The full Statement is at: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1739CSyu5q_xSeFvkUvfFXUQopYtLd3jZ/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=114555905071788929193&rtpof=true&sd=true

You can endorse the statement by clicking on this link https://forms.gle/4YK1ZH2Pn7q7aW1t5 

Any suggestion for addition or modification to the Public Statement can be mailed at huz208546@iitd.ac.in or Qiz208582@iitd.ac.in

Dear Peers,

I hope all of you are doing well.

I write to all of you on a sombre note because of the series of events that have transpired this month regarding the teacher’s training manual formulated and published by NCERT to make educational avenues more enabling, inclusive and accessible for transgender and gender non-conforming persons. The redaction of the manual and the institutional attitude of human rights oversight bodies signals worrying trends in India.

The purpose of this message is to seek your support and endorsement of the public statement that would be sent to important stakeholders for their immediate retrospection and actions, failing which we* plan to seek legal remedy.

Your support, endorsement and suggestions will be highly valuable. In rage, we unite!

Link to the Statement – https://docs.google.com/document/d/1739CSyu5q_xSeFvkUvfFXUQopYtLd3jZ/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=114555905071788929193&rtpof=true&sd=true

The authors  are a group of gender non-binary, gender non-conforming students from various educational institutions, who have experienced the horrors of the gender non-inclusive education system.

Contacts: dialogues.diversity@gmail.com, orinam.net@gmail.com

TRANSGENDER-AFFIRMING GUIDELINES FOR INDIAN WORKPLACES

Two community collectives, Orinam in Chennai and Diversity Dialogues in Bangalore, have launched a guide for employers  who seek to make workplaces inclusive and welcoming of transgender employees, and support employees who are choosing to come out as transgender.

Being transgender, intersex, non-binary or genderqueer (henceforth transgender+) is a challenge to finding and retaining education and employment in India. The few individuals who manage to acquire education and access to employment opportunities constantly face a choice between affirming their true (gender) identities and staying in long-term careers.

Many workplaces in India are already likely to have transgender+ individuals working with them. These individuals, who may have been recruited through mainstream recruitment channels and are actively contributing to the business, may not openly identify as transgender and are perhaps living and expressing in the gender assigned at birth, and are forced to conform/pass as cis-gender. Some others may be transgender and living in their preferred gender(s), without disclosing their gender assigned at birth.

Very few employers in India are known to be inclusive of transgender+ individuals and/or allow/support their gender affirmation within the company.

Orinam believes that “Organizations committed to diversity and inclusion need to create a safe, welcoming and inclusive environment for transgender+ employees, both existing employees and new recruits, to be recognized in their gender, and create channels for requesting support if and when required.”

“Affirming the gender of transgender employees, with respect to inclusive policies and benefits, is an essential part of creating an inclusive environment. The resource guide from Orinam and Diversity Dialogues is an attempt to encourage HR professionals or business leaders to implement the guide and build inclusive practices towards the transgender+ community.” said Diversity Dialogues.

“As transgender+ persons we go through unnecessary scrutiny at interviews or otherwise. People sometimes think it is their right to ask deeply personal information about our genitalia, about our sex lives, about our transition surgeries. While all they should be caring about are our names and pronouns, treating us like regular individuals. The guide provides essentials about culture and acceptable behavior required for organizations to be transgender+ affirmative”, says Aditya Batavia, who works at an Indian retail conglomerate, and identifies as a man.

“As a transgender person and IT professional, I have had to refrain from potential job opportunities, faced micro-aggression, and been denied client-facing moments because of my identity/expression. The anxieties and fear of discrimination, difficulties in finding another job, and risk of losing livelihood prevent many of us transgender+ people from revealing our true gender and force us to live dual lives. Post- the NALSA and 377 verdicts it’s the right time for business community to pitch in and address discrimination faced by transgender+ community in their organizations as they now have moral and legal obligations to ensure a safe, inclusive and healthy workplace“, says Kanaga, a transwoman working as Domain consultant for a large Indian IT services provider

“Understanding issues related to transgender identity at work place (just as other issues related to diversity and inclusion) is a layered matter which will have to be revisited and updated from time to time and experience to experience. An open and embracing attitude and kindness is the key. I feel this document clearly shows the sincerity and hard work put into recognizing core issues related to transgender persons’  inclusion at workplaces and is very beautifully put together” says Shyam Balasubramanian, an assigned female at birth transgende, transmasculine person, who works as a DFT engineer in the semiconductor/chip design industry.

Most of the recommendations in this guide are relevant to all institutions: corporates, not-for-profit NGOs, government departments, public sector undertakings, or any other.  The guidance around acknowledging self-identification of transgender persons flows from the directives of the Supreme Court of India’s landmark 2014 ruling on transgender rights in National Legal Services Authority vs. Union of India and Ors.

The guide is dedicated to  the memory of Anannya Krishnan, a transgender woman in Chennai who was part of the Orinam collective. Despite a promising career as a pharmacologist in the  drug safety vertical of a Chennai business, Anannya faced numerous struggles to find a place to live, and have her family acknowledge her gender identity. These struggles proved too much to handle, and she took her life on Dec 30, 2017.

Diversity and inclusion is an intent and can be implemented by every organization, irrespective of nature of work, size, scale or anything else. The recommendations in this guide urge organizations to embark on this journey.

The guide may be downloaded here.

Also view: Employers’ Guide to Making Indian Workplaces LGBTIQ+ inclusive and Videos on LGBT+ inclusion at Indian workplaces

Follow Diversity Dialogues on Facebook , YouTube and instagram @dialoguesdiversity

Follow Orinam on Facebook and Twitter @chennaipride, and visit our website www.orinam.net

“I’m trying to build a culture of compassion, understanding, and of service. I’m trying to build a culture of questioning the status quo.”

Inspiring words by Shivanee Sen, a young teacher I recently met at the Tagore International School in Delhi, where Sen is mentoring the first student-led campaign in India to address LGBTQI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex) issues. In the U.S., Sen’s student group would be called a GSA (Gay Straight Alliance), but in India, it’s more like a revolution.

In just a little under six months, Sen has mobilized an energetic group of over 50 students to address issues of gender and sexuality in education and politics. What they have done in a short amount of time is more than what most established GSA’s in the U.S. do in years.

Called Breaking Barriers, Sen started her groundbreaking group during a conversation with her high school students about gender. Her initial goal was to inspire students to care about intersex individuals as well as the hijras, a community of transgender women, who are marginalized both socially and economically. Her initial goal was to inspire students to care about the hijras, a community of transgender women in India who are marginalized both socially and economically. What started as a discussion topic has turned into a national campaign that has gained the attention of the Indian media across the country.

What’s utterly remarkable is that Sen’s students have taken on work that is usually done by experienced activists. For example, last summer, all of her students trained with one of the leading feminist human rights groups in India, CREA, dedicating six weeks worth of weekends to learn about queer issues and activism. Each of these intense workshops lasted about three to four hours each and taught students the various nuances of Kinsey sexology, current LGBT terminology, and misconceptions about the queer community.

“Over the course of six weeks, not a single student missed a workshop,” Sen said.

After completing their training, students then led LGBTQI inclusion and awareness workshops for their entire high school faculty of teachers and fellow students at Tagore. The trainings have gone successfully, especially in terms of breaking down misconceptions. As part of their education and awareness work, the students hope to deliver these workshops in other schools across India.

Prior to the trainings, there were some teachers and students at Tagore who associated homosexuality with bestiality, disease, and immorality. Further, there were some who believed that homosexuality was a “Western” import.

A solidly middle class community, Tagore parents are mostly in the business sector. When students met with me to discuss their activist work, they shared a mix of reactions when I asked them how their own parents would feel if one of them were to come out.

“My parents would accept me,” one student said.

“My parents would wonder if [LGBTQI people] would have a bad influence,” another said.

The trainings that the students have created for their teachers and peers include an extensive PowerPoint with definitions, graphs, and resources. Students have also participated in a powerful video made by CREA; participated in the Delhi Pride March last November; and protested against the recent restoring of the Indian Penal Code Sec. 377, which criminalizes homosexuality.

The group also has an active Facebook page that is regularly updated by the students with encouraging postings about queer activism both in India and abroad. They even have their own student media team that is creating a feature documentary about their work, a sneak peak of which can be seen here. A possible student radio show is also in the works.

As a result of their work, the Global Educational and Leadership Foundation crowned the Breaking Barriers team with their National Youth Leaders title after an intensive search for high school students doing the best grassroots social work in India.

Doing grassroots work is not usual for middle class Indian students who, like many American middle class students, are sometimes very much removed from not just radical organizing but activist work in general.

Indeed, part of what motivated Sen to start this group was to move middle class Indian students away from “resume-building” and instead towards being committed to social justice from a genuine place of compassion and care.

Over a cup of chai in Delhi, Sen confessed, “Americans do more service than Indians do, and India needs its citizens to do a lot more service.” A Berkeley graduate with a psychology degree, Sen has her sights on a masters program at Teachers College, Columbia in New York.

“Along every metric, LGBTQI people suffer more in terms of harassment, assault, and suicide. Of course, I wanted my students to learn about these issues, especially since in India, no one talks about it,” she added.

During my own two-hour conversation with the students, it was my goal to learn directly from them what they were getting out of the experience of being a part of Breaking Barriers. Why did they join? What keeps them committed? I wanted to know.

Students shared that they felt most proud of changing the school climate in relation to talking about queer issues, albeit slowly.

“Our friends all know that if they are about to say something homophobic, that we will pounce on them,” one student said.

Even with a changing climate at this particular school, coming out in India is still a challenge for young people.

“There are no out students at the school, at least not publicly,” Sen said. “Our campaign has brought about a change in terms of people not wanting to say ‘that’s gay’ anymore. The campaign has made everyone more PC [politically correct].”

Being more PC is a start, but it’s not enough, and Tagore students know that. Understanding the root causes of homophobia and transphobia is the next step. Creating safe and inclusive schools with education and awareness workshops consistently and over the course of time is part of that work as well.

Creating a leadership path for the next group of Tagore students to lead workshops for upcoming classes is also essential. Indeed, in my time with them, I shared with students that their work needs to be passed on to those who are younger than they are.

“One day, you will graduate, and the next group of students will need to learn what you have all learned to continue the work you have started. In schools, this work is never-ending,” I said.

Even the principal, Madhulika Sen, is committed to continuing this project. Completely fearless in her approach to LGBTQI inclusion in schools, Sen told me that she never even thought about the repercussions from the parent body.

“We didn’t even think about the parents’ reactions. We just thought this was the right thing to do,” she said.

While it helps that Madhulika is Shivanee’s mother and that the school was founded in 1972 by Shivanee’s grandmother, Dr. Hari Sen, taking on queer issues in a school steeped in family history hardly seems like the usual route for a traditional school, especially in India.

I think that’s why I’m particularly rooting for Tagore. The family piece makes me cheer them on all the more. It’s not just that a passionate group of students are leading workshops and marching in the streets. It’s also that it’s a family affair that’s committed to social justice of all kinds, regardless of what some parents might think. It’s the right thing to do, as Madhulika, the principal, says.

If a school like Tagore—which is K-12 and in the heart of Delhi—can address these issues, then schools around the world can do this work too. As the younger Sen, Shivanee, says, it’s all about building a culture that questions the status quo.

This piece originally appeared on Feb 28, 2014, on the FeministTeacher blog with the title  Exclusive: First GSA in India Speaks to Feminist Teacher, Ileana Jiménez.