The latest glossary (henceforth official glossary) is a marked improvement over the previous version drafted by the government. It largely adopts the community-preferred glossary  developed by Queer Chennai Chronicles, Orinam and The News Minute, building on the work done by QCC-TNM media reference guide and Orinam’s terminology, and included by  Justice Anand Venkatesh in one of the interim orders of the Sushma (2021) case.

A key difference is in the official glossary’s replacement of ‘Thirunar’, an umbrella term for transgender persons, with ‘maruviya paalinar/ maariya paalinar’. We invite reader comments and feedback on other changes: please reach us at orinam.net@gmail.com.

Orinam congratulates Neelam on this initiative and looks forward to further episodes. View the videos below:

I know Priya from activist and social spaces in Delhi. She was exuberant, full of life and energy, inspiring fellow activist and friend. She was full of good cheer, happiness and had that unique ability to be on the visionary side of things, as well as the frontlines of activism.

Priya was sharply intelligent, defiant and provocative in her thinking. Sometimes her clothes reflected some of this defiance too. She was glamorous, scintillating and bold in her appearance.

Priya was not one to be cowed down by peer pressure and social taboos. She had the personal courage and conviction to live a life on her own terms.

Her sudden death is a deep loss to the legal and activist fraternity in South Asia and the world at large. I mourn her death and seek solace in her words published recently in Ceylon Today on 2015-09-16.

“As provided for in constitutional norms, the country must acknowledge the right to dignity, due process and equal protection to all its citizens, and therefore the State cannot exclude the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) community from services provided by State institutions, lawyer Priya Thangarajah said.”

Ed:  We invite friends of Priya Thangarajah to share their memories as replies to this post. See more tributes on Kafila and Ground Views.

We also refer readers to Priya’s LASSNET piece, co-authored with Ponni Arasu, titled Queer Women and the law in India: The writ of Habeas Corpus. The essay takes a critically important look at laws other than Section 377 that have implications for queer women in India.

Sir,

I watched “I”.

I stand here in Tamil Nadu, where religious fundamentalist forces have ensured that a creative piece of work has been retracted and its author gone into exile, where – on grounds that it hurt religious sentiments – “The Da Vinci Code” was banned, and “Viswaroopam” was temporarily banned and went on to get a lot of publicity, becoming a high grosser.

I stand here today and look at your work. Everyone knows that a ‘Shankar film’ caters to the actor’s hunger for versatility in a role, the producer’s fetish for money, the mad worship of a rogue masquerading as a hero, or  the blatant misogyny underlying the blind craze among fans.

However, you would have known that most critics, barring a predictable few, have found the film disappointing. While they have ridiculed your script and your screenplay, it seems to be beyond them to criticise your ridiculing the ‘nine’* (trans) character in your movie. I am amazed at the wonders of freedom of expression exercised in the making of this particular work. You are, after all, the epic director! You are free to depict us, trans* people as sex freaks, sociopaths, second class citizens, or in any way you want to. I’m sure you would have liked it when one of them took a leaf out of your book and wrote, ‘there’s another villain, a “nine”thara.’

Beyond your magnificent ambition, ostentatious sets,  striking actors, and your grand budget, I would like to reach out to your large and imposing mind. If the appalling denigration of transwomen in “Shivaji” (when Vivek says ‘It has just come back from surgery,’ and our super star moves away, disgusted) was at one level, you have surpassed yourself by taking transphobia to a whole new level in “I”.

This insignificant little girl would like to speak a few words with you about this.

Just ten minutes into the film, Vikram, the epitome of on-screen machismo, stares at the villain and says ‘dei, potta’. I was not surprised. Other ‘pottai-s** like me and I are used to such slander on screen. When Vinoth, director of the socially-sensitive film “SathurangaVettai”, casually uses the word ‘pottai’ as an abuse, and critics ruling this part of the world support him, can we expect any less from you?

Shankar, how are we, the pottais of the world, any less dignified than your masculine ideal? Is that ideal bigger than our realization that our being is filled with femininity, and we yearn to live the truth of our gender? Is your ideal much bigger than the courage to be honest and leave the safety of our home, and the comfort of our families? Is your ideal nobler than us losing our basic rights as citizens, when we run away and become refugees, second-class citizens, in our own country? Is it more magnificent than the scorching pyre of starting life afresh as a woman, without economic or social support? Is it any grander than us bearing with fortitude, the violence of your masculine ideal on our bodies every day of our lives? Or, Shankar, do you simply think we do not feel at all? That we cannot realize our dignity is assaulted?

It’s fine that you wanted five villains. I understand your script required all of them to be from the film industry. But then, you wanted one villain among them to be plush and grand and at the same time comical. I am appalled that you chose to have a transwoman as that villain.

Your transwoman character is a stylist. Just so that you wanted it to be authentic you cast Ojas Rajani – Aishwarya Rai’s stylist in “Enthiran” (I wonder if she knew what she was doing; if you told her how transphobic her character is in the movie). Even while she is introduced as the top stylist by the ciswoman who plays the leading lady, why do the hero and the friend look down on this transwoman? You must know that there are numerous examples of transwomen who have risen to great heights, battling these very same struggles. Do you wish to make the statement that despite our rising to great heights, the fact that we are trans* is reason enough to look down on us? To denigrate us? When you see fans update their vocabulary to use the name of a popular film that strove to bring dignity to the transgender community (I am referring to the film “Kanchanaa” which, surprisingly, against its intention, has lent its title to be used by people to tease us these days), why would you start with that popular song sung by a travelling group of transwomen singer-dancers, “oororam puliyamaram”? Unfailing your ignoble intention, the audience erupted with laughter at this mean usage of the song. Would you have heard the wail of our mothers, who are, just like your “Muthalvan” Pugazh’s mother, in anguish?

Your leading man sees your leading lady only in posters and on the silver screen, falls in love with her – true and honest – and yet manages to not have any sexual desires at all. And your leading lady loves him in return, thanks to guilt and sympathy. When this is okay, how is it that the love of a transwoman is so worthless that it disgusts not just the leading man, but also the lady, and the friend, and the faraway ad filmmaker? This disgust is a tool you have employed to vilify the character in your script, isn’t it? When you wanted to show her as a rich transwoman, your camera lens showed her in a very beautiful light. Immediately after her love is brushed aside as being worthy of scorn, your camera shows her as a despicable person. Shankar, let me tell you, your camera does not just show a despicable Ojas, it shows a despicable you!

You know, right up to this scene I wanted to be civil and polite in expressing my angst. Just when you showed us that Ojas occupied Room No. 9, I lost it. You must know that I have been called ‘nine’ all my life in school. I was poked and pierced on all sides, torn apart, left alone and to nothing but tears, with this number. I still have this number now, thrown at me on the streets. I also have the arsenal of swear words I have picked up on the way, and I would not hesitate to throw back at you. But then, the critics of the world (special mention, Cable Shankar) will take it upon themselves to give me lessons in cultured conversation. I do not want that; so I will continue to be polite.

While the censor board made you place the disclaimer, ‘No animals were harmed during the making of this film’, it turned a blind eye to the blatant discrimination of sexual and gender minorities, and people with physical disabilities – granting you the freedom to hurt and offend these sections of the population. What is the use of questioning the faults in your work without condemning the kindness of the CBFC?

Let’s turn to your leading actor Vikram. He has risen to great heights after much effort and hard work, but he is no exception to this insensitivity – the film that gave him his big break, Bala’s “Sethu”, has him say ‘de, you are going to become an ajak one day, doing this’. His inspiration – the rationalist, modernist, liberal – Kamal Haasan has, after all, used ‘pottai’ with such recklessness, and has famously vilified transwomen and homosexuals in his film ‘Vettayaadu Vilayaadu’. This insensitivity is common to every actor here.

But still, if it will reach, I’d like to say one thing to you – and all actors, comedians and directors. The men of this world are not your only audience – those men who worship that abusive, insensitive, patriarchal, masculine ideal that denigrates people who are courageous enough to live the truth. Your work is also watched by those very same people you denigrate, alienate and laugh at. We have TVs in our homes. We watch your films. We laugh, we enjoy. We also feel. We can also rise in fury when our dignity is assaulted.

* Nine: “ombOdu”, a derogatory Tamil term for transgender and other gender-nonconforming people.

** poTTai: another derogatory Tamil word, loosely translated as “sissy” and used  against gender non-conforming and transgender people, but also used in some communities as a non-derogatory reference to girls and women.

See original letter in Tamil by Smiley here.

It was 2011, my third year of college. I wasn’t struggling with my identity or anything, but I was going through a phase where I felt I was not being loved. I felt depressed to the point of being suicidal almost every week, and I had come out to a couple of friends in college by then. Every time I felt incredibly depressed, I used coming out as a vent to talk about my issues with someone. And it helped me feel better.

At one point, I decided someone from my family should know. It was going to be my mom, sister or my dad. One of them, first. I wasn’t sure about telling my sister then, because she was in college, and my friends suggested it might be too young for her to know about my sexuality then. I also ruled out telling my mom because, at that point, I didn’t want her to be sad about her son being gay. I was already depressed, and wouldn’t have been able to take it if she had struggled to come to terms with it too.

It had to be dad for a couple of reasons. My dad was a very well-read man. He had never been to college, but he spent most of his nights devouring books. I’d sleep off at 10 PM, but he’d stay up till midnight reading everyday. We’ve never watched cricket together, we’ve never gone to movies together, but he’s always talked about history (Soviet Russia!), about people we now consider icons and the like. I just believed dad would understand sexuality better than my mom, hoping he’d have read about it somewhere. While there was a good enough chance that he may have never heard about queer people, my gut feeling was that he’d come to terms with it pretty quickly because he’d surely read enough about people and cultures across the world, and as he’d always taken a specific interest in reading up on these topics.

Although I tend to narrate my coming out experience as something that happened over a couple of minutes, I remember asking dad directly how liberal he thought he was, a few months earlier. He laughed, trying to understand why I was asking that question when we were bored out for two hours waiting to meet the doctor on a random day. I went on to ask him some really irrelevant questions to get an idea of how accepting he would be of my orientation, and I vaguely remember he passed the test, though I don’t exactly remember what I asked him to find that out.

So one day in August, I called up dad and told him I was coming over for the weekend, and that I wanted to talk to him about something important. He asked me for details, I said I wanted to talk in person over the weekend, and asked him to make sure he was available. I went home that weekend, but couldn’t muster the courage to come out. I postponed telling him.

One or two or three weeks later, I went home again. Sunday morning, we were watching TV, and my mom came over and asked me what it was that I wanted to talk to dad about. I shrugged it, off saying there was nothing important, and told her I almost forgot what I wanted to discuss. It was hard for me to lie and hide things from my mom, but I really wanted to tell dad first.

A little later, dad came over and asked me the same question. My grand plan for coming out was to slyly ask him to take me shopping for shoes, but instead take him somewhere else once we’d left home and tell him everything he needed to know.

A few minutes later, I was on his bike and I told him I really didn’t care about shoes, and that I just wanted to talk in some secluded location where no one could hear us. In retrospect, I find it funny that I was so scared about some random stranger finding out I was gay when I was talking to my dad, but three years ago, I was definitely afraid.

So, he took me to a park. And I had my Kindle with me. I had bought it a few months earlier, specifically to read the It Gets Better book. It had stories of LGBTQ people from across the world, and I was scared to read the hard copy in hostel, so I actually ordered the Kindle just so that I could read the book without anyone knowing it. When I was with dad, I had also loaded the Kindle with PDFs of web pages converted from Orinam.net that had resources for friends and parents.

So we sat in the park. I made sure no one was around, and proceeded to tell him. It was all the more tough for me because I had to come out in Tamil. So far, when I talked to friends in college about sexuality, it was very convenient for me because I could get away with saying I’m gay, and I’m attracted to men and a trillion other things in English. How do you actually tell your dad that, in Tamil? Not to sound elitist – just that I haven’t had enough conversations about sexuality in Tamil, and I haven’t read as much about sexuality in Tamil although I’d have liked to.

But I was prepared, though. I had also gobbled up substantial information in Tamil (from places like Orinam.net) and I knew same sex attraction was ஒருபாலீர்ப்பு. I knew the right terms, and I proceeded to tell him my பாலீர்ப்பு was different. I told him எனக்கு பொண்ணுங்க மேல ஒன்னுமே தோணாது “I have no feelings towards women”. To be honest – I was pretty nervous. I did not shiver – but I was definitely sweating. His face turned weird. I told him some of my friends knew and they had always listened to me and stood by me every time I was depressed. I told him there’s no concrete research to prove why people are gay – it could be genetic, it could be environmental. This triggered him to tell me “medical treatment எடுத்துக்கலாம்” (“take medical treatment”) in the belief it would make me straight. I told him this in return: அவ்வளோ easy நீயும் என்னை மாதிரி மாறிடலாமே (” if it were so easy, you could become gay”). And then we talked for about half an hour, and I pushed him to read resources for LGBT parents on my Kindle. He said he was not in a position to read those right then, and that he was happy I read so much.

We didn’t talk much once we came home and I was leaving back to college at night. He just told me to stay safe. Only a day had passed, and he was coming to terms with what I told him and I could totally understand. It was a bit too much to get him to understand everything quickly (my friends were pretty quick), but I was sure we would get there. The next time I came home and I raised a topic that was close to these issues, I always spotted a tinge of sadness in his face. It has been three years now, and things have changed drastically. A couple of months ago, I saw him sharing pro-gay stuff on Facebook. He knew I attended the Pride March, he knew I went to the Chennai International Queer Film Festival, and he’s getting very comfortable about talking about my sexuality with me.

When I was depressed, I went for a counselling session and was told that I had done the right thing by disclosing my orientation to my parents in college, and I’m so glad I did it then. I can see things falling in place right now: I’m getting out of my bouts of loneliness and depression, attending queer events, and generally feeling a lot better in comparison to that day three years ago when I struggled to tell my dad everything he needed to know about me.

We gather from one of the organizers that participants included LGBT people and allies from Assam, Manipur and Meghalaya, West Bengal and Delhi.

While no one from the southern part of India appears to have been present, we were delighted to see a placard (photo below) with the words “Hues may vary, but humanity does not”. This line, translated from the original வண்ணங்கள் வேற்றுமைப் பட்டால் – அதில் மானுடர் வேற்றுமை இல்லை,  is by Tamil poet, social reformer and freedom fighter Mahakavi Subramanya Bharathi (1882-1921) who campaigned vigorously against the caste system and for the liberation of women. It is also, incidentally, the tagline of Orinam, and has been one of the rallying calls of Chennai Rainbow Pride since its inception in 2009.

Photographs from Guwahati Pride may be viewed at http://photos.orinam.net/tagged/GuwahatiPride. Thanks to Mili Dutta and Randoni Lairikyengbam for sharing these.

Mainstream media coverage includes pieces in the Times of Assam by Partha Prawal Goswami and a front page story in  The Telegraph by Rajiv Konwar.

To help address this gap, Vanavil Foundation, a transgender collective in Tamil Nadu, organized the first of a three-part writing workshop in Chennai for members of the LGBT  communities. The workshop was  held on July 21 and 22, 2012, at the All India Catholic University Federation (AICUF) premises in Nungambakkam, Chennai. The event was supported by Orinam and the Tamil Nadu Progressive Writers’ and Artists’ Association.

Twenty seven people people participated in this workshop, which marked the beginning of a several-months long writing process. Participants included those from community groups such as 4G Cluster, Chennai Dost, Erode Aravani Sangam, LesBiT (Bangalore), Nirangal, Orinam, Sahodaran (units 1 and 2), Sangama, SWAM, The Shakti Resource Center, TAI and Thozhi; and some registering as individuals.Vanavil Foundation has planned to support the participants with mentorship provided by Tamil writers and to bring out the results of this process in book form. The two-day workshop was a mixture of talks, sharing, games and exercises.

The workshop began with an introduction by Priya Babu, a well-known aravani activist and writer, also a member of the Managing Committee of Vanavil Foundation. She highlighted the thinking behind planning the workshop – the need for getting our voices out, writing as a therapeutic exercise, to put down in writing our own histories, etc. Mr. Tamilselvan from TPWAA spoke about the power of language to shape thinking and culture. He also emphasized the importance of training and practice and said that workshops such as these could provide exactly that.

In the small ice-breaker exercise that followed, the participants were asked to list out the number of activities that they think could be done in three minutes. Once the list was finalized, they were asked to write a paragraph each in three minutes incorporating at least three items from the list. This activity proved to be a good, humourous ice-breaker.

Mr Saidai J spoke about questions of who writes for whom and how. Interspersing his talk with comical anecdotes, he addressed the need to be clear about whom we are writing for and for what purpose. Aniruddhan Vasudevan shared his experiences as a writer from within the LGBT community in Chennai.

The afternoon session began with a game, facilitated by Srijith Sundaram, a theatre activist, which broke the participants out of stupor. They were then asked to organize themselves into small groups of four or five and were each given a topic to think about pertaining to the issues faced by the identities in the LGBT spectrum. For instance, one group worked on making a list of issues relevant to gay men; another group on issues faced by lesbian women; and so on and so forth. After spending considerable time on making their lists, representatives from each group shared their list and explained their process. At the end of the process, the participants saw that a remarkable number of the issues they had listed out could be grouped under comprehensive topics such as “LGBT and the law,” “Life Story/ Autobiography,” “Social Issues,” etc.

At the beginning of the workshop, the participants had been given a set of written material collated from writings by members of the LGBT community, and allies. At the end of the first day’s workshop, they were asked to read through the material and share the next day about at least one of the pieces.

The second day of the workshop began with a game/ activity facilitated by Aniruddhan Vasudevan. In this well-known workshop game, he called out specific gender and sexual identities and their socio-economic backgrounds and the participants made their one call as to whether the particular identity was a disenfranchised one or not. They then accounted for their judgment. After this exercise, some of he participants shared about their readings from the selected written material provided to them.

A bulk of the second day was spent in a writing exercise. The facilitators of the workshop had organized previous day’s lists into comprehensive topics and provided the groups with smaller lists to choose from. Each participant chose a topic to write from and spent the next hour and a half writing.

In the post-lunch session, each participant shared what they had written. Not only had they chosen different issues to focus on, they had also each chosen different forms of writing – poetry, essay, self-narrative, short-fiction, etc. At the end of each sharing, they also made specific requests for guidance and support. These could be in the form of mentorship as well as assistance in the form of providing resources such as books.Mr Arumugam of TNPWAA gave a consolidated feedback about the exercise and urged the participants to cultivate the habit of reading a lot. Leena Manimekalai, well known poet and writer, was a surprise guest at this event. She spoke about the power of writing to ensure truths never go unsaid. Sharing her experiences as a woman writer who had to fight to make language pliable for her use, she said that it is only with a constant engagement with language that we can make it our own, suitable for our purposes. Manu from Vanavil Foundation thanked everyone for their participation and involvement.

The workshop ended with a commitment on part of Vanavil Foundation to keep the momentum going by checking in regularly with the participants on the progress of their writing work. Moreover, Vanavil has also taken the initiative to collate the reading resources needed by the participants. On 4 August 2012, one group of participants met at the office of Sahodaran to receive further reading material and to discuss what they were working on.

For more information, contact Vanavil Foundation:

• phone Manu at +91 97890 23157 or Thenmozhi at +91 98414 45583
• email vanaviltg@gmail.com
• visit http://vanaviltg.blogspot.com