IT’S a matter of survival, one Indian transgender woman explains: never make eye contact with anyone potentially threatening. Yet in the warren of alleys, workshops and tenements that is Old Delhi, Mallika, with a defiant gleam, is having none of it. Until recently neighbours used to mock her and denounce her as a danger to their children. With police connivance, they pressured her to leave. But then SPACE, an NGO working with transgender people, took up her cause. It taught Mallika her rights, and engaged the whole area in discussions, warning neighbours as well as the police that discrimination against trans or “third gender” people was illegal, and that prosecutions and fines would follow. Now, Mallika says, her street has stopped mocking her, and she can go about “full of attitude”. “It’s them who don’t dare look at me,” she boasts.
There are 9m-9.5m transgender people in Asia and the Pacific, according to an estimate by Sam Winter of Curtin University in Australia, equivalent to 0.3% of the population. Others say the figure could be much higher. In some countries, in some respects, their life is getting better. Courts or governments...Continue reading
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