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How to change your name and gender legally? We have demystified the key aspects of social, medical and legal transitioning in India.
How to change your name and gender legally? In this article, we have tried to demystify in detail the key aspects of social, medical and legal transitioning in India.
Trigger Warning: transphobia, abandonment, gender dysphoria.
Transitioning for trans people can be a tenuous process. Transition includes three key aspects, which are interconnected, and they are social, medical and legal transitioning.
Being transgender in India can be various shades of challenging. The common person often makes the poor choice to be intolerant, misinformed and discriminatory. This comes from a narrow-minded approach to sex and sexuality.
Being in the minority, as opposed to being cisgender, transgenderism is frequently stigmatized for not explicitly fitting into the male-female gender binary. Many see it as an attack on pre-established patriarchal gender roles and a threat to so-called traditional values.
Trans persons have historically and traditionally had integral roles in royal courts, temples, and artistic fields and have always been part of society. Transsexuality is valid and legally recognized outside the social stigma in India today.
The Transgender Persons Bill passed in 2019, defines a transgender person as one whose gender does not match the gender assigned at birth. It includes trans-men and trans-women, persons with intersex variations and gender-queers.
Persons with intersex variations are defined as those who show variation in their primary sexual characteristics such as external genitalia, chromosomes or hormones from the normative male or female body at birth.
Gender queers are persons whose gender identity does not fall into the normative binary. For transmen and women, persons with intersex variation and gender queers, the understanding of their gender identity versus their externally perceived sex can cause gender dysphoria.
Gender dysphoria is defined as emotional distress due to dissonance between assigned birth and gender identity. It can occur at any age and to any person. As a result, those experiencing gender dysphoria often take the route of gender affirmation.
Gender affirmation is a transition usually undertaken by trans, intersex or gender queers to affirm their gender and lessen gender dysphoria. Gender affirmation is typically of three types – social, legal and medical. The legal aspect is involved in both social and medical areas.
The meaning and implication of social transitioning are subject to the person involved. Typically, it involves introspection, counselling and coming to terms with your own gender and, if willing, making your family and friends aware of the same.
This goes a long way in alleviating distress and allows room for close people to use correct pronouns, practice sensitivity and not enforce preconceived gender notions and expectations.
Many trans people would also like to use a name and make changes to their outer appearance that is more fitting to their gender identity.
The article further covers the following topics in detail:
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UP Boards Topper Prachi Nigam was trolled on social media for her facial hair; our obsession with appearance is harsh on young minds.
Prachi Nigam’s photo has been doing the rounds on social media for the right reasons. Well, scratch that- I wish the above statement were true. This 15-year-old girl should ideally be revelling in her spectacular achievement of scoring a whopping 98.05% and topping her tenth-grade boards. But oddly enough, along with her marks, it’s something else that garners more attention – her facial hair.
While the trolls are driving themselves giddy by mocking this girl who hasn’t even completed her school yet, the ones who are taking her side are going one step ahead – they are sharing her photoshopped pictures, sans the facial hair, looking nothing less than a celebrity with captions saying – “Prachi Nigam, ten years later”.
Doctors have already diagnosed her with PCOD in their comments, based on photographic evidence. While we have names for people shamed for their weight – body shaming, for their skin colour- racism, for their age- age shaming, for being a female- sexism, this category of shaming where one faces criticism for their appearance has no name. With that, it also has zero shame attached to it.
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