When Manoj, registered female at birth, told his family that he felt like a man and loved a woman, they almost killed him. He was 17 years old.
His parents refused to accept him, tied his hands and feet, brutally beat him, and locked him in a corner of the house.
His father threatened to kill him.
“The violence was beyond what I had imagined,” he says.
“I thought that whatever my truth was, it would be accepted; after all, this was my family. But my parents were willing to kill me for their honor.”
For a woman in rural India, asserting her right to identify as a trans man could lead to strong reprisals.
Manoj says he was taken from a village school in one of India’s poorest states, Bihar in the north, and forcibly married off to a man twice his age.
“I even contemplated taking my own life, but my girlfriend supported me at all times. Thanks to the fact that she did not give up, I am alive and we are together,” he recounts.
Now 22 years old and in hiding in a big city for the past year, Manoj and his girlfriend, Rashmi, are anxiously awaiting the Supreme Court’s verdict on their petition for the legal right to marry.
India decriminalized same-sex sex in 2018, but same-sex marriages are still not recognised.
The Supreme Court heard 21 petitions for legalization this year and a ruling is expected soon.
Although some have advocated for the right to marry as a matter of equality, Manoj and Rashmi’s petition, filed along with two other couples and four feminist LGBTQ+ rights activists, claims that marriage is a way out of brutal physical violence. and mental illness inflicted on them by their own families.
“Legal recognition of our relationship is the only way out of this life of fear,” says Manoj.
India has half a million transgender people, according to the last census in 2011, a number that activists believe is far below the reality.
In 2014, the Supreme Court ruled that trans people be recognized as the third gender.
Five years later, India passed a law banning discrimination in education, employment, and health care, and criminalizing crimes against trans people, including physical, sexual, emotional, and financial abuse.
But family violence is a complex challenge.
domestic violence
Most laws and society view the family by blood, marriage or adoption as the safest space for people, says Mumbai-based feminist lawyer Veena Gowda.
“Family violence is not unknown to any of us, whether it is against our wife, children or queer trans people. But it is consciously made invisible because to see it and to recognize it would be to question the very institution of ‘family'”, she explains.
Gowda was part of a panel made up of a retired judge, lawyers, academics, activists and a government social worker who heard detailed testimony of family violence faced by 31 LGBTQ+ people in a closed-door hearing.
Their findings were published in April this year in a report titled Apno ka bahut lagta hai (“Ours hurt the most”) which recommended that LGBTQ+ people have the right to choose their own family.
“Seeing the nature of the violence they face, denying them their own family free from violence is tantamount to denying them their own right to life and dignity,” says Gowda.
“The right to marry would be a way to create this new family and redefine it.”
A few months into their forced marriage, Manoj tried to get back together with Rashmi, but was tracked down by her “husband” who threatened to sexually assault them both.
They escaped to the nearest train station and boarded the first train out, but he says his family found them and took them home to receive another round of beatings.
“They forced him to sign a ‘suicide letter’ blaming me for his death,” Rashmi recalls.
Manoj’s resistance led to his being locked up again and his cell phone taken away.
Rashmi contacted an LGBT feminist support group and the local police women’s cell and they were able to get protection and escape from Manoj’s family home.
They moved to a government transgender shelter, but had to leave early because Rashmi is not a transgender person.
escape and survival
Manoj was also able to divorce.
But the support systems that help them escape violent families and build a new life are few.
Koyel Ghosh, who uses “they” as a personal pronoun, runs Sappho for Equality, the first lesbian, bisexual and transmasculine rights collective in eastern India that began its work two decades ago.
She vividly remembers the day in 2020 when she received a call to the helpline about a couple who had run away to a city in eastern India and had to sleep on the streets for seven nights.
“We rented a space and put them there so they would have a temporary shelter for three months and could focus on getting a job, since that is the only way they can build a new life,” says Koyel.
Aside from social stigma, the threat of violence at home, interrupted education, and forced marriages, many transgender people also struggle to find stable employment.
India’s latest census showed that the literacy rate for this group, at 49.76%, is much lower than the country’s 74.04%.
sexual exploitation
According to a survey of 900 transgender people in Delhi and Uttar Pradesh conducted by the National Human Rights Commission in 2017, 96% were denied work or forced to beg or do sex work.
Saphho for Equality has created a shelter to help runaway couples rebuild their lives: 35 couples have been housed there in the last two years.
It is hard work.
Koyel receives three to five distress calls a day and regularly communicates with a support network of attorneys to find solutions.
“I’ve received death threats, I’ve faced crowds in the villages, hostility in the police stations because I’m also open with my queer identity and they just can’t deal with it,” says Koyel.
When Koyel found Asif, a trans man, and his girlfriend, Samina, they were at the local police station in a village in eastern India.
Samina alleges that the officers called her a eunuch and said they should have died instead of going public with their relationship.
Childhood friends turned lovers, they had run away from their families twice before, but were forced to return.
This was their last chance to escape and they needed support.
“Only when Koyel arrived did the harassment by the police stop. A superior officer reprimanded his subordinates for their prejudices and ignorance of the laws as public servants,” explains Samina.
prejudice and ignorance
Now living safely in a big city, the couple are co-petitioners with Manoj and Rashmi in the Supreme Court.
“We are happy. But we need that piece of paper, a marriage certificate, to deter our families and community. We are afraid of sanctions and the police,” says Asif.
“If the Supreme Court doesn’t help us, we may have to die. We will never be accepted as we are, we will keep on running, always afraid of being separated,” he says.
The names of the petitioners have been changed to protect their identities.
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BBC-NEWS-SRC: https://www.bbc.com/mundo/articles/c3g1jeeel44o, IMPORTING DATE: 2023-08-02 08:10:05
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