced in under its “Adopt a Park” scheme, BBMP Bangalore’s parks. Most parks developed invited corporate bodies, educational by the BBMP only remain open under institutions, clubs, residents’ associations, heavy surveillance from 6 am to 10 am hospitals, hotels, retail showrooms, and in the mornings and 4 pm to 8 pm in the other such organisations to maintain and evenings. During an interaction, a BBMP develop Bangalore’s parks. Since then, official mentioned that parks are closed parks across the city have turned into in the nights to avoid illegal activities, highly surveilled, exclusionary, enclosed, and are closed in the afternoon to and restricted spaces. In recent times a discourage “unemployed Road Romeos” nexus of brahminical, upper and middle- and couples from engaging in “indecent class activists, real-estate developers and behaviour”. the state has mobilised the discourse of “public interest”, “women’s safety” In the history of the queer movement to appropriate parks in a way that their in Bangalore, parks have played a critical new designs deliberately exclude the role in building communities, networks,

113 and solidarities. Almost everybody we The article said that for the first time, spoke to in Bangalore, mentioned how the horticulture department in charge one park or the other has played an of these parks had sought help from important role in their journey or in the the police to prevent what they called movement. “V-Day nuisance”. It planned to prevent We heard similar stories of love, entry to lovers by closing all but one discovery of self, finding partners, gate of Lal Bagh and also increase the having sex, and even of starting social number of police personnel at Cubbon movements. But these acts of love Park. We ask whose interests are and dissent have lately come under being safeguarded by these institutions surveillance from the state and the and police? At the centre of these police. They have been cited as legitimate exclusionary practices is an upper- reasons for increasing technological and caste, upper-class morality that leads police monitoring, fencing, and locking to exclusion of non-normative and up of parks and restricting entry to a marginalised bodies, monitoring of select few. For instance, on 8th February, gender expression, and the moral 2018, a week before Valentine’s Day, policing of sexuality. the following headline appeared in a Bangalore-based broadsheet: During our fieldwork, our friend who is a trans-activist took to us on a journey “Forget V-Day red roses, it’s red flag through some of the public places she for love at Lal Bagh, Cubbon Park”.3 frequented and had fond memories. 3 http://www.deccanherald.com/ One of the places is a sports ground content/658508/forget-v-day-red-roses.html which has a prominent history. In 2012,

I came to be part of the ‘community’ in 1984, when I was 16 years old. At that point, I didn’t know who I was and I wasn’t aware of the changes taking place inside me. I would often go to a park to study, read something. Many people would come there to jog to one of the parks I went to. I used to think it’s a really nice and good place because many elderly people and adults would come there and I thought it was being used only for jogging. But, sometimes I would go there in the evening also. And I realised that there is something else happening that is appealing to me in a different way. That space became my base, first place where I could express my inner feelings and emotions of femininity - which shaped slowly my desires and identity. I slowly found friends like me. I used to experience a sense of freedom over there. That space became a preface to my story.

114 The Malleshwaram ground was once an active protest space. In 2012, it was "developed" by the local MLA. It is now a gated, fenced and surveilled football and basketball playground, accessible to only a few elite residents of neighbourhood who can afford to pay for sports coaching.

Parks in Bangalore, like this one in Indiranagar, are increasingly fenced and gated, with strict timing and checks on who can enter and who cannot.

115 the park was “developed” by the local of the ideal, moralistic Indian woman right-wing MLA (Member of Legislative through satire. Assembly) into a sports ground through “When they closed the park they a Public-Private participation venture only told us it was for some minor with a corporate company. On the repairs. Then one day, these tall afternoon we visited it the entrance gate fences were built,” said our friend. was locked. A notice board on the gate said “The premises is to be used only for Today, a ten feet metal railing with sporting activities” and “The sporting large towering gates surrounds the activities that are permitted in the stadium. Two security guards man it at premises are Football and Basketball”. all hours and the premises are surveilled Standing at the gate, our friend from 24x7 with CCTV cameras. The park the community in great detail described is neatly divided into two sections––a how until 2010, the ground was both football field and a basketball ground. a cruising space (for picking up sexual We approached the MLA’s office partners) and a political space used by to understand the reason for the the community for rallies and protests. development. The MLA’s assistant told us: “We all met here, hung out here, “Till 2012, this ground was did our dhanda (sex work) here. maintained entirely by the BBMP. Look at this place, I can’t recognise It was an open and unsafe ground it,” she said while cursing. “See… with no proper infrastructure, no this is the part where we used to order. Twenty five to 30 teams sit and talk and this corner of the would come and play cricket in the ground was the dhanda spot. This same ground! Now we have fencing, was an interesting place because a sitting area and a ground.” protests, dhanda, and cruising used to all happen here. It was The MLA, a doctor by profession, had community space. Men used to also chosen “health care” as one of his key play cricket. It was always crowded. agendas for the municipal election. The Once this place was developed, it construction of the sports grounds and destroyed my business”. state-sponsored gymnasiums was an extension of this agenda. The prominent The space was also important to us ground was not the only space fenced because we (co-authors Rumi and Sunil) for this reason. Several smaller open performed our first play there as a part spaces frequented by the local public of the LesBiT group—LesBiT, founded turned into sports complexes with in 2005, is a community collective for access limited. Encouraged by the MLA, working class, non-English speaking the ground now hosts a basketball lesbian and bisexual cisgender women tournament for nearby clubs and and trans men and trans masculine colleges. A few walkers are allowed in community. The play, titled “Typical the evening and gully-cricket teams are Indian Woman”, questioned the idea encouraged to play elsewhere. When

116 we spoke about the rallies held at the Our friend continued, park, the assistant said that he had no memory of any such protests. “This isn’t a place where we can meet anymore. If few of us “Rallies and protests happen meet––you know how we stand in a nearby park, not here. We around and talk––the police and have also restricted all types of the security come and chase us events,” he replied. away. Even back then they would Despite the assistant’s multiple chase us away, but if we saw them claims, we found that the Hindu coming, we would just jump over right-wing outfit RSS (Rashtriya the compound and escape. Now Swayamsevak Sangh), has been using the with this tall fence, we have lost park for their rallies. this space.”

Etiquette to follow while walking or jogging, seen in a public park

117 Protests: Accessing Public Spaces for Resistance

Bangalore has a long history of protests deal with other issues such as poverty, organised by different movements corruption, and so on. For many of such as the women’s movement, us, who were just beginning to form dalit movement, communist women’s organisations and work for the rights movement, socialist women’s movement, of sexual and gender minorities, these labour movements, and many more. snide remarks were deeply hurtful and Political parties also occupy the streets frustrating. Many of these remarks came for protests. While issues like equal from our fellow activists. For them sex wages, dalit rights, violence against was seen only in terms of marriage or women (including for dowry and sex work. Although in progressive circles domestic violence), women’s education, free consensual sexual intercourse was and women’s autonomy were spoken of common and accepted they were still questions of sexuality and gender were within the ambit of heterosexuality. never publicly addressed until the late The constant question “Is sexuality an 1990s. In the early 90s, the women’s issue of rights?” only proved to us that movement mainly focused on violence heteronormative patriarchy was deeply against women within the household. entrenched in people all around us, With “the personal is political” as the including in our own activist circles. rallying point, the movement tried to The first time people took to the drag the violence women faced behind streets in support of homosexuality closed doors out on to the streets was for the 1996 film, “Fire”. Directed of Bangalore. However, the role of by Deepa Mehta, starring Shabana sexuality, sexual desire, and sexual Azmi and Nandita Das, Fire was the choice was absent in their discourse and first mainstream film to portray a resistance. Any response to sexuality or lesbian relationship. Right-wing groups transgender issues in a public meeting around India attacked theatres, rioted, was met with a question, “Is this a and burnt posters at the film’s release. political issue?”, “Is this an issue worth They argued that Fire was an “immoral discussing in public as a political issue? and pornographic” film “against Indian Isn’t this too personal?” Some people tradition and culture”. In response, a openly asked if sexuality is an issue that number of progressive groups organised needs attention when we still have to protests in support of the film, yet the

118 question of choice in sexuality was not Thanks to their mobilisation, in the directly spoken of. The focus was largely year 2000, hijras joined the Narmada on the right to Freedom of Speech Solidarity Forum (NSF) to protest against and Expression. We remember only the Supreme Court verdict of the Sardar two posters that our friends carried— Sarovar Project4 that adversely affected ”Indian and Lesbian” and “My Body the communities living across the My Rights”—that directly addressed banks of the river. They also joined the sexuality as choice. women’s movement protests including the “Women in Black” initiative, a form By the early 2000s, the sexuality rights of silent protest, organised by Vimochana, movement had started raising its voice a feminist group in Bengaluru, against demanding to be heard. Initially, the violence on women. presence of trans and queer bodies in a public protest was seen with In 2002, gruesome communal violence skepticism and caused great discomfort erupted in Gujarat resulting in heinous crimes against Muslim communities among many. A trans activist said, in the state.5 The pogrom sparked a “I remember we tried to join a number of widespread protests across protest against acid attacks on the country. In Bangalore, protests women and we were told, ‘If hijras were organised for several weeks come for the protests they will under various citizens’ initiatives. take away all the attention and the Many movements came together and media will only focus on them’. protested in front of the Corporation This hurt us a lot, especially since Office, a central area in the heart of many hijras had been victims of Bangalore. During this time, members of acid attacks too but violence Vividha, the first autonomous sexual and against them was never recognised.” gender minorities group in Bangalore, participated in large numbers, sat through We continued to push and create hunger strikes, and made themselves and spaces for conversations not just their voices heard. This effort by Revathi, within our circles, but also among Famila, and Kajol of mobilising the other movements. In Bangalore, many sexual and gender minority communities transgender community leaders such made a huge difference as it brought as Famila, Kajol, and Revathi started the community in contact with other attending and mobilising the community social justice movements and created a to support different protests and strikes, platform for a dialogue on the issues of on different issues. sexuality and gender. “They would personally walk up 4 http://www.narmada.org/sardar-sarovar/ sc.ruling/bangalore.protest.html to sex workers and hijras when they were working and tell them, 5 https://indianexpress.com/article/ what-is/what-is-godhra-case-gujarat- come with us for the protest, this is riots-sabarmati-express-narendra- important” a senior activist said. modi-4881537/

119 By the early 2000s, the sexuality rights movement had started raising its voice demanding to be heard. Initially, the presence of trans and queer bodies in a public protest was seen with skepticism and caused great discomfort among many. A trans activist said, “I remember we tried to join a protest against acid attack on women and we were told, ‘If hijras come for the protests they will take away all the attention and the media will only focus on them.’ This hurt us a lot, especially since many hijras had been victims of acid attacks too but violence against them was never recognised.”

Protests by the sexual and gender of the wide media coverage it receives minorities for the demand for rights and and its connection to similar Pride as acts of resistance for atrocities against marches across the globe, the Bangalore the community were held many years Pride remains one of the more popular before the Bangalore Pride was first marches in the collective memory organised in 2008. However, because of the city.

Pictures of Pride March in Bengaluru from different news outlets

120 Loss of Spaces

Since the 1970s, Cubbon Park has been advisory, it permanently influenced the a central location for many political functioning of some of the city’s key protests and rallies, especially the area of administrative units and wings including the park that directly faced the Vidhana public transport, public infrastructure, Soudha (the Karnataka state legislature the police, development of public parks building). However in 1998, after a public etc. Janagraaha, a sub-initiate of BATF, interest litigation (PIL) was filed in the was set up as a “non-profit organisation High Court by a citizen activist, the that aims to strengthen democracy in Police Commissioner banned all rallies in India by working for citizen participation the park. One of the supporters of the in urban local government.” A division ban was quoted saying, Bench adjourned hearing on the PIL filed by Janaagraha, seeking to codify “Most of the political leaders rules and regulations on holding rallies used to tell them [protestors] to in Bangalore. Apart from BATF, several stay in the park and asked them forces came together to strategically to use tree branches as timber reduce spaces for dissent. for cooking. Due to lack of toilet facility, the park was used as an Mallige Srimane, from Mahila Munnade open toilet.” says that, After the ban, the movements moved “It wasn’t just one thing that their protests on the peripheries of the was changing how and where park, mainly near the Mahatma Gandhi we protested. We could see the statue and elsewhere. city change everyday without our consent.” In 1999, the then Chief Minister S. M. Krishna of the Congress party A number of places with long histories invited elite, upper-caste individuals to of dissent were lost because of new intervene in urban governance, with development projects, especially the the aim of turning Bangalore into a ongoing construction of the metro “world-class city” and formed the stations and flyovers. For instance, Bangalore Agenda Task Force (BATF). Chikka Lalbagh was one of the most Though the BATF’s role was merely common starting points for rallies. In

121 the 1930s, Chikka Lalbagh was used into an open public park, with a special by mill workers and trade unions to space designated for protests. The protest given its proximity to the old space was demanded by the police who textile mills. In recent times, several wanted to ensure that agitators were Bangalore-based movements, including prevented from using the public parks the Bangalore Pride, have begun at and disrupting traffic on roads.7 This Chikka Lalbagh. In 2008, around 700 Central Jail space, now ironically titled sex-workers and human rights activists “Freedom Park” was to also have place marched from Chikka Lalbagh to for exhibitions. Tenders were invited in protest against the amendments to 2004 through a nationwide competition ITPA (Immoral Trafficking Prevention among designers and architects. Five Act) that further criminalised sex work. acres of this park would be set aside By the end of 2009, at least three- for arranging rallies and protests. In fourths of Chikka Lalbagh was closed by November 2008, Freedom Park opened Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation for its gates to the public. One of the senior the underground construction of the Bangalore activists shared that protesting metro. One-fourth of the park will be at Freedom Park immediately felt futile permanently occupied by the metro’s because it is a closed, walled space and entrance and protest outside or around there is no interaction with the public or will no longer be allowed.6 the state. Powerful middle-class civil society “We are told that if we want to organisations such as Janagraaha that protest then we can only use that saw rallies as an unnecessary nuisance space. It is almost like the police that caused traffic jams, filed PILs have said, ‘Do whatever you want to introduce a range of restrictions here, scream all you want, we’ll and checks for organising rallies. The continue to do what we want. suggestions included, “Rallies should When you are tired you’ll leave’.” be held during non-peak hours” and “Applicants should state in the During our interaction, Mallige Srimane licence that they shall clean the venue said spaces like Freedom Park are immediately after the event is over, failing symbolic of how the state is strategically which they will be penalised.” Around working towards making all forms of this time the police started saying to us, resistance invisible and irrelevant. “Why don’t you go to Freedom Park to protest?” “You must have heard about ‘End of Protest’ by Micah White. He is In 2002, the BATF along with the BBMP one of the people behind Occupy decided to convert the old Central Jail premises on Seshadri Road, Bangalore, 7 It was not possible to allot 15 acres of land as demanded by the city police, said 6 http://www.dnaindia.com/bangalore/ officials, but demand for more land by the report-chikka-lalbagh-loses-83-trees-to- police would be discussed with the Chief the-metro-project-1289319 Minister.

122 Wall Street. He says that in any In 2018, there was an additional movement or any protest there proposal to develop Freedom Park as a cannot be a spectator. If you are tourist destination, which was met with directly involved then you are on resistance.8 the side of the protestor, if you Today, protests are often seen as “public are not directly involved, then you nuisance” obstructing public flow in the at least have empathy towards form of traffic or pedestrians’ movement. the state or the resistance. A Protesting is seen as a menace, waste of movement cannot afford to have time, obstructing other people’s mobility, any spectators,” she added. “Now issues that are not important compared there is a deliberate push from the to the most important operational state to make all these protests activities of IT companies, multinational tokenistic. They will happily give companies, etc. Strangely the people who us permission to do a protest in were part of different resistances came Freedom Park. They will arrange to represent “working-class issues” and shelter and they will arrange water issues of the lower strata of the social for us. They will guide you—‘If fabric. Local struggles, struggles for you want to hold a protest write raise in pay scales by Anganawadi (rural a letter to Bangalore Water Supply child-care centres) workers, teachers, and Sewerage Board (BWSSB), they corporation workers, garment workers, will provide you free water. We will sex workers, against eviction of slums, inform the person who brings the struggles of dalits, women, sexual and tent house, you can pay them’.” gender minorities, Adivasis, environmental issues, and every struggle of people who More recently, there have been several are part of the working class ended up attempts to put a stop to protests even becoming issues of minority, marginalised in Freedom Park. In 2013, the BBMP sections, which the majority had no time made an attempt to rent out the space to even hear. When we resist in a public for parking, and for public and private space, it is to reach the public. The best events. In the tabloid, Bangalore Mirror, way to curb the discussion or awareness Executive Engineer (West) L. Venkatesh of these issues is to restrict and regulate was quoted as saying, public resistance. The restrictions in the “We will not charge money for form of regulations from the state not protests. But we will rent out the only reduced the physical space but also auditorium, open-air theatre and emotionally in the mind spaces of people. other portions of the park for Now protests are only allowed at a few private and public events. The park places such as Town Hall and Freedom is being frequented by anti-socials, and to check them we have planned 8 https://bangaloremirror.indiatimes.com/ bangalore/cover-story/was-the-iconic- to rent out the premises. Hence, freedom-park-created-to-host-all-kinds-of- we have written to the police.” jamborees/articleshow/21242297.cms

123 Protests are only allowed at a few places such as Town Hall and Freedom Park. For the mainstream public, who are used to seeing these repeated protests at one spot every other day, the issues mean little. The same spaces are used by opposing groups to register their point. The protests are now regularly dismissed as yet another event. The impact of such protests on the public is significantly reduced. It also allows protestors limited creativity— protests are streamlined and asked to follow the same standard formats.

Park. For the mainstream public, who know what is happening. What’s the are now used to seeing these repeated point of that?” protests at one spot, every other day, the issues have no significance. The same In one instance the Communist Party spaces are used by opposing groups to of India [Marxist] (CPI[M]) had come register their point. The protests are for a protest on wage issues and our now regularly dismissed as yet another gender and sexual minorities group was event. The impact of such protests on protesting a case of violence against the public is significantly reduced. It also community members. In the same allows protestors limited creativity— venue, there was also a celebration of protests are streamlined and asked to a revered Swamiji’s (religious teacher) follow the same standard formats. birthday. There was a red carpet laid “You gather there, protest all out for him. We were all standing you want. It won’t ever reach the around the red carpet and protesting. ones sitting in the Vidhana Soudha. But it actually looked like we were People will think something is part of the audience waiting for the happening there, but nobody will Swamiji with protest posters!

In any movement or any protest there cannot be a spectator. If you are directly involved then you are on the side of the protestor, if you are not directly involved, then you at least have empathy towards the state or the resistance. A movement cannot afford to have any spectators.

124 Freedom Begum

RESEARCH CONCERNS ABOUT may invite varying degrees of exclusion, BANGALORE banishment, surveillance, and violence. In the past two decades, Bangalore Between 2016 and 2018, the authors has gone through drastic changes, of this report worked on research especially since the IT boom, when the focused specifically on discrimination city’s development authorities started faced by the trans and queer community dreaming of turning Bangalore into a in public spaces. Many of our friends “world-class” city. The places that we, from the community narrated stories of the trans and queer community, knew, how Bangalore as a city had changed— and frequented have gone through how the parks, cinema halls, localities, rapid transformations. Many spaces restaurants that they frequented were that were built by the working-class either demolished, or “developed”, or trans and queer communities have been gated, and were no longer accessible snatched away or demolished. Sunil and to them. Rumi have been a part of a number of struggles that tried to safeguard these Our analysis of the interviews showed spaces. The new developments have not that the city’s rapid development was only erased and displaced our histories, erasing and invisibilising an entire neighbourhoods, and communities but community’s neighbourhoods, histories, destroyed an entire way of living and and lives. However, while there was our relationship to the city. The kind detailed documentation of the city’s of “development” is also very telling of glorious past and heritage, there was how the city has changed and in whose very little written about the trans lives favour. At the centre of the restructuring and their history and place in the city. and gentrification is a heteronormative, We only heard oral narratives from the upper-class, upper-caste, morality that community that could not be backed by excludes the working classes and those evidence. This was our biggest challenge: marginalised by gender, caste, and How do we write the story of places sexuality. A person’s access to these that no longer exist? How do we write spaces depends on how well they adhere about places that were erased without to dominant norms of social morality. a trace or documentation? When we Any deviation from these social norms write the history of a city, whose history

125 Koramangala / Koramangala Gym: Parks are also only reserved for certain activities such as “gymming”. Sleeping, eating, protesting in public parks is now strictly prohibited

126 are we writing? And what do erased hesitated, and hid a lot of information histories and silenced stories tell us especially about the burning of the Mahal about our cities? and the involvement of real estate giants and their hand in the destruction of the THE PROJECT property. At the same time, we could When we started our interviews with feel that many from the labour classes the trans community in Bangalore, who made the space their own were we were led to a woman called “the devastated by the burning of the Mahal Begum” who owned a large piece of land and its erasure. We started wondering: in Central Bangalore. A multi-storey Can we build a narrative based on heritage bungalow called “Begum Mahal” “rumour”? Will such a narrative have any stood at the centre of the property, legitimacy? And how do we tell this story and around it lived a working class if all we have is a series of mismatched community that depended on the Begum anecdotes from a lost world? and her son. The stories and rumours It was then that Sunil suggested the idea we heard about the Begum and the of turning these narratives into a play Mahal made us very curious, but when and the team contacted theatre activist we went to the actual spot there was no Mangai to discuss the idea. In most of the trace of the life that was described to us. work that Rumi and Sunil have engaged As we probed those who lived in the by- with, one of the creative outputs has lanes around the property, we uncovered always been a play production, and this a treasure trove of people’s memories research also took the same path. of what the Begum was like, and how she protected and nurtured an entire Rumi worked on the script and the community of autowallahs, tongawallahs, reconstruction of all the narratives hijras, sex workers, mechanics, scrap of life around the Begum Mahal were dealers, and many others. Radhika went retained in the languages that they in search of more narratives that would were provided (English, Dakhani Urdu, help us understand these lives, but Kannada, Malayalam, and Tamil). We though we heard several anecdotes, we presented the interviews as we heard found little evidence to back them. them from various sources starting from trans community people, to labourers, People did not immediately respond or scrap dealers, tea sellers, auto drivers give us information about the Begum of the area, people who have settled or the Mahal. Researching the story of in small pockets of huts in and around, Begum Mahal turned into an endless people from nearby gurudwaras, temples, series of unanswered questions. We churches, and dargahs. The rich narrative were often discouraged from pursuing script reflected different perceptions it, people questioned the need for it and about the Begum, her son, and the we were turned away, sent on wild goose Mahal. It also traces our journey in chases, and constantly warned that what search of the Begum. For example, for we were hearing was all rumour. Many many people Begum was a sex worker

127 herself, a pimp, or a brothel owner, and about the last years of the Begum’s for others she just provided a space for life and about her son. The grey areas sexual leisure. What we understood in the stories about the Begum’s son from these narratives was that she being homosexual or bisexual or believed in providing an open space transgender or genderqueer needed to for all kinds of sexual pleasure which be understood, so it is explored further otherwise non-normative sexualities and included in the play. The climax or workers, or street vendors or the brings together the multi-coloured labour class people could not otherwise multi-cultural life experiences of people have afforded. in those bylanes along with the burning of the Mahal. The story of Begum Mahal is not just the story of Bangalore’s transformation, With the support of India Foundation but the story of every Indian city that for Arts (IFA) under the project 560, has lost several open, inclusive spaces partnering with Citi India, we had around of expression, conversation, resistance, 15 training and rehearsal sessions in and freedom. As we read out the script Bangalore from April 2019 to July 2019. at conferences and among friends from The play comprised a cast of 11 people the trans and queer community, several and 5 supporting crew along with the people shared similar stories of spaces Director. Initially we held auditions, that once existed and were eventually and then started exploring each scene demolished, destructed and with it went and the experience of community in an entire way of life. inclusive spaces, the closing of spaces, the dismantling of lives, displacement We have performed the play at several of roots, trust, and so on. Each scene venues to encouraging responses. is colourful and retains the cultures of FREEDOM BEGUM AS THEATRE street life and market space. The dance PRODUCTION forms used in the play are Karaga (an ancient dance form from the depressed Once the script was ready and we castes in celebration of Mariyamma, were in the play production stage with a local mother deity) and the Dervish Mangai as the Director, and a mixed dance of the Sufis. The team was trained cast of community (queer and trans) in the Karaga dance, by Rosi a trans and theatre professionals, many people woman from Tamil Nadu, and trained from the larger community started by Shabari Rao a well known dancer in sharing more stories and memories Dervish and other dances.

128 Outputs

We used our findings to produce tools n Presentations in different fora and creative outputs that can be taken and conversations based on our back to our sites of research. extensive interactions.

Our three outputs are: n A photo essay (see images in report) exhibition on the various n Freedom Begum: A multi-lingual prohibitions in public parks play production in Bangalore.

129 An Exploratory Study of Discriminations based on Non-Normative Genders and Sexualities 7

Questions on Gender–Sexuality and Discrimination: Perspectives from and on Biomedicine and Healthcare

Asha Achuthan and Akanksha Singh Questions on Gender–Sexuality and Discrimination: Perspectives from and on Biomedicine and Healthcare Parts of this chapter have been written and submitted in the form of two articles: (a) Achuthan, A. (2019). “Gender Affirmative Technologies and the contemporary making of gender in India”. Manuscript Submitted (as part of an edited collection on Affective Technologies); and (b) Singh, A. & Achuthan, A. (2019). “Appearance of Gender-Sexuality in Medical Curriculum in India: A critical analysis of the language of medical texts”. Manuscript Prepared. Suggested citation for this chapter: Achuthan, A. & Singh, A. (2019). “Questions on Gender-Sexuality and Discrimination: Perspectives from and on Biomedicine and Healthcare”, An Exploratory Study of Discrimination based on Genders and Sexualities, New Delhi, Ford. Introduction

his chapter offers a set of assemblage, partly through a critical set Treflections on the work with of questions addressed to practitioners, medical practitioners and students, partly through perspectives developed public health researchers, members of by health movement activists and others LBT collectives, HIV health workers, in interfacing with the system. The key women’s health movement activists, women’s studies students, and others areas of focus were the following— that formed part of this study. We curriculum and pedagogy of modern focus on the emerging meanings of biomedicine primarily in undergraduate discrimination, access, and training, spaces, practice and protocols of health among others, and describe our institutions, histories of HIV work in methodologies and outputs, as well institutions and organisations, queer as research and advocacy efforts feminist1 organising and perspectives moving forward. on health, and work within health The objectives were to trace the movements. appearance and journey of gender- sexuality as a metaphor in medical 1 We use the term ‘queer feminist’ as a self- identification used by participants in the text and practice, to explore terms study. It is also a term that functions today of legibility and entry of marginal lives as a catch-all that some are uncomfortable and experiences into mainstream with, functioning as it does as a preferred healthcare spaces, and to understand term, in place of other terms like ‘lesbian’ that are today considered narrow and links across institutions that consolidate identity-focused alone. This is only the these terms. The effort was to look edge of a much larger debate that we will back, in some sense, at the biomedical not go into here.

133 Contexts and Historical Background

We begin by delineating contexts. century that Foucault marks as the birth There has been much work in the of the modern clinic, when “illness and critical social sciences looking at the medicine came to be spatialized upon pathologisation-medicalisation nexus the individual body” (Rose, 2007, p. 9), through which lives, distress and disease when an “alliance was forged between are understood, and understood in words and things” (Foucault, 1973, p. gendered fashion. Taking cognizance of xiii), to a time in the middle 20th, of a some of this work, the team has looked medical assemblage (Rose, 2007, p. 27) primarily at the medical institution as the that introduced a very different way context and location of discrimination, of managing health than only through focusing on clinical protocol and the clinic, that included management of practice, curricula, texts, teaching, and predisposition and risk, to a moment in research. We have also attempted to the beginning of the 21st, of what Rose access the intersections and critical calls “biological control”, or control of conversations between movements on what will be termed biological, disease, healthcare access and those around beginning and end of life, we have seen gender-sexuality. The focus has been several “styles of thought” as marked to map the biomedical institutions that by Ludwik Fleck—“a particular way of are accessed/encountered by those at thinking, seeing, and practicing... that a distance somewhat from the centre involves formulating statements that are of Rubin’s charmed circle [Rubin 1984], only possible and intelligible within that the manifestations of discrimination— way of thinking” (Rose, 2007, p. 12). We episodic and everyday—that occur have also seen an extension of medical in the realm of the institution, and to authority through a spatial extension understand the terms of inclusion of of the number and field of actors gender-sexuality within it. responding to illness, particularly in the context of technologised and corporate To mark four broad contexts to this medical institutions and health systems. work helps locate, historically, the This extension of medical authority is present-day version of the modern to much beyond the clinic, and to many medical institution and the health more ways of living than periods of industry in Indian contexts. From the illness. What we have named earlier as moment in the last years of the 18th pathologisation—a connection drawn

134 between body-organ-identity-behaviour, experts in March 2018, while the SC is no longer the only mechanism at judgement on Section 377 was being work here. Medicalisation, therefore, awaited, or the Indian Psychiatric becomes about health and ways of Association putting out statements being, resulting in a shift of responsibility against pathologisation in 2018, while and culpability onto the individual revised undergraduate medical syllabi accessing health care, accompanied by an released after the judgement continued appearance of participation, consent, and to locate “lesbianism” in the forensic power for the patient/client. Accompanied medicine text and under “unnatural by withdrawal of state support from sexual offences” 2, are examples of the health, and the explosion of speculative arbitrariness and ambivalence at work medicine and its natural emergence as here. We might, however, look at a corporate entity, it is in this space the partial normalisation of the queer that we could locate discrimination subject in clinical spaces from a different as a phenomenon more difficult to vantage point as well. If we juxtapose name today. the exercises of active privatisation of healthcare from the early 90s, and Here we might examine the read alongside these the exercises of relationship between medicalisation medicalisation that involve the “client” and pathologisation. With renewed and distribute medical authority, via technologies of causality that re- diagnostic technologies or protocols, centre the body as medically legible, we see a “queer person” who may as also with the co-presence and co- no longer be marked as ill on account option of discourses of resistance, and the continued presence of the of their identity or behaviour. Their market, evidence-based biomedicine distress, however, is theirs; it matters continues with newer super specialities, less whether psychic or bodily, as long and newer experts. In this scenario, as it is not seen as social. This distress is pathologisation may have been legible if it can be codified, medically, challenged; medicalisation has however legally. A particular kind of “queer been consolidated. The critiques of subject” is being produced here, who pathologisation of non-normative can be read via the medical assemblage gender and sexuality in healthcare (Rose, 2007, p. 27), one, moreover, and the mental health disciplines, have always moving, in a fort-da, along the been visible within movement spaces spectrum from the pathologised to the (Chandran, 2015 & Ranade 2015, 2018), medically legible, with these end points and have had delayed and partial impacts defined. Needless to say, this is “good on healthcare. While empathetic and 2 An Attitudes, Ethics and Communication informed, if privileged, practitioners course was added to this revision, the first have always existed, active efforts since 1997, to make the curriculum more like Health Professionals for Queer patient-centric, and has been the primary promotional in all news emerging around Individuals, an urban-centric group the revision. We might see the regulatory formed with the mission of sensitising impulses here.

135 science” at work; while older forms For trans* lives in Indian and other of pathologisation—”bad science”— “Third World” contexts, for example, continue and flourish. the question of being an experimental vs. a consuming subject is a more The third context is of an interface particular as well as vital question than between contexts of vulnerability one simply of the way in which global and advanced technologised medicine biopolitics is organised. When seeking with newer emerging identities being a service in a gender clinic, for instance, made legible and legitimate subjects of where codification is the source of intervention. Kaushik Sunder Rajan has legibility and therefore access, but talked about the simultaneity of the where needs and aspirations from the consuming subject of Western societies medical space are varied enough to like the US alongside the experimental challenge easy protocolisation, where 3 subject of “Third World” contexts with natal family support is unavailable, where relation to genomic medicine—as seen in fact distance from family constitutes in the case of clinical trials in the “Third” safety, the promise of “advanced” and the nature of speculative medicine in experimental techno-medicine brings a the “First”, for example (Sunder Rajan, whole new dimension, with transparency 2005). Chaudhuri, Das and Chakrabarti or predictability appearing nearly talk about the “third world” as a impossible, or an unfair demand. The discursive formation, and problematise particular questions of visibility-legibility- the empirical notion of a “third world” bias, and the implications for consent, (2000)). This formulation is useful become more fraught in these contexts. to speak of the metonymic presence of power, as also its particularity. The last context comes from the We suggest that the simultaneity of atomised character of contemporary consumption and experimentation, medical practice and knowledge, its while visible in the empirical “Third active links with the idea of the bounded, World” today, across class, for example, niche queer subject in neo-liberal is also visible in experimentation as discourse, and forms of politics that, consumption, in the performative aspect while making visible critical questions on gender and sexuality, and pushing of the experimental here, of course in the medical institution and the health contexts of vulnerability. 4 industry to eliminate homonegativity or 3 Participation in clinical trials in exchange transphobia, may deny or background for treatment, for example, or the database the implications/ effects/ meanings of built on patient records in the empirical “Third World” being used for genomic this for other moments in individual research in the First. lives. Feminists have sometimes referred to this sphere of experience 4 Butler speaks of “vulnerability [as] not a subjective disposition, but a as the everyday that is usually rendered relation to a field of objects, forces, outside the sphere of the political, the and passions that impinge upon or public, or the historical, and worked affect us in some way.” (Butler 2016, p 16-7)

136 towards acknowledging the politics of precisely because that is the kind of everydayness (Smith, 1987); discussions visibility they cannot afford? What on the episodic or critical and the are the degrees of safety experienced everyday contexts of queer lives by lesbian cis-women in a regular follow logically. gynaecology OPD where they either have to pass through the heterosexual By way of an example for our purposes, activists have asked the question of matrix or be outed for their what attention medical practitioners “symptoms” of menstrual irregularity completely into the discourse of SRS are to get a hearing? As we have suggested paying to the question of osteoporosis above, these are questions more likely among transmen.5 We may ask other to proliferate than be boxable if the questions—what degrees of autonomy, famed 2-sex model and its corollaries information, choice of care options, is given up on. However, these are also are possible for trans* individuals who questions that regularly fall through the cannot use regular referral systems cracks in contemporary medical practice, and need to be brought in as also facets 5 Rumi Harish, queer feminist activist and co-researcher in the larger study, of discrimination before an attentiveness in conversation. to them can be sought.

137 Methodology, Methods, and Sites

The study has used qualitative and peer counsellors, some women’s methodologies. The attempt was to movement activists, feminist queer shift from business-as-usual objective activists, as also those active in women’s research to situated research that is the health movements. We conducted over cornerstone of feminist methodologies. 51 individual interviews, supplemented The disciplinary frameworks for the with focussed group discussions and study have been feminist science consultations across our field sites. studies, feminist perspectives on health, Focus group discussions were held with deconstructive ethnography, and critical sex workers’ groups, LBT activists, feminist anthropology. medical students from government Our field areas were primarily Kolkata, medical colleges, and early career Mumbai, Bangalore, and Ahmedabad. medical practitioners identifying as Our rationales for sampling included queer. Three city-based consultations the need to explore links between were conducted at different times gender-sexuality movements and during the study, in Kolkata, Bangalore, gender-sexuality as a trope in health and Bombay, involving practitioners movements, bring connections with and organisations, that attempted to queer feminist and institutional trace histories of talk around gender perspectives on marginal lives and and sexuality within healthcare and the experiences, to understand the nature of contexts of these. One workshop was academic discourse on gender-sexuality conducted with 8 students of public across natural and social sciences, and health and women’s studies from social to look at gender and health courses science universities. Since these actors across disciplines. Our participants are very unevenly distributed in terms therefore included medical practitioners of power in the system, we also used across fields, in-depth interviews with multiple methods; a “studying up” other medical staff including laboratory approach with the expert practitioners technicians, public health researchers, (Nader 1972, Priyadarshini 2017), and teachers and students in medicine, public aspects of studying side-by-side, as also health and women’s studies students, studying down with other participants in practitioners at different locations within the study. We attempted to be reflexive HIV work including peer educators through this process, making our own

138 locations—of expert training of different on the kinds of “work” medical students kinds, of being presently social science— perform vis-à-vis medical curricula and particularly women’s studies—rather the relations they build with multiple than medical practitioners, of being texts, the politics of the space they in less vulnerable class locations than performed their work within, and several of our participants, part of the therefore the directions of clinical conversations and recognising the impact practice within the institution. Speaking on the researcher-researched relation. to practitioners within the system We also recognised attachments and definitely gave more insight into the dissonances with participants, and have workings of the system, but this method attempted to be cognizant of these in went only so far for us, particularly our analyses. in the context of this being a cross- sectional study. To get practitioners to USING INSTITUTIONAL reflect on their own practice, as also ETHNOGRAPHY to get the expert to look at the politics We began by attempting to use of space in the clinic and the ward, institutional ethnography to understand also presented a significant challenge. protocols, practices and sites of We therefore used more traditional authority formation within the ethnographic methods in order to bring institution. These focussed, for example, voices that are looking critically at the

Exclusions Based on Space Design: The Spaces, Procedures, and Processes in the Hospital

In this section, we hope to get more insight on the confluence of design and practice, and OPD its subsequent impact on the lives of patients Diagnostics who are of non-normative sexualities and Ward gender identities. We are looking for inputs on behaviours/acts/vibes/procedures that are Ward/ attentive to and are in the context of gender Pharmacy OPD/ and sexuality, while tracing the routes of Teaching patients in hospital settings. We are hoping that the following points Casualty/ Spaces within might serve as triggers to help you write this Toilets Admission journal on the way in which the OPD/ward the instituion and associated spaces are designed as well as how they are used. Doctors Canteens The following are a list of spaces that we had Room/ sent to you earlier, which we have identified Nurses Room as potential sites of patient interaction and of Operating design influenced practices. In the following Theatres Nurses Labour pages, we have explored triggers on each and Stations/ Ward we hope you can elaborate on them. Waiting Rooms

Figure 1: From the Institutional Journal designed as part of the study, by Shruthi P.

139 system—their critical and reflective medical colleges and early career work helped us find entry points and medical practitioners and one workshop perspectives that, put together with with 8 students of public health and the earlier expert voices, opened up women’s studies from social science the questions of institutionalisation in universities. relation to discrimination. 1. Focus group discussion with It was as part of the experience of this medical students failure that we developed an institutional journal, which we subsequently used These discussions were primarily in workshops with medical students focused on getting medical students to and practitioners to get them to reflect on curriculum and pedagogic reflect on the politics of the clinic as methods, and were a rich resource in a space, on practices and curriculum. this regard, in addition to the partial It has, therefore, translated into an content analysis of curricula that we output that we have used to design also did. In fact, this method and the CMEs and workshops, that we hope to reflections it supported opened up an develop further. alternative entry point into looking INTERVIEWS at curricula than a textual analysis did. The undergraduate students also Traditional ethnographic methods like attempted to reflect on the space of the interviews, semi-structured and in- teaching hospital—wards, OPD clinics, depth, were employed as methods, in labour rooms, ART centres. Some of addition to observation, and secondary these reflections juxtaposed with their data collection. We conducted semi- thoughts on the curriculum helped structured interviews with medical us analyze the contexts within which practitioners across fields, in-depth curricula are framed. interviews with other medical staff including laboratory technicians, 2. Focus group discussions with public health researchers, teachers women’s studies and public and students in medicine, public health students health and women’s studies students, practitioners at different locations within These discussions, in the first year of the HIV work including peer educators study, opened up conversations about and peer counsellors, some women’s the entry of gender-sexuality and of movement activists, feminist queer discourse on health policy, frameworks activists, as also those active in women’s and perspectives as also both health health movements. movements and movements on gender and sexuality in social science curriculum FOCUS GROUP DISCUSSIONS across disciplines. The importance of Focus group discussions were held with interdisciplinary dialogue and courses 14 medical students from government was foregrounded in these discussions.

140 3. Focus group discussions with entry points, and helped provide insights Queer medical practitioners into questions of lesbian invisibility, A focus group discussion with early but also into how collectives have career medical practitioners identifying historically framed the idea of crisis, as queer, towards the end of the medical crisis, mental health crises, and study, provided us further insights into developed networks and collectivised the micro-discriminatory contexts around access. How traditional present in medical text and practice, into hierarchies and the masculinised relationships with expert practitioners character of certain specialities have changed were also some of the within biomedicine, and the impact of gains from these conversations. heteronormative frameworks on the life of queer-identified students and CONCEPTS AND TERMS IN practitioners. The discussions also PLAY DURING THE STUDY focused on the various social contexts, n institutional rules and politics of Bias, prejudice, discrimination space within the teaching hospital and n Legibility spaces in and around it and the impact these have on the lives of those of its n Access and terms of inclusion occupants who live non-normative lives. n Consent 4. Focus group discussions with members of a queer feminist n Institutionalisation and community collective n Medicalisation and Pathologisation This was planned early on in the study, as we were framing our approaches and n Standard and Perspective

141 Emerging Themes

A NOTE ON DISCRIMINATION or less universally recognisable and therefore a route to stigmatisation. On meanings of access There is a shift, for example, from The work in the field began with a having red markers that used to be question on terminology. Does bias as hung on the beds of those who were a recognisable term within biomedicine HIV positive, to the present context and science, capture the various where files and other documents of manifestations of discrimination that HIV positive patients carry the label are seen in the realm of the institution “USP” (Universal Safety Protocol, taught and around/outside it, or does it in the curriculum) in bold letters; the focus on weeding out the element meaning of USP, however, may not be of the subjective, the situated, the lost on other patients or relatives who perspectival, that might provide multiple visit. The existence of double gloving descriptions of the same phenomena? as a practice for particular patients, or With reference to feminist literature the autoclaving of instruments when that responds to this question, the an “effeminate” man [read as gay, disciplinary and methodological read as “at risk”, read as “already ill/ impulse was to use discrimination as infected”] comes to the dental clinic, an analytic, to attempt to understand were some of these practice codes that we found medical students and some access through discrimination, and practitioners or researchers refer to in from within the healthcare apparatus. the course of discussions around the Difficulty of access has traditionally study. These codes are not confined to been understood in terms of distance the expert domain and are not therefore or unavailability of treatments or protective of patient/client privacy and practitioners; we found, in the field and confidentiality. in the vocabularies of practice, that it could be coded in many ways, ranging Meanings of access are also not static from overt denial of treatment, referral but evolve spatiotemporally. These as a mechanism since “other docs or expert behaviours we were able to hospitals” are now available, or codes connect to the absence of perspectival of naming within hospital settings that training on gender-sexuality, that are different from before, yet are more ill prepared practitioners to notice

142 and understand the gendering and is understood within biomedicine, in inequalities of power along other the service of “arriving at a diagnosis”, axes that informed clinical situations; as being geared towards making inequalities that were implicitly accepted connections with social determinants of and promoted practice behaviours. health as risk factors, not social context, There are accounts, for instance, of a and is not seen as discriminatory or “patient [who] gives a bad history” that ghettoising. The idea of training as sometimes emerge when the person a standardised protocol, or of well in the OPD is speaking too softly or bounded syllabi in the undergraduate not enough, as one example. The medical syllabi, however, seems more absence of perspectival training, in this and more difficult to “find” in the example, manifested in the failure to public hospital-teaching college, where be able to dialogue with the client who our participant experts gave us either may experience dysphoria around the different views and details of training, or gendered character of their voice at spoke of it as irrelevant to learning. The the time of coming into the clinic. In end result is an instructor-centric form the case of commercial sex workers of learning, with the consolidation of coming into outreach clinics, one of the teacher/doctor as icon/expert. This our medical student participants had iconicity, we found, also meshed well this to say: “she doesn’t have to say with forms of hegemonic masculinity, it, everybody knows”. These are not with a symbolic mobilising of the “ascetic hostile behaviours by the expert but knowledgeable singular” figure with they do stereotype certain livelihoods, obvious links to the Brahminical, while and consolidate the idea of certain continuing to be located in the scientific. personalities or identities being While there were psychiatrists among responsible for their own troubles. our participants who used the shifts in DSM protocols to tell colleagues This is the frame that is useful for us to and parents, “No, we cannot ‘treat’ understand both incidents and contexts. homosexuality or gender identity We understood, then, that it was not ‘disorder’ anymore”; we also had other exclusions within the frame, but in psychiatrists saying “...‘disorder’ or its very constitution, that we might ‘dysphoria’ this is only terminology understand discrimination. ‘they’ come for treatment”. In surgical On standard training and who is a practice, the use of and excitement good doctor around experimental techniques in what is now a “niche” super speciality, The obvious question that emerged popularly termed SRS in medical from the field, then, was what effect communities, is actually being posed does the absence of perspectival training as a counter to the need for training. have? Does it enable discrimination? Accountability then seems to come What are the impacts and effects of in the way of risk-taking, which is standard clinical training per se? Training the preferred, and sometimes only,

143 proposed way forward. These were the positioning of disciplines, questions variations of the “access” question that asked in examinations and responses of the study provided. our participants for this analysis. GENDER-SEXUALITY IN Design and delivery of undergraduate MEDICAL CURRICULUM medical curriculum Despite the relatively lower status of the In order to understand the ways in text book in the practitioner’s world, which gender-sexuality are addressed a key aspect of undergraduate medical in the language of medical texts and training continues to be curriculum. in practice, it is pertinent to unpack Our attempt was to undertake critical the structure of undergraduate curriculum analysis, and the direction medical curriculum. Dr. Tirthankar from which we approached this was Guha Thakurta in his article “The provided by workshops with students of medicine, public health, and women’s homophobic doctor” proposes that studies. During these workshops, design and delivery of curricula is key questions around the entry of gender- in making some doctors “professional 6 sexuality into curricula gave us vignettes homophobes” (Thakurta, 2014) from specific texts as also clues into 6 Thakurta emphasises that years of pedagogy and context within which reading and referencing textbooks that we could frame our analysis. This are prescribed to students of medicine analysis of undergraduate medical create biases and presumptions about non-normative identities in the minds curriculum helped us locate the entry of doctors that are difficult to unlearn and institutionalisation of gender even as newer knowledge is available and sexuality in medical training and and development in the field of gender practice. We considered content of and sexuality continues. He writes, “So textbooks prescribed to and referred he engages his attention to the more important topics that will make him a good by undergraduate medical students, student and a better doctor. If at all he the organisation and positioning of comes across the newer developments in content in these textbooks as well as the fields of sexuality, the older and earlier

MBBS 1st year Anatomy Physiology Biochemistry (First professional) MBBS 2nd year Forensic Medicine Microbiology Pharmacology Pathology (Second professional) and Toxicology MBBS 3rd year Community ENT Ophthalmology (Final professional) Medicine MBBS 4th year Medicine (and Surgery (and Gynecology and Pediatrics (Final professional) allied subjects) allied subjects) obstetrics

Table 1: Courses in undergraduate medical curriculum followed across India

144 His analysis, informed by his own the objective—is introduced. It is in experience within biomedicine as a textbooks prescribed for Forensic practitioner and teacher, has been medicine and toxicology that gender- referred to here. A brief outline of sexuality can be found. Within forensic courses as they appear in undergraduate medicine, medical code of conduct, laws medical curriculum are presented in which influence medical practice and Table 1. medical jurisprudence are introduced as sacrosanct; a critical approach to that During the first professional or first which is legal or not upholding law as a year of study, students encounter signpost for “normal” or “natural” are Anatomy, Physiology, and Biochemistry. While any mention of non-normative not to be found either in textbooks or sexuality and gender are absent in in classrooms. Sections of the Indian textbooks prescribed for Physiology, a Penal Code like Section 377 (mentioned chapter on “The Reproductive System” as an unnatural offence in the chapter is present in the syllabi 7 as a unit and in on sexual offences) and section 376 all textbooks prescribed for reference. (mentioned as a natural offence) with 8 In these prescribed textbooks there is marital rape stated as an exception are no distinction made between sex and described in rich detail in these texts gender and no discussions on sexual through usage of outdated terminologies orientation or gender identity. The of pathologisation and with opinions as first professional effectively lays the well as biases of the author passing off foundation for a binary understanding of as codified knowledge. The third year gender and establishes heterosexuality has courses on Ophthalmology, ENT as the norm. In the second professional (Ear-Nose-and-Throat), and Community where Pathology, Microbiology, Medicine. Public health and Epidemiology Pharmacology, and Forensic medicine are are introduced to students through taught, these notions are strengthened. Community Medicine where the relation As part of pathology only organic of socio-cultural aspects to disease and pathology and that which can be viewed prevention of disease are also discussed. under a microscope—the observable, Concepts and terminology from public health and epidemiology such as “high knowledge often hinder[s] unlearning!” [Thakurta, 2014] risk” populations, MSM (men who have sex with men) and “homosexuals” are 7 “The reproductive system” or “female reproductive system” and “male used arbitrarily and interchangeably. reproductive system” as units appear in Physiology and Anatomy syllabi across The fourth year, which along with state boards such as The West Bengal the third year is referred to as the University of Health Sciences, Maharashtra final professional, includes courses on University of Health Sciences (MUHS) General Medicine, Surgery, Pediatric, and in the recently introduced Medical Council of India’s “Competency based 8 Narayan, K.S. & Murthy, O.P. (2014) The undergraduate curriculum for the India Essentials of Forensic Medicine and Toxicology Medical Graduate 2018”. (23rd ed.)

145 and Gynaecology and Obstetrics. Other said by the patient or client, which the sub- and super-specialty disciplines practitioner is unable to understand and such as psychiatry and orthopedics hence, placed in categories available and are not taught as separate courses accessible to the practitioner. We found but as part of general medicine and that the appearance and positioning surgery respectively. The content and language of these texts reinforce an of gender and sexuality in medical understanding that centres reproductive texts generates notions of normativity heterosexuality and gender binarism. and delineates that which it marks as The following section will explore this. “unnatural”, pathological, deviant while claiming scientific objectivity and validity, Language of medical texts even as it masks authorial and societal If we are to see the language of biases, outdated methods, disrespectful medical texts not as a transparent terminologies and patriarchal notions as medium of instruction but as carrying value neutral knowledge. Unpacking the layered meanings, we find that it has language of medical texts, then, gives us repercussions on the ways in which practitioners speak to, speak about insight into the ways in which curricular and speak with others. An aspect of learning serves as a reference point for language in the clinic also has to do stigmatising language and discriminatory with the lacunae between what is being practices of practitioners.

“We are not officially taught how to address queer individuals, which pronouns are to be used, how to address in a gender neutral language. We have never learnt the skill of using a language without gender. We are not even aware if any gender non-conforming individual, or a hijra person or a transgender person comes for treatment, whether to admit them as men or women. This only totally depends on the discretion of the house surgeon who will be on duty. We have no concept of gender neutral washroom. The regional and vernacular of LGBTIQs are not taught. If someone identifies as a Kothi, I am not even aware what does it mean. Leaving aside the wide range of vernaculars used across the world, we are not even acquainted with the local vernaculars. We are always taught to write the history in the language used by the patients but the language is itself not taught to us.”

- Consultation with medical practitioners, Kolkata, 2016

146 To broadly flesh out the interpretations it gets translated as women and we were able to make of curricular child health or ‘deprived women’ language— of a peculiar kind. It doesn’t move beyond that to transgender unless The centering of demographic and until it has something to do language in contexts where gender with sexuality, HIV-AIDS.” and sexuality appear in some medical texts conflates identities This, and the preoccupation with and populations with behaviours, identifying “high risk groups” and stereotypes certain occupations and populations in order to move towards consolidates dichotomies of “good”, targeted interventions at policy levels, married, monogamous, heterosexual results in gender being understood cis-women, for example, as opposed to in limited ways within Public Health those who are located outside Rubin’s and epidemiology, with even critical charmed circle as “high risk” (Rubin categories getting institutionalised 2002)9 epidemiological categories in into medical texts and practice after a textbooks prescribed for Community lag. Terminologies such as MSM and Medicine. Mainstream public health homosexual are used interchangeably discourse in India works on philosophies and only in the context of HIV; alongside of prioritisation, with gender getting the overrepresentation of homosexual translated in normative ways. As a men, bisexual people, and female sex professor of public health, participant in workers in “high risk” categories, the study, said, this strengthens stereotypes of non- heterosexual people being hyper-sexual “Existing institutions like health and conflates behaviours with identities. service or health policies are clearly Even current textbooks prescribed for working in a binary. Reproductive community medicine across medical and child health as a purpose of universities in India10 attempt to identify health care and health policy at sexually transmitted diseases as linked large always looks at human beings to a demographic. For instance, sex as heterosexual. This becomes a workers (“prostitutes”) and their very confined way to look at it clients (“prostituants”) in third-world where multiple identities are not countries are said to be a major “factor” accepted…gender may not come in the spread of sexually transmitted in the first place; if at all it comes diseases (STDs) (Park, 2015, p. 337). 9 Rubin introduced the idea of the “Charmed “Broken homes” are also identified as circle” of sexuality where sexual practices a contributing factor, with death or that are accepted and privileged by society separation of parents being cited as are located inside the circle and all other reasons for “unhappy” children who practices located at the outer limits. This sex hierarchy, Rubin argues, “grants virtues 10 Park, K. (2015). Park’s Textbook of Preventive to dominant groups, and relegates vice and Social Medicine (23rd ed) Jabalpur, to the underprivileged.” (Rubin, 2002, India, Banarasi Das and Bhanot Publishers, p. 152-154). p. 330-337.

147 Figure 1: From Park’s Textbook of Preventive and Social Medicine- Social Factors involved in the spread of STDs

148 could contract STDs in their search for We also ask questions here of diversity happiness through “other avenues”. (See in the classroom. If we are to leave Figure 1) aside assumptions of homogeneity and acknowledge the presence of diverse In a pattern which can be found in students and practitioners, then we other texts, personal biases of the must look attentively at the experiences author and outdated epidemiological of students and practitioners from data come together to produce a clear marginalised locations as they navigate demarcation of those who are “at textbook and classroom teaching risk”—sex workers, non-heterosexual and other aspects of the medical people, people who are unmarried or institution. Encountering oneself as divorced, alcoholics, migrants, children a demographic for people of non- of separated parents, as opposed to normative genders and sexualities in this those who are located some distance text creates spaces for alienation and away from risk—married, heterosexual, micro-discriminations with the ideal of monogamous people from a certain the masculine, male, Brahminical expert caste and class location. We find that being left unquestioned. As one of our this has a fairly direct impact on learning; participants, an early career medical student interns who were part of the practitioner, shared their experience of study say they are more likely to ask severe harassment and discrimination by their peers said, questions of sexual history if a “truck driver” or “prostitute” comes into “Ragging continues even after being an outreach clinic than if a married, banned but for me the ragging was pregnant woman comes in. of a different kind and for the so-

“...a patient with Hepatitis B, I will ask the occupation history—if he is a truck driver then truck drivers are known to have a lot of alcohol consumption. So I ask about alcohol history, sexual history, marital history. If I get a yes, yes, yes it becomes type A personality—risky for such behaviors.” “If a woman, housewife, has come with multi drug resistant TB, I might not necessarily ask her about alcoholism.” “Of course you won’t, you will know she will not be the one drinking alcohol” “You make a lot of assumptions” “Of course you do” - Medical undergraduate trainees in the study

149 called males it was of a different textbooks on Forensic Medicine and kind...from my accent ... I am very Toxicology prescribed to undergraduate effeminate [so] when I delivered medical students introduce them to [a] speech...they realised I was medical codes of conduct, and laws effeminate and they would make which influence medical practice fun of it... I was not the poster boy and jurisprudence. In the absence of of masculinity”. teaching of legal histories, debates, or changes in relevant laws, and through While pathologisation of particular the use of language that upholds law identities has come up for harsh as unquestionable and sacrosanct, and critique in both feminist work and deploys mechanisms of distancing and queer theory and research, there is blackboxing, this language in texts also a shift from simple pathologisation dictates not only what is legal and to medicalisation of experience in “normal” but also what is “natural”, medical texts. This is a framework—of apart from indicating a natural affinity gender binarism and implicit “good” between these expert systems. In the heterosexuality—where the body and chapter on Sexual Offences [See figure the person has to be medically legible 2] there is a classification of sexual in order to be understood—in both offences as natural, unnatural, sexual medical texts and the papers that perversions and sex linked offences 11. constitute the life of medical practice— Rape, incest and adultery are classified OPD tickets, admission forms, history as natural offences while sodomy, sheets. That which gets left out in tribadism (or lesbianism) are classified as textbooks and forms and tickets—self- unnatural offences along with bestiality identification, social distress that is and buccal coitus. This not only continues not medically legible—does not get to conflate identities with sexual acts entertained as valid. Knowledge in the or behaviours but also deems non- expert domain holds even as experience heterosexual identities as unnatural. on the other side of the table questions It also categorizes, for example, it and sometimes renders it obsolete. “transvestism” as a sexual perversion Legible categories and medical along with sadism, masochism, and terminologies such as homosexual, masturbation, putting them in the same then, are used for ways of life, giving classification as, for example, necrophilia. legitimacy to expert naming of identities In describing “tribadism or female in ways that are often out of touch with homosexuality or lesbianism”, the text self-identification and self-determination, states that, for instance, by trans* patients/clients (Singh & Achuthan, 2019). And yet 11 This classification is present in various textbooks prescribed for the course on these are the placeholders within which Forensic Medicine whoever quotes and experience must be named. figures in this section have been taken from The Essentials of Forensic Medicine and Another aspect is that of medico- Toxicology, 23rd edition, 2014 by Dr. K. S. legal language. As discussed above, Narayan Reddy & Dr. O. P. Murthy

150 “Lesbians are masculine in researchers 12 sometimes articulated personality type, possibly because as the “ultimate defiance of of endocrine disturbances” and heteronormativity” (Wieringa 2012), “the practice is usually indulged this attitude in the curriculum only in by women who are mental consolidates stereotyping, victim- blaming, denies the structural character degenerates or those who suffer of such violence. The text is laden not from nymphomania.” (See figure 3) only with homophobic and patriarchal This gross misrepresentation, biases masked as knowledge but is stereotyping and medicalisation of full of inconsistencies and inaccurate an identity, sits easily alongside a information. The absence of referencing and citation of sources and the description of, juxtaposition of legal parlance with the “Lesbians who are morbidly jealous author’s own artistic imagination makes of one another, when rejected may it impossible for the audience of the text commit homicide, suicide or both” to separate fact from fiction. Lesbianism, (Reddy & Murthy, 2014, p. 430). 12 Sappho for Equality documents lesbian double suicides and other forms In a context where lesbian double of violence in the study “Vio Map: suicides and other kinds of violence Documenting and Mapping Violence and Rights Violation Taking place in Lives of against lesbian women have been Sexually Marginalised Women to Chart out documented by LBT activists and effective advocacy strategies”.

Figure 2: Classification of Figure 3: Description of Sexual offences in the text Tribadism in the text

151 the text states, is not an offence in about how different women may resist India; however, male homosexuality sexual violence to different degrees is described as an offence with “any (See Figure 4). In making the claim degree of penetration or any attempt that “a women who is used to look of penetration into the anal margin” after herself” would be less terrified being punishable.13 The same section of rape than “a women who has lived also describes Hijras as “a class of male a sheltered life”, the text urges future prostitutes called Eunuchs [who] act as medical practitioners to consider the passive agents in sodomy”. “type of woman” along with her social The text in describing rape makes status and physical development. disrespectful and patriarchal judgements The use of dated terminologies and 13 This recalls, of course, contexts of obsolete knowledge is rampant lesbian invisibility both in these sciences in medical texts. This impulse of and within the larger movements that museumization spatially and temporally challenged Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), which in its wording only displaces queer bodies and identities addresses anal penetration. from the present. Terms such as

Figure 4: The text on Rape and Resistance

152 “transsexualists” or “transvestitism” the-job who can “identify” the “case are neither consistent with currently outside of the norm” and train the established standards nor respectful unit interns/students accordingly, while of lived realities of trans* and gender not necessarily providing a replicable non-conforming people who have model of diagnosis for the same. It is been fighting for the right to self- here, also, that the chasm between determination and recognition by the curricular learning and practice become State. Forensic medicine and toxicology normalised, while the text book textbooks describe, for example, continues as reference point for what is lesbian women as residents of an island abnormal, and the source of the many called “lesbos”, placing them outside micro-discriminations to be found in the the land of the living. Even after ICD vocabulary and practice of practitioners and DSM classificatory systems in the (Achuthan, 2019). psy-disciplines have moved away from Gendering of medical disciplines has pathologisation of identities, these been spoken of in existing literature, textbooks continue to talk of non- as also hierarchies of sub-disciplines; normative gender within the contexts of we learnt, through our work with criminalisation and pathologisation. This practitioners, about gendering of lag between origin of critical respectful disciplinary clusters in medicine terminology and its appearance in too as a way of understanding the medical texts contributes to the ways in gendered composition of these clusters, which museumization happens (Singh & and the impact on curriculum. A Achuthan, 2019). Community Medicine practitioner in To conclude, we found that curricula our study spoke of the felt need to were hardly the subject of any but incorporate perspectives on gender the most casual referencing in medical in the curriculum, and her efforts to undergraduate training. And yet, float courses on sexuality and ethics curriculum remains the custodian of in one specific instance. In reflecting the standard, with marked bodies on her own location, she also spoke continuing to be placed in contexts of her journey into the discipline as of predisposition and risk, with even partly driven by the desire to work that understood in hetero-patriarchal more closely with women, and of her ways, spoken of in disrespectful learnings around gender and sexuality and museumized languages and as largely coming from her association terminologies, located in frameworks with women’s movements. This of criminalisation, while claiming sense of allyship and accountability objective status. It is in this discrepancy may be interpreted, perhaps, as a between curricular language and clinical form of social learning that other experience that curricular learning practitioner participants also spoke can be left to stagnate, substituted of; it also, however, points towards for by the genius of the-surgeon-on- the gender burden—understood in

153 heteronormative forms, of course— deviance, and it is outside of the scope on those disciplines and practitioners of this study to explore the histories where cis-women are somewhat that make this possible. Feminist more represented. Another version scholarship has presented, extensively, of “women’s work”, perhaps? Gender critiques of objectivity and neutrality understood as women is now being that are cornerstones of orthodox brought into curriculum, after a lag and science (Haraway 1988, Langton 1993, after a number of years of questioning by Harding 1995). It is useful to look the women’s movement; we have also very briefly at the terms on which the explored hierarchies amongst disciplines deviant body gets brought back into consequent on their gendering later in the clinic, however. There is extensive this chapter while discussing the tropes literature on the specific contexts and of masculinity that occupy surgical fields histories within which we see the entry and their attitudes toward gender. of what are broadly referred to as GENDER-SEXUALITY IN THE non-normative genders and sexualities CLINIC: RE-READING EARLY into the modern western clinic and HISTORIES healthcare system in the Indian context under the rubric of what has been Why, we may ask, is medical curriculum termed the “HIV/AIDS epidemic”. so full of these bloopers? Why are Here we see the healthcare system as they so easy to find? Why is there so representative of the biomedical model, little investment in preparing better and the discourse of public health as texts? Should we look a little before, the framework within which we see the and a little after, the undergraduate entry and production of these bodies. training space, in order to understand We might suggest, also, that these this better, in order to understand are almost the first vocabularies of the constitution and gendering of the gender-sexuality outside the reproductive expert domain? Should we look at the that exceed, somewhat, the merely histories of objectivity and neutrality in demographic within healthcare, although modern knowledge systems with respect that is where they begin. Radhika to which a set of observational, clinical Ramasubban (1998, 2007), Nambiar sciences such as the ones we are looking (2012) and others have detailed some at are positioned? of these histories, and talked about the The previous section on curriculum overlaps and conflicts between languages has attempted to indicate some of the of sexual and health rights, with activism ways in which variation is marked as around Section 377 of the IPC that

“Back then, the word homosexuality could not be uttered, there was this whole thing going on around section 377.” – LBT activist from Kolkata in the study, and former peer counsellor/ educator

154 “Truck drivers are known to have a lot of alcohol consumption. So I ask about alcohol history, sexual history, marital history. If I get a yes, yes, yes, it becomes type A personality—risky for such behaviors. Otherwise type B. Books also mention this. It is a very clinical way, a subjective way of going for a diagnosis. We are taught that only because it gets us closer to a diagnosis.” - Medical undergraduate trainee in the study until September 2018 criminalised connection—all truck drivers, always, consensual same-sex practice/love, with and only, and in a new demarcation notions of culture and tradition. This from “normal”, “safe”, “healthy” sexual period was significant for the study practice that also locates the risk away as it marks the shift from, or rather a from heteronormative, dominant caste- parallel introduction of, languages of class locations (Achuthan, 2019). risk and vulnerability alongside earlier We see, then, that these categorisations, languages of stigma and legal vigilance and the stereotyping following them, (Ramasubban, 1998). This involved was not merely a simple instance of establishment of behavioural categories institutional authoritarianism, but a for intervention in healthcare—a generation of practices and shared learning from earlier global HIV work terminologies between institution where identity categories and brutal and community—in other words, a surveillance around them resulted in shared language of the meanings of and people going underground rather than exhortations to health. This is what we coming for treatment. LBT activists and propose as a starting point both to re- former peer educators in our study examine meanings of access and terms spoke of their first engagements with of inclusion, as also to understand the these categories. Our conversations grounds for “community” formation, with these members of “community” care, and collectivisation. produced several understandings. One, ON COMMUNITY their reflections on HIV work in the 90s helped mark that period as the one With the extension of surveillance/ of consolidation of behaviour-identity diligence/vigilance across drop-in-

“If a household working female comes, we won't ask her [about alcohol history] because she will take offence, honestly. They do take offence or they will laugh.” - Medical undergraduate trainee in the study

155 Such stereotyping is active not only within hospital settings but in DICs too. Community participants in the study spoke, for instance, of how the only diagnostic meanings attributed to “anal rupture” when a client attended the weekly clinics at DICs in the late 90s were of habitual or violent anal sex—a stereotyping that then translated into inadequate, neglectful and stigmatising treatment procedures—the client would not be examined clinically, adequate histories would not be taken, and the moral point about punishment for “bad behaviour” would be reinforced. This is a classical example of both atomisation at work in these settings and of bodies being rendered intelligible only within these identity categories.

centres (DICs), peer educators, etc., the service be provided? I have to the institution follows the at-risk go to the ICTC center for taking identity outside too, in the shape of the ART, I have to go [to a public moral injunctions to “good behaviour” referral hospital] for taking ART, (see box on page 156) and safety if not how will I get there?” complete reformation as a prerequisite And the doctors at DICs? They were to a good life (Achuthan, 2019), and how offered training, although not in far is a measure of good patienthood perspectives on gender-sexuality, and, as or citizenship. a peer educator said, And yet, this demand for good “... they (the doctors) found behaviour, and its failure, point in several it lucrative ... they were given directions. A former peer educator in travelling allowance, they could the study spoke of HIV-positive people stay in luxury ... not everyone went who had been identified and brought though ... there was no rule that in for testing, who have disappeared everyone had to go ... if we were into the void after the drying up of HIV working in 7 areas, and there were funds, subsequent collapse of NGOs and 7 doctors in that specific area ... we positive networks, and asks what the would request them to go for the point of confidentiality was, when the training ... it was difficult to follow service was absent. up...the coordinators and the “... am saying, the 10 people under supervisors would come and invite me, 5 of them are missing, there is them and they would say yes ... but a possibility that they have died. 6 then most of them did not turn up of them were going through ART. ... Many doctors would come [to So where is the service? How will the clinic] the first day and stop

156 coming ... after they came to know educator would take great care, that their patients were men who would tell the patient to go to the were having sex with other men. doctor, to go for tests, and would accompany him. The patient would Then again new doctors had to be say that she did not want to go on approached, and the situation had some particular day ... the educator to be explained. Initially, there was would go according to the patient’s a huge crisis of doctors at the drop timing. Also, she would say she did in centers. In my area, there was not want to go out during the day also the crisis of counselors. There time. The educator would wait at were mainly female counselors [a railway platform], the patient during that time. There was a would not even turn up ... when dearth of male counselors ... girls they did not go to the doctor, did mainly pursued Psychology at that not take proper treatment, and time ... fresh graduates mainly involved in rampant sex without came to these places for work. protection, I would directly reach And, when they began interacting the cruising points. I would see with the patients, the patients her but still asked the others ‘Did would talk in detail about their you see her? Did you see him?’ I partners, and the violence they could totally see her standing at inflicted on them, the kind of a distance, but I kept on asking sexual acts they got involved in where she is ... and I kept on taking ... and it was uncomfortable for her name ... Then I would take her the doctors ... actually there were to a side and tell her ... ‘Today I many homophobic people around came here and had tea with you, ... and the supervisors who visited tomorrow if you don’t come, and from one drop in center to the if I don’t see you in front of [a other, they at times, interacted hospital in that area]’ ... They had with the doctors, asked them to to be threatened. We had to show clinically examine patients as it them fear to get work done. This was their work ... but the doctors had also been the case ... if I came did not even use the instruments. to know that someone was positive And when the visits took place, and left for dancing at ‘Lagan’. the medical officers boiled the She was sick and her health was instruments, dropped them, and the priority at that time, I would again boiled these for 2 to 5 hours directly call at the person’s house just to make it look like these are where she had put up, and ask for regularly being used ...” her. She would panic and ask why But then again, did I call? I would straightaway say that if she did not take the “Once the patient became positive, next train back here, I would tell she became God. The peer the troupe leader that she was

157 positive and she had gone there to representation and not models of spread the disease and If I did this, knowledge at work here, and the ways she would be beaten and thrown in which these are overdetermined. In out of there.” addition, the seemingly unprepared, insensitive and unrespected expert, We may read these narratives as casting about in the field for signposts, evidence of the callousness of the and mostly failing, keeps us from seeing expert, of homonegative stances, of that the idea of risk, the behaviours extreme corruption, insensitivity, and leading to it, and the services required gatekeeping in target approaches. to keep these in check, have not been What we also see, however, is the dislodged, rather they have been emergence of a fairly homogenised consolidated. What we see, then, is also category of “community” from a diverse an extension of expert authority much set of practices and experiences of beyond the physical space of the hospital distress, with the stated objective or the trained physician via these newer of bringing people out of invisibility sites of authority and facilitation of entry (Achuthan, 2019). Here, the flat terrain of the institution. As a former peer of community, while still referred to educator tellingly reports in the study, as such, is punctuated now with newer nodes of authority—the supervisor, peer “If I talk about the supervisors educator, counsellor, community-based who were part of activism, they organisation heads, to be followed in the were quite active, they knew how second phase of NGOisation (Nambiar, to approach people, how to build 2012) by active gatekeeping. These rapport, to manipulate people figures represent and are committed ... I mean how to bring people to community, they excel at bringing through counseling ... they worked community to the system, they facilitate as individuals. And, they had the access, and in doing so, also become skill to gather people in the field, more powerful arbiters than the expert ranging from 50 to 500 ... The or the system. Is this a problem? Perhaps work of the peer educators was from 6 am to 10 pm in the field. not, for, in the partial relocation and They ... did not have to come to redistribution of power, accountability the drop in centers, but if they did, is relocated too, “community voice” they got patients to the doctors.” is brought in, and the entire discourse is about “who” speaks rather than Nambiar (2012), Ramasubban (1998, what is spoken (Achuthan, 2019). The 2007) and others have written “what” has already been discredited about outreach and the nature of through critiques of universalism and collectivisation that follows some of this positivist medical knowledge; nothing structuring of HIV work. Our concern further is, however, deemed necessary here is also with the organisation of in the expert domain, with the question HIV work within community with a call of power being addressed through to focus on targets and not structural

158 barriers to access, accompanied by call themselves as Kalavanthulu an erasure of languages of desire and in the colonial era while they focus on behaviour 14 during this time. were depicted as ‘prostitutes’ in A researcher participant in our study the colonial literature or reform referred, for instance, to the women movements and Surya Ballija in of the Kalavanthulu community, who the post-independent era or in are performers belonging to Dalit official records, “high-risk group” castes, who enter into a variety of in the advent of AIDS industry and “quasipatrilineal and patriarchal kinships ‘traditional sex workers’ by the sex with dominant caste men”, who are worker organizations.” (Jena, 2018, “not a stable category”, or, we might p. 1, fn. 1) say, community, but who are, in HIV And yet, in these very spaces fraught discourse as well as movement histories, with surveillance and hypervisibility, identified and marked as sex workers— aspirations flourished. Our study thus both homogenising and erasing participants speak of the DICs as a space multiple and diverse locations into where the “community” flourished, terms recognisable and nodal within HIV where people who led otherwise discourse. closeted lives found an affirmative language of gender expression, “From time to time, the identity of who found livelihoods, who found Kalavanthulu women has changed. an opportunity to accept risk as a For instance, in the medieval era, manageable entity that did not entirely they were referred as Devadasi define them. in the Hindu texts or epigraphic sources, whereas, these women A peer educator in the study observed, were called, Saini or Bhogum. “And previously they were not Bhogum in generic sense means even visible ... It was a safe space enjoyment or entertainment and for them. They could also meet possession. It also means a kept other Kothis.15 One would start women, mistress, a concubine wearing kajal after seeing a Kothi or a prostitute in the common do it. Then, she would start putting parlance (Vijaisri 2004:1, Jordan lip color. They would remove their 2003, Lalitha and Reddy 2007). kajal and lipstick while leaving the Subsequently they preferred to centers. But gradually, this became 14 Behaviour here, in the space of the clinic comfortable. They would wear as well as in community outreach, works kajal even when on the street, or as a much wider trope than the meaning roam around with less inhibition. attributed in demographics or public health. It is morally inflected, related to 15 A term used in HIV and other discourse deviance in addition to and inclusive of to indicate those who were primarily particular non-normative sexual practice; receivers in the sexual act, who were it is, in fact, a term exclusively attached to further invisibilised in healthcare, as also the non-normative. among community members.

159 Then they would cross dress. It and aspiration live alongside each other. was their desire. They wanted to We understood, also, that for marginal have sex. So they would. They groups, the relationship with and within would also take up sex work, get community, as well as the presence of money. Most Kothis loved dancing. the state, were different from the way And I have seen that many were in which the same played out vis-à-vis actually influenced by this, and they more privileged groups, for, “whether went to ‘Lagan’ 16 (Achuthan, 2019). the state is contested, negotiated or strategically manipulated, it remains ON INCREASED SITES OF significant in the lives of marginal INSTITUTIONALISATION groups, and perhaps more so than for This brings us to a point about mainstream, or non-marginal groups. institutionalisation that we have been non-welfare” (Williams et al, 2011, p. exploring—when is an experience 22). This is where we also learnt that, accommodated within dominant in different locations, “community”, knowledge practice systems, and how tied as it is to the institution, could also become the space for articulating does it link to institutionalisation? We a different future, alternative priorities, found, in speaking both with experts and different political strategies. Study working with HIV for several years participants from Maharashtra and and with activists in the field, that one West Bengal, as well as feminist queer of the ways in which the institution activist participants from both spaces, follows bodies outside the clinic is spoke of ways in which they challenged through a proliferation of sites of the vocabulary of HIV interventions— institutionalisation in the form of DICs, the need to focus on daughters of peer counsellors and educators, and sex worker women needing access to in more recent times, transgender formal education rather than understand development boards, among others. children in terms of mother-to-child This, in relation to our understandings transmission, for example, or of of medicalisation in the contextualising focussing on domestic violence, or the of the study, helped us thicken meanings patriarchy embedded in doctor-client of discrimination and access—the dynamics, as a way of talking about institution not only limits entry, it also access. A participant spoke in scathing sets terms of entry, and exit. terms of the “gender history of HIV LANGUAGES OF programmes”, saying, COLLECTIVISATION ”We have never had HIV The idea of the “community” is what prevention program for women per we were able to thicken here, through se, it was only women in sex work.” an understanding of how both distress This participant challenged further 16 Term used to refer to dancing at weddings the HIV and public health strategies that kothis were traditionally part of. on “awareness building in general

160 populations”, recalling arguments from work or those who asked questions got that time, drafted into peer educator roles— “I said there is nothing called “In-built systems of mutual support general population. Women need … were destroyed. You are tailor-made awareness packages in picking up some of the women, a country like ours, where there who were the ones who would be is minimal access to information, speaking against the pimp, madam. there is hardly any decision The leader would pick up the making in regard to sexual and issue, but then she is chosen for reproductive health.” peer educator. You are lifted from political work to developmental work. It was, in effect, a way of saying that You have a special uniform, salary, public health intervention or work designation, different get up. Now around HIV provided a route to I don’t know you. And away from collectivisation, but also new forms of the community. I no longer know discrimination against women within you, I am envious and angry.” and outside of the “target groups” in the programme. Speaking of the various For these queer feminists active in central and state AIDS-control bodies, women’s movements, the attentiveness they reiterated the consolidation of to the struggles of those rendered reproductive sexuality within targetted more vulnerable on account of interventions throughout— caste or religious minority identities helped further disaggregate the idea “The only thing that got organised of community, whether it was the along with HIV is Reproductive experience of dalit children of sex Child Healthcare, within which workers in parts of Kolkata who the PTCT [parent-to-child- dropped out within a week of being transmission] programme was enrolled in school, or of pregnant launched. So, women in the health women of minority communities being intervention programme were only more easily put out of livelihoods. included if by definition they have multiple sexual partners.” In response to some of these dominant agendas, feminist sex worker groups They spoke of the manner in which spoke in the study, of adopting funds got directed away from many kinds alternative directions and strategies—of of work—to counter in-trafficking of making the municipal hospital system young girls into sex work, for instance. accountable and accessible. They spoke In a stunning criticism of the idea of of care and on dying with dignity for “community” as an organic, flat space, those who had been affected by HIV. a queer feminist activist participant They spoke, further, of the struggles spoke of the manner in which either within women’s movements and those powerful within brothel-based sex dominant feminist perspectives—

161 “We would scream the elders intervention is being mediated by NGOs down. Only S [name changed] was working on socially relevant issues. silent on these issues. M and B Terminologies used to describe clients were main proponents—women are a mix of common parlance and burnt alive for dowry, families are medical terminology, and both in the dying of hunger, how can you begin narratives and in the protocol reporting to talk about sexual rights? We across practitioners, it was clear that were like, how can you not begin these are procedures agreed upon as to talk about sexual rights? So ... “ 17 highly individualised, risky, prone to criticism in case of failures (“a thankless ON CRAFTING AND GENDER IN job”), and not a major part of the THE CLINIC, AGAIN ... practice. Transpersons seeking gender Some of the surgeon practitioners in affirmative therapies, addressed as our study in public healthcare, speak of patients in all public healthcare settings the starting points of their training, of and clients in all private, are involved “non-life-threatening” or “non-essential” in consent and planning procedures surgeries related to gender that begin to in terms of admitting to having been come up in the early 90s in Bombay. It is warned that these are merely external changes that can be introduced, that useful to recall that there has been, prior this is what is available, 19 that these to this, a history of HIV work in all these are irreversible, 20 and that these are hospitals which are referral hospitals, inessential. In a context where most but gender affirmative work particularly of the transpersons coming to the for hijra persons, is only being spoken service are assigned gender male at of as beginning in this period. The birth, those assigned gender female at narrative is of a sought-for intervention birth (PAGFB) are told that “becoming being agreed to in the context of a real man”—in terms of a functioning “unhygienic, life-threatening procedures” penis—is an uncertain future, and in being conducted otherwise outside the terms of reproductive function—not an medical setup—what these practitioners 18 option. Thus failure is presented as risk, term self-mutilation . Some of this continuing the susceptibility paradigm 17 Poushali Basak has (2018, M. Phil Thesis) (your life choices or illnesses are written on the contestations between the responsible for these failures), separating political and developmental in the context from the enhancement paradigm as a of the organisation and collectivisation of women in sex work in West Bengal way of discrediting, reducing priority for, and Maharashtra. or pushing down the list of vital/ life- 18 Nirvan, or nirvana, is the term that medical spaces. has been popularly associated with 19 “We tell them that this is the package”, gender affirming bodily practice in hijra Endocrinologist in private healthcare in the study. communities. It has, alternatively, been celebrated as the “indigenous”, and 20 “It is irreversible, like jumping off a cliff. derided as “self-mutilation”, unhygienic, Important for them to understand”, Private unsupervised, life threatening, etc. in Surgeon in the study.

162 threatening surgeries (Achuthan, 2019).21 Between the seeming apathy of public The language in which this is presented healthcare and the business interests of may vary across practitioners in public the private setting, what is the meaning or private healthcare settings, but at or result of protocol, then? Arbitrariness base remains the same. or adhocism, to varying extents, seems to be a common element of The apparently rigid protocols around the practice. There are some points of psychiatric certification fall away in convergence, however, with policy and many private healthcare settings, law as well. Whether it be feminisation/ with the benefit of a network of masculinisation procedures, “top” or practitioners within which the client “bottom” surgeries, the appearance 22 is circulated. Also, the protocols— of binarism must be preserved, and one or two certifications—often vary, administered. That may be done through with convenience seeming to be the terms of entry, with demands to “live determining factor (we might ask in the other gender” for extended whose, or more robustly, what the periods, with the naive assumption that simplest measure of convenience is, the person self-identifying has not done here). Psychiatrists in public healthcare so before first coming to the clinic, or settings, however, who have been initial resistance to the “irreversible” involved in the work since the 90s step—“why don’t you take steps with continue to speak the language of appearance”25. It may be done through pathology,23 and continue to say that advocacy towards enhancement— they are disinterested in convincing photographs of chiselled transformations or assuring natal family, except to say towards hypermasculinity or femininity that the “condition” is documented.24 on websites and waiting rooms of 21 “This is cosmetic”, Surgeon in public private clinics, as we observed in the healthcare, in the study. study. It is done through pathology, or 22 “It basically starts with evaluation by 2 medicalisation of distress, as the terms psychologists, who refer to a psychiatrist on which gender affirmative procedures who certifies them as having gender will be offered. It may be done through dysphoria. With the certificate they come discussions of surgical procedure that to me”, Private Surgeon in the study. take on board client questions on how 23 “Disorder, dysphoria, they come for the body and its parts will look, behave, treatment”, Psychiatrist in public healthcare feel, post-procedure, with the highs in the study. experienced by both the surgeon and 24 “We say this is the situation, according to the client being shared in a moment of us and according to what we know. He is seeming solidarity (Achuthan, 2019). suffering from gender identity disorder, this is a well-known disorder, there are many This desire for binarism is not simple people who have this kind of thing. In the patriarchy or heteronormativity at work; past we have had experience operating so it is also the excited call to multiple many of them and they are living a happy technologies of enhancement within and life. That we explain to the relatives”, Psychiatrist in public healthcare in the study. 25 Public hospital surgeon in the study.

163 outside the clinic, to a myriad regulatory trans*woman study participant reflected structures and strategies, to community on the experience of the 90s— and individual, and most significantly, “You know what? Many people perhaps, to the expert redrafted as say transgender, hijra... I say, look the ally, all over again. Separating these behind [to an earlier time] ... Who from standard old-school discriminatory knew the word transgender? “marking” practice, then, is the ways Everyone used to say ‘Hijra’. Even in which bodies are seen as a new today they say ‘Hijre Didimoni’ constituency that provides the testing [Hijra woman teacher, as a way ground for this group of practitioners to refer to the participant who to hone their skills, to “craft” what was teaches at a government school]. until so recently the impossible. Yes, after looking at my episode It might be useful to take a closer look there was a concept that perhaps at the contexts and histories of this one is a ‘Hijra’ from birth. The access to feminine expression. Lesbian female cook at the mid-day meal scheme of our school said ‘You and trans*masculine invisibility in HIV must be in pain. God has given you studies and intervention projects is a birth like this.’ ...” a documented debate, both in LBT organisations and academic literature. Apart from the recognition of wounded This invisibility and erasure, also identity that these attitudes foreground, experienced as resistance, is active in there are several other points here. organisational memory today too, as an One is, in addition to the erasure of LBT activist who has played a significant lesbian and trans*masculine experience, role since the late 90s in queer feminist the conflation of trans*woman and movements in the study posed— hijra identities. While the hijra figure is instantly recognisable in most cultures “We never went there ... It was in the subcontinent,26 and is described like LGBT movement is equal to HIV. This was the situation. In 26 Mario da Penha talks, after the NALSA judgement, about the “history of defining such a situation, right from day and demarcating people who are neither one, what we had done was that male nor female in India. In the immediate we would speak in the language pre-colonial period, hijras and jogappas, of rights. I mean it was a chosen who both serve as ritual functionaries to the subcontinent’s gods and saints, were path, but at that time, it was very among a range of initiation-based groups, difficult.” which accepted people of heterogeneous origins who had abandoned the security This difficulty, of course, also of their ethnic communities and families. referred to conflicts over language Historical sources from the eighteenth and categories, knowledge about century tend not to dwell on ethnic origins or corporeal difference in their mentions widespread misappropriation of funds, of hijras. The term “hijra” itself —Arabic and organisational power struggles. A for “to leave one’s tribe behind”—suggests

164 in Orientalist and other anthropological And “SRS” becomes the sole name literature as sacralised through myth for that entry. As a participant noted, (Nanda, 1990, Doniger, 1982), the reporting with irony on a typical figure is also stigmatised, condemned conversation— to “a birth like this”. In this form, the “ ‘Oh! You have had SRS? Yes, I hijra figure also becomes the only am a little sophisticated.’ ‘Oh! You recognisable trope of trans*experience haven’t had SRS. Wah! Wah!’ ” in normative societies, and it is perhaps While we focus on respectful in a piggybacking on this trope that terminologies in feminist queer work27, trans*women’s lives are allowed into SRS is the respectable protocol and both HIV and gender-transgressive symbol of “sophistication” that offers, discourse in clinical spaces (Achuthan, now, the possibility of exit from a 2019). difficult life— apathy towards individual histories, and “Our funding agencies have said to castes and pasts foregone. Colonialism to speak about HIV and AIDS and brought two persistent forms of categorisation that continue to shape that they won’t be able to talk and new legislation for transgender people: a help with any other issues. When focus on the authenticity of ethnic origins, these people come to us ... we and on corporeal difference. In 1836, RD understand that [name of their Luard, the enterprising sub-collector of Solapur, recorded that six hijras under community-based organisation his jurisdiction came from four separate facilitating medical and legal ethnic groups. (That all six remembered procedures for gender affirmation] and divulged these details is a noteworthy is such a place where we can come reminder of the durability of ethnic outside this and talk. At the middle identity.) By 1892, HB Abbott, another colonial official, recorded that 356 hijras in of the night when we feel that the Rajputana were born in 38 distinct Hindu, whole world is dead and only I am Muslim and animist ethnic communities. alive, very few NGOs are there to This sort of documentation, usually for the listen to that person at the middle Imperial Census, was ambivalent about the suitability of classifying hijras as a caste, or of the night. It’s 2:30 at night and an ethnic group unto themselves. Even as my phone rings, a transgender original jati began to be counted as a part person who wants to die speaks of hijra identity due to the mechanisms to me about the reality of their of the colonial census, physical difference became increasingly important as a marker. 27 The tension between feminist and queer The colonial term “eunuch” was used as movement positions, from a time when an umbrella to cover all kinds of gender dominant feminist positions were further variance, just as “transgender,” which qualified as being heteronormative, are gained currency in the 1980s, is today. today visible in an acknowledgement of These colonial exercises were primarily for non-feminist perspectives in several queer studying—and sometimes controlling— positions. The need to qualify queer with minority populations, not empowering feminist, therefore, to indicate those who them.” (da Penha, 2014) choose this qualifier.

165 life and I listen. And at that time from a social perspective, no one is I feel that till date, government helping me in this ...” has not taken any initiative to see to it that such people do not ON MASCULINITY AND walk this path and can look at MEDICAL FIELDS life positively. In the midst of so This brings us to the idea of particularly much negativity that person can surgery as a field and the positioning of feel that at the end of the day, we the surgeon who does gender affirmative have a glimpse of light. I have tried procedures, for instance. “They want to to create that space in my own function like a full man” is one refrain, way. Till now, the government used both to pose the irony of wanting has not done any work ... At the out from the natural [with the irony of government sector hospital, they what the surgeon himself is doing being always have an approach ... when lost], as also to stand-in for failures of a transgender person goes there surgical procedures and accountability and speaks about their suffering in this regard, and yet again, to posit a and deprivation... somewhere hierarchy between “what is vital” i.e. life ... the heterosexual normative -threatening and therefore demanding of has penetrated ... So we try and medical attention, and “what is lifestyle”. explain that what you are thinking This idea of the “vital” also relates with is actually not correct. This the idea of medical interference being judgmental way out... I have always justified only with unhealthy bodies seen this ... with my own life... In or organs, or “unnatural” bodies or all the government sector hospitals organs, and came up again and again in where I have tried to go and tell conversations with experts. my story... I have been discouraged and have been told that if you want The question “What is vital” is also to be like yourself, you will become collapsed with the difference between alone and isolated ... Society must easy and difficult for the surgeon. have a norm which is for your own So “why don’t you take steps with good, then what is your problem appearance”, or go in for breast in accepting it? I have found that implants, or similar “easy” things, is the infrastructure ... has still not produced within known/older surgical been created in most of the places. techniques with higher success rates, There, a person can go and talk while other procedures are clubbed as about their HIV or STD infection aspirational, unnecessary, irreversible but nowhere has it been told that [each of these slightly different but put a transgender person who cannot together in rationale building]. The look at the self in front of a mirror choice of “unnecessary” procedures ... every moment that person feels by the client, then, is more easily put that the way that person wants to at the door of the client, in terms of look at the self personally as well as accountability.

166 Ways Forward—From the Standard to the Perspectival

In our conversations with on the one the occupation of the normative by hand expert practitioners who also dominant groups be revised, and can frequently occupied dominant positions the normative itself be revised—in in the charmed circle, and on the other history-taking, case presentation, those who were either on the other side treatment spaces? Can, in other words, in the clinic or who were offered a place people come out of the land of Lesbos within knowledge communities provided into the land of the living? Can we they did not live their difference, as acknowledge, and re-cognise, the clinic as also with activists and allies whose job a political space? it had become to ask the questions, What is to be lost if this is not done? we learnt some questions of our own. Costs to those “on the other side” are Is it that the instructor-centric risky well documented already; this study has learning we heard about works in the shown us some of the more insidious split and distance between training ways in which the costs function. What and practice? Do ideas of merit and of costs to medical communities? Apart genius conflate here? Is accountability in from the isolation of a few who do the these circumstances more of an appeal “gender work” in these spaces, and the than a demand, and is it almost only continuation of bias, the learning that the burden and the labour of those is bound to accrue from asking the who occupy the expert domain less “other question”, the value in building as educators and more as members a critical mass of members who will of “community”, as our conversations challenge existing models—are lost. with medical persons queer identified Most importantly, the chance of learning seemed to show? Can this labour be about variation in the deviance model, is resituated—in research, in training and in irrevocably lost. practice—as a side-by-side rather than a resistance model that lives at the most What might be gained if the normative as a subculture in clinical spaces? Can is revisited? Critical lessons from HIV this labour go into diversifying medical work have shown us that cis-women in classrooms and communities, where marriages, cis-lesbian women in families, the scope for modelling and mentoring upper-caste clients of cis-women in sex are also possible? Can, in other words, work, all become visible once target

167 groups and categories are not the revised models of history-taking, taking only lens through which we look. Our into account not just gender-sexuality conversations in the study showed us but thickening symptoms in particular, the possibility of thickening the contexts are possible. We would pose these of the “symptom” by starting from as different from learning-on-the-job. experience, with a chance to develop From the histories of collectivisation collaborative terminologies in the clinic, and critiques of institutionalisation, and to keep them provisional rather than as well as the vocabularies emerging freeze them. We saw the chance to bring from within community activism, we into epistemic presence, on a “regular” also ask the question of these models and not rare basis, experiences that have needing to be collaboratively built with been invisibilised, without calling them persons named as clients, with other rare or new. We saw the chance to knowledge communities including recognise what Longino calls ontological academic disciplines and campaigns, heterogeneity—recognising variation in including terminology used. Terminology, nature—if knowledge communities are we suggest, is about self-identification consciously diversified. rather than expert naming of persons In talking about revisiting the normative, or behaviours or disease, and needs therefore, or asking the question again of to be acknowledged as such. Our case “what is to be done”, we ask questions history formats have been developed in of training, for one. Is training for this regard, and we have, through both standardisation? Since that has already the outputs of our limited institutional been under question, with respect to ethnographies and our analysis of critiques of universalisation and yet the interviews, built formats for perspectival question of accountability remains, we training and practice (see Figure 5 for have been trying to ask if provisional, sample format from module).

168 History Taking – Practice, Possibility, Generalities, Reflecting on Practice Standardised training The counter-narrative? New, provisional Critical voices, parameters/reflecting oppositional voices on the standard describing distress collaboratively ‘Dress decently’ ‘People who dress well get What does my appearance say - The respectable doctor code treated better. Not people about me? The construction of like us.’ the expert; the construction of the patient; we reflect on the need for distancing that drives this doctor code? Brief perusal of OPD ticket “There’ll be 50 people in the What walks in with the patient/ - calling out the name [it’s a queue. We have to first go person? heavy day today, already 250 and get a registration slip. What do I as practitioner come have registered] And by the time we get the in with? registration done, the doctor Who sits with me in the has already left.” “doctor’s” chair? What are my contexts? Come to the morning OPD, I My work is at night...how can To ask the question Ericka Hart will be there I wake up that early and reach asked - who is this for? Who is the clinic? the clinic for?

Bolun/tell me/what is the ‘I can tell the outreach worker How do I identify as matter/ where does it hurt? in the drop-in centre, but practitioner - a name, to begin how can I tell the doctor in with? Or do I say that ‘it is not the hospital about what my me we are talking about?’ problem is?’ What do I see when I look at “The doctor used his the person who comes in to the stethoscope and told me he clinic? What do I miss? What do couldn’t hear my heart beat! I ‘mark’? Then I had to tell him that I had silicone implants and he had to place his stethoscope in between my breasts to hear my heartbeat.”

What kind of pain is it? I’m not sure... Learning language from Aching/throbbing/constant/ the person who comes in; colicky...we have to classify building terminologies this in order to arrive at a together diagnosis

Figure 5: Section from Perspective Training Module

169 Outputs

Towards Research healthcare discrimination team 1. An edited volume or special in collaboration with medical journal issue on Feminist Queer practitioners and professors understanding of Healthcare on 10th August 2019. Medical practitioners, students of medicine discrimination will be published with and social science researchers contributions from health activists, attended the workshop which feminist queer activists, medical helped practitioners, students practitioners who have worked on and teachers reflect on existing HIV programmes and researchers in curriculum, training and practice. social sciences and public health. It included presentations on 2. Two articles, namely—”Gender experiences of bringing gender- Affirmative Technologies and the sexuality into medical practice, contemporary making of gender developing protocols for in India”, Achuthan 2019, as part gender affirmative procedures, of an edited collection on Affective advocating for terminologies Technologies; and “Appearance developed collaboratively between of Gender-Sexuality in Medical communities and doctors, Curriculum in India: A critical advocating for shifts in perspective analysis of the language of medical on mental health and advocating texts”, Singh and Achuthan 2019, will for diversity in the pool of be published. medical practitioners. 3. Workshop modules for social 5. Curricular material on gender- science students have been designed sexuality and health for women’s to translate some of the project studies courses in 2 non-English findings into interdisciplinary languages has been designed. learnings and dialogue. This will Advocacy provide frameworks for inter- sectoral dialogue across queer 6. Advocacy handbooks in 4 non-English feminist and healthcare disciplines. languages to take findings back to organisations that work on gender, Towards curriculum sexuality and health, queer groups 4. A workshop was conducted at and communities, student groups, and NIMHANS, Bangalore with the women’s movement spaces.

170 References

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172 8

Healthcare Discrimination Experienced by Non-Normative Genders and Sexualities in Southern India

Vinay Chandran & Anurag P Nair Healthcare Discrimination Experienced by Non-Normative Genders and Sexualities in Southern India Introduction

ersecution of religious minorities, normative genders and sexualities, Pcontinued atrocities on lower caste what experiences are typically populations, and violence against women classified as such, and also what have become more visible with the rise experiences are perceived as of religious right-wing fundamentalism discrimination but are not visible; (Basu, 2018) and have now become commonplace as well. Still, the stories n Record best practices addressing of discrimination experienced by people community healthcare needs; and from gender and sexuality minorities are n Provide direction to urgent and not as visible or recorded with the same long-term redressal to those with seriousness, except by communities such experiences. directly affected by these (Narrain & Eldridge 2009, Narrain & Chandran The following report is a preliminary 2015) or groups working with human analysis of the research that examined rights violations (PUCL 2001, HRW discrimination in the area of health 2002, PUCL 2003). (see chapter 1 for details on two teams addressing the area of health). Specifically, The study that houses the following it looks at healthcare experiences of research was set up to speak about non-normative genders and sexualities discrimination of people from gender in Southern India. The research and sexuality communities—whether documented a variety of experiences they identify as such or are perceived such as rejection of access to healthcare that way (hence the study adopts the services, abuse at the hands of broader term of “non-normative” healthcare providers, violent and invasive genders and sexualities). It is an therapies or treatments, and many more. exploratory study and the findings Even the stories from interviewees who should help formulate further research spoke of having no negative healthcare as well as support social campaigns experience were documented in order through the following steps: to gain insight into what constitutes best n Provide clarity on what is practices in healthcare and the examples “discrimination”, how it is of discrimination that may border on experienced by people with non- being unrecognisable. A detailed report

175 with a case-by-case analysis will be one Healthcare for non-normative gender of the main outputs. Using the analysis of and sexuality communities received community experiences to help influence attention only in one important context: medical teaching and practice is another sexual health (mainly around HIV and planned output. AIDS). Significantly, this also meant that non-government organisations (NGOs) CONTEXT AND RATIONALE started some of the early conversations FOR THE PROJECT AND THE around gender and sexuality due to STUDY their focus on “high-risk” vulnerable For lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, groups. (Khan 2001). This focus included hijra, queer, questioning, intersex, asexual men who have sex with men (MSM) and other communities (LGBTHQIA+ and male-to-female (MTF) transgender or LGBTQIA+) in India, the last three women and also sex workers (men, decades have produced an evolution women and transgender). Right up until in social acceptance, better visibility, the mid 2000s, conversations around the and a foot in the door for civil rights importance of mental health, access to with the reading down of Section 377 regular non-judgmental health check-ups, of the Indian Penal Code in September and the lack of experienced doctors for 2018 (Devi 1977, ABVA 1991, Joseph gender affirmative surgeries were not 1996, Fernandez 1999, Divan 2019). prioritised. Historically, the community’s efforts A few of the notable exceptions in for social change evolved through the this were the People’s Union for Civil following: Liberties in Karnataka (PUCL-K), n Queer women’s visibility in the which suggested recommendations for feminist movement; improving healthcare practice, based on interactions with LGBTHQIA+ n Addition of new and serious communities, both in 2001 and 2003. literature on genders and Others like Fernandez (2003) studied sexualities, the experiences of lesbian women in n Coming together of cis-male mental health services and listed the support and culture groups, kind of violence they faced. Narrain and Chandran (2005) first presented n Urgency around prevention of a study on attitudes among mental HIV and AIDS, which promoted health professionals and other the growth of community-based healthcare practitioners. While that organisations, study was inspired by narratives of personal discrimination experienced by n Visibility of transgender persons in community members in medical spaces, all of these contexts, and the narratives were not the primary n Legal advances of the last two focus. Ranade (2015) explored medical decades (Divan 2019). responses to same-sex sexuality noting

176 how many mental health practitioners stood out in the Supreme Court still considered homosexuality a deviant judgment that rejected the Delhi High behaviour. Narrain and Chandran (2016) Court ruling and reinstated Section 377: further explored the idea of healthcare (a) That the LGBTQIA+ community discrimination by compiling multiple was ‘minuscule’ and thereby their examples of such medical opinion. appeal to challenge the law was At the same time, civil society debates unwarranted, and on widening the scope of anti- (b) That there was not enough discrimination legislation gained ground. evidence that the number of people In addition, other incidents of violence affected (or prosecuted) by the law against multiple minorities owing to or that such cases were too few to the rise of the Hindu right-wing, the count. lack of engagement with the concerns of persons with disabilities despite These specific arguments catalysed government support, many individuals the conceptualisation and execution and campaign groups attempted to of the current study. The belief was pool together efforts to counter that the trope of “discrimination” was discrimination and address it both needed to help bolster the arguments socially and legally. in favour of removing or reading down Section 377 of IPC. But such a study In that context, the legal victory on discrimination could not be limited at the Delhi High Court in 2009 to recording experiences in law alone, helped empower LGBTQIA+ since these already existed owing to the people to publically engage with efforts of human rights organisations. discrimination. The belief was that with If evidence were needed that discrimination in the law out of the way, discrimination was widespread against addressing other kinds of discrimination the community in multiple social sectors, experiences within the communities then these would be collected. And if, would be a natural next step. The through this collection of experiences subsequent challenge to the Delhi High in different social institutions, the larger Court judgment in the Supreme Court debate on discrimination could be saw a number of groups, including illuminated then such an effort would healthcare professionals, petition the be worthwhile. It is in this context that Court and align themselves with the healthcare discrimination was considered LGBTHQIA+ movement. Two concerns to be an important area for this project.

177 Method

Two teams within the project chose to CHOICE OF METHOD study healthcare. One team proposed This study was facilitated by focus group to focus on the medical institution, discussions and semi-structured in-depth pedagogy, and curriculum. The second interviews. The focus group discussions team proposed to document actual with key members within these LGBTHQIA+ experiences in healthcare. communities––especially community- based healthcare providers––helped The researchers of this report have to identify some of the concerns that provided mental health support services were then discussed during in-depth for LGBTHQIA+ communities in interviews. Two objectives emerged Bangalore for over twenty years. Their while considering the stories of interest in the health conditions of healthcare discrimination experienced by these communities also stems from LGBTHQIA+: the hundreds of difficult stories n Collect the full description of the shared in peer counselling sessions healthcare experience; and or support group meetings that they were part of. The stories were of bad n Understand the context in experiences within clinics and hospitals, which such discrimination was experienced. or with doctors providing treatment for sexually transmitted infections Together, both these objectives helped (STIs), psychologists and psychiatrists identify the method that would be offering conversion therapies, most relevant i.e., oral narratives of gynaecologists and urologists, surgeons life histories. However, this would not and endocrinologists, and many more. be a study filled with mere incidents of discrimination but would include Already medical perspectives on sexual stories about childhood, education, orientation and gender identity had been work, relationships, and so on where compiled and analysed earlier. It was felt healthcare experiences could be that the next stage of the work should located and expanded from. Efforts involve a detailed recording of the were made to get as clear a picture of narratives of discrimination themselves. the participant’s life and all healthcare

178 experiences, regardless of how minor then, was to get at least 30 interviews they considered it. from each State and UT for a total of at least 150. The hope was that the large The detailed enquiry, through semi- sample would either give a complete structured questions, into their lives picture or that experiences of multiple meant that most participants had identities across the LGBTHQIA+ to spend at least one hour with the spectrum could be recorded. But due researchers and the gradual questioning to our presence in the state, there about their lives would help them reveal has been a skewed sampling with more than in a survey. It also helped Karnataka providing the largest number in understanding how discrimination of participants. The final number of per se affected the participant’s lives participants is 185 (see Table 1). in other areas. Sometimes, participants opened up about experiences with the law, in educational spaces, in workplaces, State Number of participants and so on. This helped us to clarify the participant’s own understanding of Karnataka 76 discrimination. Kerala 30 The researchers’ experience in counselling helped to ensure that Tamil Nadu & the participant felt at ease in sharing Pondicherry (UT) 41 any intimate details of their lives. The Andhra Pradesh 23 researchers’ status as belonging to the LGBTHQIA+community meant that Telangana 15 participants would hopefully feel that Total 185 their stories were treated with the dignity and confidentiality needed. At the Table 1: Number of Participants end of the interviews, participants who needed any kind of support services All the interviews were conducted were referred to local organisations or in the language that the participants groups in the location, to help them. were comfortable speaking. Both the SAMPLING, LOCATION AND researchers were comfortable and LANGUAGE fluent in English, Hindi, Malayalam, Tamil and Kannada. The lead researcher could Initially a small sample size within one comprehend Telugu, but where necessary, or two cities was thought to suffice. But we took the help of a translator familiar the researchers’ experience counselling, training, and activism within South India to the participant and with whom the provided contact with multiple sources participant was comfortable. Likewise and helped gain a larger sample in the project information sheet and multiple locations. The initial estimate informed consent forms were translated

179 into regional languages and/or read out some participants in the study . In some to each participant. locations, when the research used the office space or hired a place from a CBO RECRUITMENT AND or an NGO, a small donation was also COMPENSATION made to compensate for the use. For several months at the beginning All participation was voluntary and of the project a brief poster about the the consent sheet was counter- study and its purpose was circulated in various forums, both online and offline signed by researcher and participant. through LGBTHQIA+ support groups The participants could withdraw at and to CBOs and NGOs that worked any time of the study. And where it with these communities. Several local was clear to the researchers that the support group members volunteered participant was uncomfortable answering to participate and were interviewed questions, the interview was stopped early on. Follow-up calls, email invites and compensation paid regardless of and other modes of communication how long the interview took or if any had to be made to community based question was answered. This meant that organisations (CBOs), NGOs and some narratives may be incomplete. support groups in other cities, towns, STRUCTURE and states. While the information about the study went to as many groups and Each interview began with an networks in Southern India, the existing introduction of the study and visible networks were mostly those explanation of the purpose. Initial that work with “MSM” and transgender questions focussed on the background women for the prevention of HIV. details of the participant. A chronological This meant that contacts in many of history was elicited by enquiring about the districts were mostly from these each phase of the participant’s life communities and forms the larger while also asking about any healthcare portion of our data. It also meant that experiences during that phase. Specific our contacts for lesbians, bisexual questions related to surgeries, body women, transgender men and gender changes, hormones, medical tests, and non-conforming individuals were only other categories were also asked. Only from tier-1 or tier-2 cities, although if participants were particularly non- some of them speak of having migrated committal were leading questions asked from tier-3 cities or from villages. about specific instances of healthcare Since the study wished to engage discrimination. Interviews also elicited participants for at least an hour, this details of how other factors like caste, would mean a loss of income for many income/class, religion etc. impacted of the participants especially those in healthcare experience. Interviews closed tier-2 and tier-3 cities. Towards this, a with the suggestion of returning if more compensation of 300 rupees was paid to questions arose during transcription

180 and analysis. The participants were investigated further. The point of the then compensated. analysis is not to provide statistical data on how many experience discrimination, ANALYSIS but on the nature and context of Although study interviews were discrimination experienced by those conducted right up to end December within the LGBTHQIA+ spectrum. 2018, further interviews are still being LIMITATIONS conducted and transcriptions and analysis still being done. Notes from The study does not propose to be the interviews are also being used a representative sample of the many for locating specific trigger incidents gender and sexuality communities in or significant issues that arose at the India. The skewed sampling with the time. This report will provide some larger selection of MSM and transgender preliminary analysis of healthcare women’s experiences indicates what discrimination experiences. While the direction further research should take, interviews were kept open-ended to and the limitations of the current one. ensure unbiased data there is clearly Asexual community members are still potential that the narrations can be being recruited at the time of writing influenced by the project purpose and this report. Accessing individuals from the researchers position within the within networks of organisations community. One way that this was working with HIV also means that the handled was by addressing certain parts study links to a certain experience of the interview multiple times to see of discrimination already recorded if the narration details changed. Several by the HIV prevention and treatment of the experiences narrated relied on campaigns. While this does not reduce the participant’s memories in hospitals the value of the stories that are being or clinics. The use of these memories told, it would be necessary to look as data is invaluable owing to their outside these collectives to see what associations with the feelings of having the experience would be for those had a “good” or “bad” experience. The who are not represented within such recording of participant feelings was movements, which includes the concerns an excellent indicator on whether they of female born individuals or cis women. considered their healthcare experience The hope is that the presentation of as being discriminatory . this study will enable more female-born This is not a quantitative study, the individuals, cis women, gender non- reason behind accessing data from conforming individuals, asexuals, intersex multiple locations for so many individuals individuals, and many others to recognise was to look for some basic patterns the importance of recording their in different locations that may then be discrimination experiences.

181 Demographic Profiles

Participants were asked questions that NATAL FAMILY would be pertinent in helping formulate A majority of participants who identified a social profile: their age, composition as transgender women did not live with of their natal family, location and their their natal families. Of these, transgender current home (to understand migration women who did live with their natal status), education status and whether family contributed to family finances, had they studied in government or private regular contact, or were their family’s schools/colleges, if they accessed sole breadwinner. Similarly, female-born government or private healthcare, their or assigned-female participants had little occupation, and relationship status.Some or no contact with natal families. Most participants were open about their HIV male-born and assigned-male participants status and discussed their experiences were either living with or had contact with respect to HIV medicine. A few with their families. participants, who, despite agreeing to the interview in the beginning, dropped AGE out of the interview or did not answer Participants ranged from 18 to 65 any/or all of the questions, so the data is years. Hopefully, this provides a helpful incomplete for them. representation of LGBTHQIA+ people MIGRATION from across different generations and illustrates the similarity of their Researchers visited 3 cities classified as discrimination experiences. tier-1; 9 classified as tier-2; and 4 classified as tier-3 (“tier” categories are being used EDUCATION only for convenience of illustration and Most of our participants had some are not indicative of urban/rural divides). education, with many having graduated. Most of the participants in tier-1 were But an equal number had either left migrants, while there were fewer in tier- before completing 10th or stopped 2 and fewer still in tier-3. There were immediately after. Only 2 participants around 60 migrants, both from villages to had no education whatsoever. Poverty tier-2 or tier-3 cities as well as from all was listed as an important reason for these places to tier-1 cities in our study. the lack of education, especially when

182 dropping out early. Education by itself house into a temple and people visited on did not seem to show a significant a daily basis or attended poojas and left impact on access to healthcare nor money after worship. in the experiences faced, although poverty did determine whether they RELATIONSHIP prioritised government or private A few of our male-born participants healthcare. Gender expression or non- were in heterosexual marriages with conformity was an important factor for women and several had children from the discrimination experienced within the these marriages. Almost none of these education sector and this discrimination participants were open about their was often given as a reason for dropping sexuality, or in some cases, gender out of school or early college. identity, to their families. For those who were in heterosexual marriages, and for OCCUPATION transgender women who were married Owing to the linkages with CBOs, many to or in relationship with male partners of the interviewees worked within and “presented as women”, we found such organisations as peer support or that their “normative” appearance and as outreach workers or other similar relationships gave them an advantage of position providing HIV awareness for being perceived as worthy of healthcare “MSM” and “transgender” communities. access. More importantly, those who These have been combined together as provided the service did not see these “social worker” in our profile, owing individuals as being “non-normative”. to the fact that many of them actually perceive their work as that, and also HIV STATUS communicate the same with their Nine participants identified as living family members. There were a couple with HIV. Their experience at the anti- of transgender women who were retroviral therapy (ART) centres (in unemployed as well, with at least one government hospitals) was uniformly participant having lost her job due to bad regardless of location, education, or her recent transition, and unable to find any other status. Additionally, accessing mainstream work. Seven of the jogappas government facilities was by and large who participated in the study spoke of considered ill advised for reasons such as: doing “joga” regularly as a way to earn a living. This meant that they conducted (a) not enough doctors, religious worship (pooja) of the Goddess (b) doctors’ timings, Yellamma, helped people make decisions (c) long waiting periods or queues, and (marriage, mediating trouble, good (d) poor quality of care. occasions, or help interpret why the Goddess was angry at them) etc. They Expectedly, the disregard for government earned money in this manner and facilities reflected patterns found in sometimes received food rations. Often, the National Health and Family Survey they converted a room or corner of their (NHFS-4).

183 Particulars Numbers (n=185) Age Range 18-23 37 24-30 64 31-35 33 36-40 18 41-49 12 50 and above 8 Not disclosed/Unknown 13 Education Up to 7th 27 Up to 10th 21 Up to 12th 18 Diploma 12 Graduate 49 Post Graduate 18 No Education 2 Not disclosed/Unknown 38 Occupation Unemployed 12 Sex work (non-traditional) 3 Traditional (hijra) occupation 25 Social Worker 30 Religious Service to Yellamma 7 Student 14 IT Industry 9 Other/Not disclosed/Unknown 85 Self-stated Identity Bisexual man 4 (Gender and/or Double Decker (DD) man 1 Sexuality) Gay man 27 Gender non-conforming/non-binary 1 Hijra 47 Intersex born 3 Jogappa 8 Kothi 49 Lesbian woman 3 MSM 5 Pansexual woman 2 Queer woman 1 Transman 8 Transwoman 21 Undecided / Questioning 1 Not disclosed/Unknown 4 Relationship Single 87 Status Married 35 With Partner 20 Other/Not disclosed/Unknown 43 HIV Status Sero positive 9 Table 2: Demographic Profile

184 Emerging Themes

The Healthcare sector is still––despite the preliminary analysis of the narratives its current avatar as a service industry illustrating this. where “clients” replaced “patients”–– “EXPERIENCING” riddled with hierarchies that encourage DISCRIMINATION serious inequalities. The social perception of any doctor (allopathic, I don’t like it when the doctors ask ayurvedic, or others) as being a me “Have you ‘moved’ with many more valuable human, and therefore men?” Why do they think all of us someone with high morals is a strong are like that? belief system. This in turn generates Kothi participant the perception that the doctor’s Usually there is only a doctor and interests are in the betterment of a nurse in the ultrasound room, patient health, that they are incapable but that day there were three of violating anyone, and therefore do house surgeons watching. It was not discriminate. But conversations very intrusive. Then students were with community members and earlier coming and asking, “What is this work (see Narrain and Chandran, 2015 case?” All of this while I’m lying and Ranade, 2009) on the attitudes of there. I was feeling very humiliated. healthcare professionals shows that Transman participant personal prejudice and traditionalist gender and sexuality frameworks I was at the government medical continue to play a great part in hospital for a kidney stone professional practice. The result is that procedure. The doctor made me healthcare professionals become part remove my clothes and started of the many socialisation processes that pointing different parts while teaching his students. I felt so weird enforce gender and sexuality norms. and embarrassed. I stopped going And, within such practice, the non- to government hospitals after that. normative person can experience every Kothi participant comment, look, touch, diagnosis, and even treatment as discriminatory. Here Whether or not healthcare service are some of the themes emerging from providers see themselves as being biased

185 or view their actions as benign, non- Every doctor I’ve gone to has normative people experience many of been obsessed with my weight. I the situations in healthcare spaces as am happy with my body but the discrimination. This is shared with us in doctors insist on telling me how to language that indicates feelings of hurt, lose weight. shame, guilt, frustration, humiliation, Lesbian participant embarrassment, anger, confusion, helplessness, shock, pain, or just the After finding out that I’m gay, the feeling of being judged for their bodies doctor will just say “Ah, okay” or identities. If healthcare spaces are and then he won’t touch me, designed to be safe for the “client” then he’ll not examine me, he’ll just any of these emotional reactions renders prescribe tablets. the space unsafe. Community members Gay participant seem to agree that to a large extent The doctor told me, “All of you are healthcare spaces tend to be violent like that? Do you do it in the back to those who are perceived to be non- (anal sex)? Doesn’t it cause you normative. Neither privacy nor safety problems? Doesn’t it pain?” is prioritised for these communities by Kothi participant most services and being disrespected or dismissed and also being abused can My two friends and I were walking be disempowering and prevent further to the discount pharmacy shop to health-seeking. get some medicines. The guy in the shop saw us talking to each other JUDGING BODIES, as we approached the shop. Our APPEARANCES, AND actions and gestures were very IDENTITIES feminine. When I showed him the I went to the doctor for regular list of medicines I wanted, he very treatment, but she first asked me, rudely said that nothing on the list “Why do you talk like a woman?” was there and asked me to leave. Kothi participant He didn’t even bother checking. Gay participant Every time I go to a gynaecologist, I get asked, “So, are you married? Do The doctor asked me, “Why did you have a boyfriend?” you go to this man’s house?” So Pansexual woman participant I told him that I went expecting a physical encounter (sex) The doctor looked at the results but I wasn’t expecting to be and said, “See, this is the problem, molested. I never expected the it’s called Androgen Insensitivity encounter to happen without my Syndrome. Now, if you want, we consent. And then he said “Yeah, can make you female. Or male, if but that’s a risky behaviour you had you prefer.” undertaken, right?” Intersex-born participant Gay participant

186 Healthcare discrimination experiences electroconvulsive therapy to cure have to be unpacked within the social my feminine behaviour. This went contexts that they take place. We believe on for 5 months.” that even in the healthcare sector the Transwoman participant social sanction of homophobia and I was asked to stand around transphobia, misogynist patriarchal perfume shops and smell women’s systems, deep-rooted beliefs about perfumes and think of women. I heterosexism and traditional gender was told to masturbate to fantasies binaries, all extract a heavy price from about women. I was also told to people, and communities, perceived pay special attention to women to be non-normative. An unhealthy on the street as I walked ... Then obsession of healthcare professionals I was told I was cured and I could with establishing “normal” bodies, get married. genders, and sexualities, produces with Gay participant it the privilege to decide who gets to be “normal” and who does not. In addition, (The psychiatrist) spoke to my such classification also encourages the parents and said, “We can make belief that the service provider is not her more womanly, we just have to being discriminatory but simply offering start hormone treatment”. support to someone who wants to be/ Transman participant ought to be “normal”. In such a scenario, I was taken to a psychologist who anyone who enters a healthcare space used hypnosis to try to change me as a non-normative body or gender and make me womanly. automatically experiences an othering, Transman participant beginning at the entrance. Further, non- normative sexualities within healthcare (This doctor) told my family spaces are, again automatically, perceived that his tablets would make me as deviant or as inviting trouble. So masculine. I used to take three it is no surprise that one important tablets every day. finding from the study was thatgender Transwoman participant appearance and/or performance had a significant negative impact on the (The doctor) said that it would healthcare experience. In fact, this stood have been okay if the patient were out in the data regardless of education, just gay, instead of bisexual. occupation or age of the participant. LGBTHQIA+ Activist Also, when clients are open about their Conversion therapies are still practised sexuality, it will be used against them. by many healthcare professionals around Southern India. Medical spaces reach CONVERSION THERAPIES out to clients who wish to convert from I was drugged as part of her homosexual to heterosexual or offer treatment––12 drugs every day. She treatments to those who do not identify convinced my parents to give me with the gender they were assigned at

187 birth. Almost all such offers of treatment personalities is controlling your conflate identity and behaviour. If we thoughts.” consider gender and/or sexuality to be Non-binary queer immutable identities then the offers of intersex-born participant treatment that involve electro-convulsive The doctor was treating me for therapy or orgasmic reconditioning to warts. When I came out to him, he change behaviour is a contradiction that said, “Oh, you are gay? That’s why many professionals still fail to recognise. you got this!” I kept quiet. Secondly, prescribing hormones to make Gay participant transgender identified individuals more I went to him because I had a fever. masculine or feminine to match their But he said, “People like you will get birth-assigned gender has very little all this…” scientific value, and is a flagged unethical Hijra participant practice. The same holds for paediatric endocrinologists who, in collusion with In healthcare, along with the obsession of defining the “normal” is another about surgeons and client families, intervene on the aetiology of the non-normative. infants or pre-pubertal intersex bodies. Rather than understanding the source In addition, many therapies for male of the distress making the client access homosexuals require them to fantasise healthcare, the professionals spend more about women both in private and in time decoding why the client is non- normative and trying to link it to some public spaces while walking down the psychological damage or behavioural street. They are encouraged to objectify pattern that can be corrected. The or sexualise women’s bodies to initiate corollary to this understanding is that heterosexual attraction. Such therapies cause is also treated as consequence. This reinforce existing sexist tropes about means that many healthcare how heterosexuality can be achieved and professionals will suggest that existing maintained. They have proven to also psychological and behavioural problems lead to depression and high suicidality. causes gender and sexuality differences. At the same time, they also suggest that ORIGINS being different will lead to psychological or physiological illness. It’s laid out as a (The doctor) said to me, “This is trap from which non-normative people nothing big, it’s just like cigarettes cannot escape. and boozing. If you want, you can let go of it easily.” Personal disgust at non-procreative Transwoman participant sexual behaviour and moral outrage at non-normative identities is definitely (The doctor) told me, “You are not a benign position, nor does it aid living with dissociative identity in providing optimal healthcare, to say disorder and one of your female the least. Can you objectively provide

188 complete treatment to someone whose my breasts. He said, “You shouldn’t behaviour personally disgusts you? put these, these are dangerous.” Can you provide affirmative medical Another time, I had a stomach-ache assistance to someone you consider and went to have an ultrasound immoral? These are questions that are scan done. I didn’t reveal my well worth asking healthcare providers. identity at any point. The doctor stared into the machine and was POWER wondering aloud where my ovaries The psychologist told me, “If you and uterus were. He didn’t ask me had come to me when you were anything. He gave a report saying fourteen or fifteen, I could have everything normal, including uterus! changed you, I have the shakti Hijra participant (power) to help you change.” The doctor looked at us angrily, he Gay participant said, “You people do this (anal sex). The doctor told us, “You have all Don’t you have any shame? You the organs of a girl, so you don’t shouldn’t do all this.” My guru said have any problem. You’re that (a to me quietly, “Don’t answer back, girl) only. You do as I say.” he won’t give treatment otherwise.” Transman participant Hijra participant The doctor said that I should give As mentioned earlier, healthcare delivery up homo-sex, “We will help you get has evolved into a service in India. rid of it. You must think of girls This has also transformed the doctor only. If that doesn’t work, we’ll do from a god-like figure to a service shock treatment.” provider. But most non-normative Kothi participant communities have not experienced that transformation. The study narratives The doctor refused to treat the indicate that many doctors use their queer client we referred for STI position of power to claim knowledge and said, “He will go back and do it about the client’s concerns even if they (anal sex) again.” have no experience with non-normative LGBTHQIA+ Activist communities. Many times, these The counsellor told me, “Why do community members are not considered you want all this trouble? Just live mature enough to have opinions like a man and be normal.” about their own bodies or genders Hijra participant or sexualities and “infantilisation” of the client is a common occurrence. In The doctor used the stethoscope addition, actual exhibition of power and told me he couldn’t hear my by healthcare professionals such as heartbeat. I had to tell him I had withholding treatment or pushing the silicone implants and that he had to client to accept their advice or diagnosis, place his stethoscope in between leads clients to more self-doubt, lower

189 self-esteem, increased dependency, and genders becomes the first indicator of fear of losing out on the opportunity to how they will be treated. be “normal”. If these power hierarchies I had my first anal sex experience are added to existing social divisions like when I was 15. I was bleeding caste, religion, and class, the imbalance profusely so I was taken to the tilts the scale against any beneficial doctor. The doctor wanted to engagement with the healthcare sector. examine me, but I was scared to The doctor there wouldn’t even show because I thought everyone touch me by hand. He would only would find out that I had anal sex. touch me using the syringe. But the doctor seemed to know Hijra participant what happened. He said nothing and gave me medication anyway. He There was a lady doctor in the was a good doctor. government hospital. When she Hijra participant found out I have sex with men We took a kothi, who was wearing she said, “You people have nothing saatla (sari) at the time, to the better to do?” The lab technician hospital. He had been raped by over there refused to touch me to 6 men and left naked to die. The take blood for a test. hospital provided treatment but did Hijra participant not interact with him. The doctor wouldn’t even come LGBTHQIA+ activist close to the bed to ask me what It is useful to point out the happened. I was having chest pains contrasting instances of doctors who as a result of the accident. He didn’t provide healthcare service without examine me, but stood far away conversation. Although their personal from the bed and said, “Yes, yes, this opinions are unknown, these doctors is normal.” seem to impress community members Hijra participant by doing their job efficiently, even if they are asocial about it. Unsurprisingly, there are resemblances to casteist and classist practices FAMILIES AND ACCESS when healthcare practitioners deal with gender non-conforming clients. My parents have spent more than Repeatedly, many transgender women a lakh rupees on different poojas in told the study that the doctors or other different temples to try and cure me after I came out as gay to them. mainstream healthcare practitioners Gay participant regularly refuse physical contact. Some of these transgender women belong When my parents found out about to lower castes and could well see this me, they called a hakim and paid as caste-based discrimination, but their him to help me become manlier. appearance of being non-normative Hijra participant

190 My parents begged our pastor to for that size! Why do you want pray for me so that I can change. to undergo all this? You need to Transwoman participant undergo counselling ... You’re so sweet. Don’t you want to have a Families are typically the first source baby? You have such a pretty face. of violence for LGBTHQIA+ people. How difficult it must be for your Whether dealing with their children’s parents. As it is women are so sexuality or with gender non-conforming less, we are losing people like you behaviour, most parents make the to the male side. That is so sad. So situation worse emotionally and interesting to talk to you. I have psychologically. Bullying and harassment oftentimes begins at home. Parents use spoken to homos, but never spoke religion routinely to provide some way to somebody like you…” of handling crises, further highlighting the Transman participant otherness that these children already Healthcare education as well as feel. Also, many LGBTQIA+ children practice reinforces the heterosexual spend formative years praying to become procreative family as a life achievement, “normal”, so such religious interventions so LGBTHQIA+ people find that their further feeds their confusion about lives are easily considered unimportant their bodies or identities. The forms of or their opinions are dismissed because religious therapy offered differed only in they don’t have parental support. content, the end objective was similar to Many of them speak of being asked conversion therapy. about marriage, husbands or wives, The doctor was only concerned and children in medical settings and no with what my parents thought. Even questions about their actual desires. when I was asking her a question The only change in this has come from about side effects, she turned to developments in the HIV and AIDS my mother and asked her what she prevention healthcare sector. In some thought about my transition. instances, removal of reproductive Transman participant organs causes surgeons to be distressed on behalf of dysphoric clients. Agency I was 33 years old and the doctor over body, gender, or sexuality is always kept asking me, “Are your parents given to families, especially for female- okay with this?” Why should I bring born non-normative people. Ultimately, my parents into this conversation? the expectation is that the patriarchal Am I not an adult? family structure has to be appeased and Transman participant the healthcare professional adopts the The doctor told me, “You have role of the appeaser. The same family a very feminine name for your standards are followed in the context appearance ... (points at my chest) of gender expression and the “normal” You have such wonderful breasts. body. People with gender dysphoria What would people not give live with distress for most of their lives,

191 so a careless professional’s explicit HIV treatment, despite the advances rejection of the dysphoria can trigger in awareness within southern India, unnecessary trauma. is still an area of concern for non- normative communities. The double HIV AND ACCESS stigma of sexuality and HIV are still I don’t go to the ART centre bound together. Much has been written because I don’t want my family to about the nature of this stigma in know about my status. HIV prevention and ART treatment Kothi participant programmes across the world. In our narratives, we see a similar thread Both the government and the across southern Indian HIV prevention private hospital refused to do my and ART treatment centres. Privacy is hernia operation because of my not valued and stereotypes about the HIV status. I went into depression people accessing these treatments are and tried to kill myself two times. still common. Routinely, clients can be Kothi participant seen in long queues with faces covered The testing and counselling centres by their kerchiefs or their saris waiting don’t always believe that a person to receive their monthly supply of is from the community, especially medicines. Into this mix are thrown if the client is very masculine. those who present as non-normative to The people at the centre think increasing hostility from both service that only feminine men are from providers and others standing in the the community. queues. It is hard to be anonymous when Kothi participant you are non-normative. In addition, healthcare service providers are also I told the doctor that my partner is adding to perpetuating the stigma HIV positive. His response was to through their own beliefs and actions. say, “You’re playing with fire!” Gender non-binary participant It is useful to note here the significant role that complementary and alternative The doctor at the ART centre medicine (CAM) plays in the HIV said, “You shouldn’t do all this (be prevention and treatment sector. The homosexual). If you do this, you’ll study found that participants knew get AIDS. You look like you can of many centres practising ayurveda get AIDS.” She told other people or homoeopathy that offered cures in the centre,“See, they are all like and treatments for HIV. While the this. This is what they do. They have participants recounted the treatments too many partners. They have sex as failures, it does not dissuade them for money too.” She’d put on her from accessing these. Many claim that gloves but still wouldn’t touch us. the spaces that offered such treatments Kothi participant were far less intimidating and more

192 non-judgmental than most mainstream abusing them and even physically healthcare services. hurting them or sexually harassing them while providing medical assistance are VIOLENCE experiences related by many, particularly The nurse rubbed my forehead hijra community members. The result with cotton very roughly without of such humiliating experiences have taking the glass pieces out ... I told often been a refusal to visit the service her to stop but she just kept at it provider, whether a professional or and said, “You people deserve this.” an institute, ever again. How does one Because of her I have scars. analyse violence in the healthcare space? Hijra participant In today’s social context, doctors are concerned about being at the receiving When my gurubai and I had an end of violence (Reddy 2019) from angry accident, we were rushed to the relatives of patients who died in their hospital. The doctors refused to care. Multiple strikes across the country see the fractures we had and said, have been carried out towards this “Nothing has happened, go away.” cause. Lashing out at doctors for political Hijra participant lapses are also found newsworthy. He had to give me injection in my But violence against persons for their hips, and he started touching me all perceived or actual gender or sexuality over. I asked him why he was doing takes many forms ranging from the that. He said, “What others are unrecognisable to the negligent and doing to you, I’m doing the same.” violent. These don’t get front page or Hijra participant breaking news coverage. In addition to these, refusal to provide treatments, Everyone in the hospital looks at challenging the client’s gender identity, us strangely. The doctors will make ignoring the client’s own experiences, us wait for a long time and see us and familiarity with their journeys, only after everyone else, even if the conflating all illness or accidents as being other patients came after us. consequence of an immoral identity, are Hijra participant some other disturbing experiences that community members have spoken of The nurses at the government within healthcare services. hospital are very rude to us community people and to HIV- SURGERIES positive community members. Kothi participant The compounder did the surgery a little after 10 a.m., I don’t know Some of the most disturbing narratives where the place is because the come from clients for whom the auto driver took us through many healthcare system has been violent small lanes. Half an hour after the in multiple ways. From refusing to surgery, we were told to leave touch community members to verbally immediately. I had to hold my urine

193 bag and we travelled back home the on transgender peoples’ bodies were same day. unsafe till recently. Several hospitals Hijra participant across south India have now become experienced at providing surgical They were painting the walls in the intervention for transwomen. There operation theatre of the hospital, are still not enough spaces where there so they did my operation on the is experience working with transmen. enclosed balcony. But surgical intervention on intersex Hijra participant peoples’ bodies is conducted even I know friends who have had before adolescence or before they horrible experiences. I met another develop a gender and sexuality identity transman who went to a hospital of their own. Such surgeries are a stark for top surgery and five days after contrast to the refusal by a few doctors surgery his nipples fell off when to intervene in adult transgender he was having a bath. The doctors or non-binary bodies, especially for had told him that he can shower removal of reproductive organs. In normally and now he has no these situations, the family’s (defined by nipples. He isn’t financially stable practitioners as parents, future wives or to go for another surgery. I know husbands, or future children) opinion many guys for whom the doctors seems to matter to the professional. don’t do enough lipo and it looks In some cases where gender affirmative like they have man-boobs. The surgeries are offered by inexperienced whole purpose for the surgery is or insensitive surgeons, experiences of for a flat chest and you come back violent side effects, body parts falling off, with small boobs. and long-term illnesses are also captured Transman participant within the narratives. Community The doctor said to the transman, members who accessed experienced “I will not perform hysterectomy medical personnel found better results, for someone who has not enjoyed but most times these services were motherhood.” located in urban areas or access was LGBTHQIA+ activist limited or beyond financial reach. The doctor is confused about why Further, while conversations around I want to get a vasectomy done? gender-neutral spaces within medical If I am okay with it, why do they spaces are still beginning, transgender have a problem? men and women have spoken of how Gender non-binary participant they are routinely forced to be part of gendered-wards or toilets assigned to In the context of gender affirmative them on the basis of their biology and therapies, the primary issue appears not their identity. Overall this led to to be safety. Most surgeries, hormone most of our interviewees feeling very treatments, or medical interventions unsafe in any public medical spaces.

194 PRIVACY AND DIGNITY had his gloves on, so he checked with his fingers. Then the doctor The doctors call their students called the woman and showed to come observe us without her too. The client was feeling so even asking if we’re okay with it. There is no privacy anywhere and embarrassed, even to remove his no sensitivity. pants he was looking here and LGBTHQIA+ activist there. And when the woman was there, he felt even more shamed. I had a circumcision operation He couldn’t say anything. He’s when I was young. I felt really a patient, they’re doctors, he embarrassed standing naked in the can’t do anything. ward in front of so many people, LGBTHQIA+ activist doctors, nurses, and ayahs. Even today I don’t like going to that The concerns around privacy and dignity hospital and if I see those doctors are repeatedly brought up in a few or nurses, I don’t look at their faces, narratives. The experience of medical I look at the floor and walk away. colleges, where healthcare professionals Kothi participant also have to teach medical students, If we are good looking, then the stands as a sore point with most doctors have a different feeling, community members. They say doctors they are interested in you. They force them to undress and reveal their won’t ask you if you want to have bodies and/or infections to students sex, they’ll just touch you. If we are randomly called into the room without too dark or too thin or something asking for explicit permission and else they won’t even look at us. thereby embarrassing or humiliating the They’ll sit away from us and just say community members. The experience is take this tablet or that. That’s how exacerbated when the case is considered they treat us. “unique” (intersex or transgender Hijra participant bodies). We took a client with anal STI to Documentation about healthcare spaces the hospital. He was in a lot of being unsafe for women has existed for pain, so we took him to the STI many decades. The presence of people specialist. That doctor examined him and called for the surgeon. from some non-normative genders and Along with the surgeon, two other sexualities in the same spaces seem people showed up, including a to attract the same sort of attention. woman student. Now the doctor Protecting the dignity of the client vis- has to see the case right? He told à-vis privacy and treatment requires an the surgeon to go and pull down ethical approach to practicing medicine the pants and put his fingers in and that is fully informed by community check what is there. The surgeon expectations of safety.

195 Conclusion and Ways Forward

The examples listed in this report There are many more examples that illustrate the experiences of could further nuance the discrimination discrimination that non-normative experiences of these communities and people face in healthcare spaces and at these will be elaborated in subsequent the hands of healthcare professionals. The complexity of such experiences publications. But they all point to the highlights the need to deconstruct importance of healthcare practitioners how prejudice is taught and/or understanding these communities’ health practiced in medicine. concerns without stereotyping them The affirmative experiences related by and presuming their gender or sexual participants in this study were found behaviours and identities.

The affirmative experiences related by participants had two specific causes. The first was that the healthcare professional in these instances was already familiar with the community or had received some amount of training about them. The second was that the healthcare professional, even if unfamiliar with the community, simply performed their duties without judgment or conversation, an asocial response.

to have two specific causes. The first In a scenario where healthcare service was that the healthcare professional in providers want to promote client agency, these instances was already familiar with medical intervention on non-normative the community or had received some bodies, or genders, and/or sexualities, amount of training about them. The has to be prepared with complete second, as already elaborated earlier, was that the healthcare professional, even if sharing of knowledge about procedures, unfamiliar with the community, simply and possible consequences, in order performed their duties without judgment to obtain full and informed consent or conversation, an asocial response. of the client.

196 Family input has to be understood in context and cannot take precedence over the client’s own life-journey and identity. LGBTHQIA+ support groups cannot be undercut due to the benefits they provide communities in the form of safe spaces, support systems, and “alternate” families. At the same time, all families must be encouraged to access support to help understand their loved one’s gender and/or sexuality journey.

Family input has to be understood in support to help understand their loved context and cannot take precedence one’s gender and/or sexuality journey. over the client’s own life-journey and identity. Healthcare professionals Belief about what can be medicalised are obligated to build networks is changing rapidly. What was once with community groups and other pathologised, owing to problematic service providers and through regular historic origins, are now being studied collaboration, build confidence in and declassified. International standards healthcare delivery systems. The gender for studying wellness and illness have and sexuality spectrum is becoming encouraged development of new criteria more visible and public quickly and for measuring health, rather than going more experiences are being shared with traditional norms. that indicate a need for healthcare service providers to be up-to-date When LGBTHQIA+ people challenge with information. these notions of the “normal” through LGBTHQIA+ support groups cannot their own lived experiences, it is hoped be undercut due to the benefits they that the healthcare professional will provide to these communities in the not take on the role of a patriarchal form of safe spaces, support systems, and enforcer of the norm and instead “alternate” families. At the same time, all focuses on enabling health-seeking families must be encouraged to access without judgment.

When LGBTHQIA+ people challenge these notions of the “normal” through their own lived experiences, it is hoped that the healthcare professional will not take on the role of a patriarchal enforcer of the norm and instead focuses on enabling health-seeking without judgment.

197 Outcomes

This study continues to interview 2. Preliminary report dissemination participants and hopes to build an 4th November 2018, to medical archive of experiences that can help with students, Kolkata. developing a better understanding of healthcare discrimination. The current 3. Healthcare Discrimination findings have already been disseminated Experienced by Non-Normative through conferences, seminars, Genders and Sexualities in workshops, and CME programmes Southern India: A Preliminary (see list). Report (current document)

An exclusive workshop was held for 4. Healthcare Discrimination medical practitioners, students, and Experienced by Non-Normative researchers to share the experiences Genders and Sexualities collected and bring about changes in the way practitioners saw their own in Southern India: A Study involvement in healthcare service (Forthcoming) delivery and also help senior medical Continuing Medical faculty to adopt changes to the way Education Programmes healthcare is taught. Advocacy with healthcare institutions and curriculum 5. Presentation at CME on Gender boards across south India are also being Identities: Medico-Socio-Legal conducted. Aspects, at M. S. Ramaiah Hospital, The following are the outputs delivered 18th August 2018, Bengaluru or committed from this research: 6. Presentation at CME on Dissemination programmes Adolescence: Contemporary and reports issues in the clinic and beyond, 1. Preliminary report dissemination 15-16th March 2019, Department 28th-29th June 2018 in of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, TISS, Mumbai. NIMHANS, Bengaluru

198 Papers at Medical conferences March, 2019, Department of and workshops Community Medicine and School of Public Health, PGIMER, Chandigarh 7. “Hegemony of the ‘Normal’: Healthcare Discrimination of 10. “Community Experiences of LGBTQIA in Southern India”. Discrimination in Healthcare”. Presentation at 14th WCB and Presentation at Sexual and 7th NBC, 6th December 2018, St. Reproductive Rights in India: Social John’s National Academy of Health Movements and Legal Battles, 14th- Sciences, Bengaluru 15th April 2019, Centre for Law 8. “Experiencing Medicine as and Policy Research, Bengaluru Discrimination: LGBTQIA 11. Presentation at Workshop for Narratives of Healthcare medical students, healthcare Discrimination”.Presentation at a practitioners, social science panel titled “Transforming Gender researchers, and others “Building and Sexuality Teaching in Medicine: Perspectives on Gender and An LGBTQIA Perspective” at 14th Sexuality –– LGBTQHKIA+ WCB and 7th NBC, 6th December communities and Healthcare” on 2018, St. John’s National Academy 10thAugust, 2019, NIMHANS, of Health Sciences, Bengaluru Bengaluru (collaboration between 9. “Experiences of persons with non- ACWS-TISS, Mumbai, Department normative genders and sexualities”. of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Presentation at 5th Public Health NIMHANS, Bengaluru and Symposium: LGBTI Health, 9-10th Swabhava, Bengaluru).

199 References

AIDS Bhedbhav Virodhi Andolan (1991) Less Khan, Shivananda (2001) Culture, Sexualities, than Gay: A Citizen’s Report on the Status of and Identities, Journal of Homosexuality, Homosexuality in India. New Delhi. 40:3-4, 99-115, Amrita Basu (2018) Whither Democracy, Narrain, Arvind and Marcus Eldridge (2009) Secularism, and Minority Rights in India?, The RIght that Dares to Speak its Name. The Review of Faith & International Affairs, Edited volume. Alternative Law Forum, 16:4, 34-46. Bangalore. Devi, Shakuntala (1977) World of Narrain, Arvind and Vinay Chandran (2005) Homosexuals, Vikas, New Delhi. “It’s not my job to tell you that it’s okay to Divan, Vivek (2019) ‘SABSE BADTAR–TEEN- be gay: Medicalisation of Homosexuality, a SO-SATATTAR!’ (THE WORST–377!): Queer Critique”. In Because I Have a Voice, Queer Mobilizing in India Against Anti- Edited by Arvind Narrain and Gautam Sodomy Law. In Sonia Corrêa and Richard Bhan, Yoda Press, New Delhi. Parker (Eds) SexPolitics: Trends & Tensions in Narrain, Arvind and Vinay Chandran (2016) the 21st Century—Contextual Undercurrents. Nothing to Fix: Medicalisation of Sexual Sexuality Policy Watch. Rio de Janeiro. Orientation and Gender Identity, Sage/Yoda Fernandez, Bina (1999) Humjinsi: A Resource Press, New Delhi. Book on Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Rights People’s Union for Civil Liberties - Karnataka in India. Edited volume. India Centre for Human Rights and Law, Mumbai. (2001) Human rights violations against sexuality minorities in India: A PUCL-K fact- Fernandez, Bina (2003) “Mental Health finding report about Bangalore. Bangalore. Professionals’ Perspectives about Lesbian Women”. In The Nature of Violence faced People’s Union for Civil Liberties - Karnataka by Lesbian Women in India, Edited by Bina (2003) Human RIghts Violations against the Fernandez and Gomathy N. B., Research Transgender Community: A Study of Kothi and Centre on Violence against Women, Tata Hijra Sex Workers in Bangalore. Bangalore. Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai. Ranade, K. (2015) “Medical Response to Male Human Rights Watch (2002) “Epidemic of Same-sex Sexuality in Western India: An Abuse: Police Harassment of HIV/AIDS Exploration of ‘Conversion Treatments’ Outreach Workers in India”, 14(5(C)) for Homosexuality”. In Nothing to Fix: Human Rights Watch Reports. Medicalisation of Sexual Orientation and International Institute of Population Sciences Gender Identity, 2016, Edited by Arvind (IIPS) and ICF (2017) National Family Narrain and Vinay Chandran.Sage/Yoda Health Survey. (NHFS-4), 2015-16: India. Press, New Delhi. Mumbai: IIPS. Reddy, I.R, J. Ukrani, V. Indla and V. Ukrani Joseph, Sherry (1996) Gay and Lesbian (2019) Violence against Doctors: A Viral Movement in India. in Economic and Political epidemic? in Indian Journal of Psychiatry. 200 Weekly, Vol. 31, No. 33, pp. 2228-2233. Apr; 61(Suppl 4); S782-S785. APPENDICES An Exploratory Study of Discriminations based on Non-Normative Genders and Sexualities

202 Participant Information Sheet

TITLE OF PROJECT: AN 1. Who are we, the researchers? EXPLORATORY STUDY OF The core team for this research is of DISCRIMINATIONS BASED ON activists, lawyers, and academics, each NON-NORMATIVE GENDERS with extensive experience in working AND SEXUALITIES both with discrimination as well as in This Participant Information Sheet the area of non-normative gender and (referred to as PIS) gives you important sexuality, among others. Many of us have information about the research study. It been and are part of LGBT, queer and describes the important details about the feminist communities and movements. study including why it is being conducted, We are all interested in understanding the need for your participation, the discrimination based on any direct or possible risks and benefits of participating indirect expression of gender identity in the study, the safety of participants and or sexuality identity that is not accepted other concerns you may have. within society because it is not the norm. This brought us together for this research Please take the time to review this which is being done through a project information carefully. You are requested based in TISS. to ask for an explanation of any word you do not understand. After you have 2. What is the study about? read the PIS, you are free to talk to the This study aims to collect stories of researchers about the study and ask them experiences of ‘discrimination’ faced by any questions you mtay have. You will people because of the fact that there are be given a copy of the PIS and a signed set norms around gender and sexuality informed consent document for your in society. These could be people who future reference. identify as transgender, queer, lesbian, Your participation in the study is gay, bisexual, hijra, or any other specific completely voluntary. You have the right identities not recognised in the two to leave the research at any time without gendered heterosexual world we live giving reasons and without losing any in. This could also be people who may benefits the study offers even if you do not themselves identify like this but may not participate in the study. be perceived as any of these and hence discriminated against. It could also be marginalisations like caste, class, ability, people who – regardless of how they ethnicity, race, religion, region, age, etc. identify or how they are perceived – exhibit behavior that is seen as against 3. Why are we focusing on this? the norm. Some research has been conducted While trying to understand what happens on discrimination experienced by to certain individuals, we also want to other marginalised groups like women, look at the ways in which different kinds differently-abled people and those of institutions actively or passively allow belonging to different castes. But such discrimination through the practices there is very little work in relation to that they establish on the basis of norms discrimination faced by people who have of gender and sexuality. These institutions non-normative genders and/or sexualities include families, medical institutions, even though there is evidence that this political groups, educational institutions, discrimination and prejudice against these workplaces, public places including public communities and groups exists even in services, housing, and many more. the most respected institutions in India. Through our research we are trying to understand how individuals perceive and For example the Supreme Court ruled, understand discrimination and also find on 11 December 2013, that Section ways to cope with it. We are interested in 377 of the Indian Penal Code (which not just actual incidents but also the ways criminalises 'unnatural' sex) should not in which fear of being different is created be removed because people who have and kept alive through established norms non-normative genders and sexualities and practices within institutions. For were a ‘miniscule minority’ and did not example, if a child perceived as “different” experience discrimination from the police on the basis of their gender expression is or any one else. We know that this is not bullied, we see this as a relevant incident true because we have seen so many such of discrimination regardless of whether individuals across the country experience it is named as such by anyone involved. harassment from the police, aggression In our understanding, even if there is no from families, or blackmail from those bullying, the fear of the possibility of being trying to exploit fear of the law. bullied is also part of discrimination in the environment of the child and needs to be We hope that this compilation will help documented. understand this discrimination along with Finally through the process of this that due to other axes of marginalisation. research we hope to evolve a more We also hope to create a data base that nuanced understanding of discrimination will help build mechanisms to address around gender and sexuality, and discrimination through State policy as also see its intersection with other well as in the processes of social change.

204 4. How relevant/important is the important to note that participating in information being collected this study does not mean that we make to the participant or to the any assumptions about your gender community? or sexual identity, or that we are only looking to include LGBT identified Since the study aims to create a data base people. of personal and/or public experiences of discrimination, we acknowledge that this 6. How long will we need your help information is extremely important and for the research study? relevant to both, thet participants in the There will be variation in the length of study and the society at large. By sharing involvement and we can make it clear to such stories from around the country we you during the consent process which hope to initiate a serious conversation general time frame is applicable to your around discrimination. The expectation involvement. Involvement can be as simple is that this research will lead to more as a single interview over a few hours, or such work and will eventually result in attending one focus group discussion. It nation-wide campaigns against all forms of can also be a series of interactions and discrimination. We hope that in the long more detailed interviews over multiple run the findings of this study could also sittings for some participants depending give shape to anti-discrimination policies on the need of the study and the for different marginalised communities in willingness of the participant. India. All these results can have an impact on the lives of participants in this study 7. What are the possible risks and and the community at large. inconveniences that you may face by being in the research study? 5. Who will be part of this research study? Participating in this research study means sharing personal and/or public This process of collecting data is being experiences of discrimination that some done using different methods suitable for of you may have gone through in your the site that is being studied. So some life because of your gender identity or of us may talk to individuals or groups sexuality. Talking about these experiences of people who—either personally or may trigger bad memories leading to publicly — are considered non-normative sadness, depression, confusion, guilt, in their gender identity or sexuality embarrassment or similar feelings. You identity. Others may speak to groups may be concerned that sharing these that may primarily work with other experiences might get other people marginalisations to see how gender and to look at you differently or treat you sexuality intersect with these. Yet others differently. You may be worried that may use other methods of mapping which sharing these stories might put you at risk may look at existing data from a different from the police, your employers or other perspective. We expect a diverse set of authority figures. We wish to assure you people participating in this research. It is that maintaining confidentiality will be

205 central to our methodology. We also will records will be kept secure under lock make sure that we are able to reach out and key inaccessible to anyone apart from with support from organisations, support the researchers themselves. Focus groups groups, and counsellors, if needed. or participant interviews will not be 8. What are the possible benefits of recorded, photographed or videographed being in the research study? without explicit permission. Focus group There are no financial or other material participants are also expected to sign a benefits for being in the research study. consent form wherein they promise to be However, the process of sharing some of responsible for the confidentiality of the your individual or collective struggles may group discussions that occur. actually help you gain some confidence. Additionally, we are hoping that the While using the material collected from findings of this study will bring attention the study we shall make sure that your to discrimination amongst communities information is anonymised in the way that marginalized based on gender and/or you would want it. We shall not use this sexuality and this will in turn support a material for any purpose other than the nation-wide campaign and thereby help develop anti- discrimination policies study outcomes itself. In case we use it in the country. All these results can for anything else, we shall take permission have a positive impact on the lives of from you again for this. participants in this study and the society at large. 10. Will you have to bear any Expenses or Costs by 9. How will privacy and participating in the research confidentiality be maintained? study? The following procedures will be used to protect the confidentiality of the You do not have to bear any expenses or study participants. Firstly, no identifying cost for participating in this study. markers of participants are being 11. Whom do you call if you have collected. This includes any identifying markers of their location, institution questions or problems regarding or neighborhood that could indirectly rights as a participant? lead to identification. Any records, audio interviews, written transcriptions, focus Please contact any of the following group minutes or reports and any codes individuals if you have any problems or developed by the interviewers to identify questions regarding the study. the data will all be kept on password protected computers and is accessible Name of Principal Institution: Tata Institute only to the interviewers and the principal of Social Sciences, Mumbai investigator. All print outs or physical Principal Investigator: Dr Asha Achuthan.

206 Consent Forms (1) (Regional translations also available)

INFORMED CONSENT FORM FOR PARTICIPATION IN A RESEARCH STUDY INTERVIEW

I ______confidential. I have also understood have read the participant information that since I will be sharing important sheet for “An Exploratory Study information during the interviews of Discrimination Based on Non- and may share relevant documents Normative Genders and Sexualities”. or records, representatives of ethics committees or others may reach me to The information contained in the confirm the information. I hereby give participant informa tion sheet regarding the nature and purpose of the study, my consent willingly to participate in this my safety, the study’s potential risks research study. However, I understand and benefits, expected duration and that the representatives of those other relevant details, including my referred to conduct the verification role as a study participant have been are also bound by the confidentiality explained to me in the language that I clauses presented herein. By signing understand. I have had the opportunity this document, I give permission to to ask queries, which have been clarified these individuals for having access to my satisfaction. to my records. I understand that my participation is I hereby give my consent willingly to completely voluntary and that I have participate in this research study. the right to withdraw from the study For limited or non-readers: I have at any time without giving any reasons witnessed the consent procedure of the for the same. study participant and the individual has I understand that the information had the opportunity to ask questions. collected from and pertaining to me I confirm that the individual has given during the research study will be kept consent freely.

Participant Name Participant Signature/Thumbprint Date

Name of Person Signature & Witness Name, Administering Consent Date Signature & Date

207 Consent Forms (2) (Regional translations also available)

INFORMED CONSENT FORM FOR PARTICIPATION IN A FOCUS GROUP DISCUSSION

I ______I understand that the information have read the participant information collected from and pertaining to sheet for “An Exploratory Study me will be kept confidential. The of Discrimination Based on Non- process how the study will maintain Normative Genders and Sexualities”. confidentiality and protect my identity has been explained to me. I also The information contained in the understand that during the Focus Group participant information sheet regarding discussions, I might hear information the nature and purpose of the study, from other participants that might my safety, the study’s potential risks and be of a confidential nature. While the researchers will ensure that such benefits, expected duration and other information is kept private and secure, relevant details, including my role as a I understand that I am also responsible study participant in the Focus Group for keeping what is said within the discussion have been explained to me discussions completely confidential. in the language that I understand. I have had the opportunity to ask I hereby give my consent willingly to participate in this study’s queries, which have been clarified Focus Group Discussion. to my satisfaction. For limited or non-readers: I have I understand that my participation in this witnessed the consent procedure of Focus Group Discussion is completely the Focus Group participant and the voluntary and that I have the right to individual has had the opportunity to ask withdraw from the study at any time questions. I confirm that the individual without giving any reasons for the same. has given consent freely.

Participant Name Participant Signature/Thumbprint Date

Name of Person Signature & Witness Name, Administering Consent Date Signature & Date

208

Mainstream discourse on “non-normative” genders and sexualities—for e.g., lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, hijra, queer, questioning, intersex, asexual, and others (LGBTHQIA+)—is often around direct violence or in epidemic illness contexts. Discrimination of these populations by state and non-state actors has not been looked at seriously.

Following the reading down of Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), the debate has shifted from de-criminalisation to anti- discrimination. However, there is still not enough work in relation to systems and structural contexts of discrimination faced by persons of non-normative genders and sexualities. In addition to “recognised” marginalisations such as gender, caste, and disabilities a discourse on discrimination has to include these populations.

The aim of this study was to undertake research to create an extensive document on discrimination faced by people from non-normative genders or sexualities. In doing so, the study looked not just at self-identified individuals but also at actions, environments, and institutions where discriminatory practices are based on enforcing gender and sexuality norms. The teams studied experiences of discrimination in five areas: Education, Housing, Political Formations, Public Spaces, and Health.

The study viewed discrimination not just as incidents or moments of certain kinds of conduct or behaviour, but also as perceptions of vulnerability that such conduct could cause, and the structural conditions that implicitly or explicitly institutionalise such conduct.

The study paid equal attention to the presence, nature, and form of discrimination as with the diverse strategies used by people of non-normative genders and sexualities to cope with and celebrate their lives, despite discrimination.

For more information, contact:

Advanced Centre for Women’s Studies (ACWS) School of Development Studies Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) V. N. Purav Marg, Deonar, Mumbai - 400 088