Like most women, my sexuality is somewhat fluid and my identity has changed over the years: as a teenager and early on in my transition I defined myself as bisexual, then as a lesbian, writes Meenakshi
I had been in India for almost a year before ever encountering any space for queer people, aside from running into the occasionalĀ hijraĀ on a train or just out and about. To give a little bit of context:Ā I was a 21-year old college student from the US whoād wandered from Bhubaneswar to Trivandrum and then Palakkad doing research on handloom, with few social skills, long bouts of isolation, and plenty of issues with her family.Ā Iād also only transitioned a few years before, and after spending much of the preceding time fighting with my mother (whoās a born-again Christian and also voted for Trump), left the US and stayed in India because apparently I passed better here. I also had my reasons otherwise, and always had a disdain for being in the US.
In the midst of all of this, another woman around my age found me on a site for queer women and we began talking. She was in Bangalore, and somehow the presence of a circle of queer women sounded appealing for a young trans woman who was still questioning her sexuality but realising nonetheless that she was interested in women romantically. Eventually I decided to come to Bangalore, and we talked of meeting.
I have a lot of social anxiety, and at the time it was much worse than it is now. Iād also never been to a bar before, and didnāt have a lot of experience with the queer community. Sheād suggested I come to a pub on Lavelle road, where there were other queer women present ā mostly middle and upper class women from urban backgrounds. I agreed to go, it went okay, and I decided to come the following week.
Unlike the first time, my friend wasnāt there. The waiter still must have recognised me or something and directed me to a table with several women Iād never met and maybe one or two who looked vaguely familiar from the week before. And then one woman in particular starts shouting at the waiter that āWe donāt know her! Who is she?!ā . . . I felt awkward and sat elsewhere until my acquaintance ended up coming.
I ended up attending these weekly meetings for several months, never feeling entirely comfortable but it was the only space I had to meet other queer women. This came to an end when the same woman basically told me one night not to come back as I āmade people uncomfortable.ā She then had the nerve to say that āitās not about your genderā even though that was clearly a factor, if not the only one.
I didnāt have a space to meet people like me, especially not of my own ageāthat, I think is the important thing to take away from these experiences which left me floating around to various queer spaces where I didnāt entirely fit in. I found these to be mostly dominated by queer men, and even events like Pride are not entirely different.
Like most women, my sexuality is somewhat fluid and my identity has changed over the years: as a teenager and early on in my transition I defined myself as bisexual, then as a lesbian. After finding myself interested in boys as an adolescent, my sexuality started to shift after I started transitioning at the age of 18. I was simply able to let go of preconceived notions about my sexuality. What I will say here is that this should rubbish any of those claims about āmasculineā women and hormones and lesbianism, for if hormones had any effect in this sense then it was oestrogen that made me into a lesbian (kindly forward this to the next delusional professor who gripes about female students wearing jeans). When I came to India, I felt more strongly attracted to women than before. It took me a long time to be okay with my sexuality, though Iām not going to assume that itās a completely fixed identity.Ā What I will say is that Iāve not really been romantically or sexually drawn to a man in years (and am not currently), but Iām not going to assume things will always be the same (nor will they necessarily change much either). I simply donāt want to be with a man, though I wonāt go so far to say that I never find any of them attractive.
My hangups on gender and sexuality were actually pretty straightforward: how could I, as a woman, be attracted to other women? Why bother transitioning at all when Iām more interested in being with a woman than a man? Is this a āhangoverā of masculinity? That took years to get over, and it certainly wasnāt helped by the fact that my limited interactions with the hijra community really brought out these questions. While I donāt fit into the hijra culture for a number of reasons, one of the main ones is that as a queer woman and a feminist Iām automatically an outsider to such spaces. Iāve actually found an even stricter form of heteronormativity within many trans spaces than outside of it. I donāt need a man to validate my identity as a woman, and moreover I donāt bloody want one right now anyway. Maybe I never will. Whatever the case may be, this must be respected.
This is not something thatās understood amongst everyone in the trans community. I was told by a trans sex worker in Chennai that I āwasnāt āa transgenderāā because Iām attracted to women (she seriously couldnāt wrap her head around the idea and went on and on about that), I was asked by an older hijra in Bangalore whether I had a husband and then asked ādonāt you like fucking?ā when I told I didnāt. This is not an issue of class or education, though. A rather vocal trans activist from Hyderabad even told me that sheād ānever heard of such a thing as a trans lesbianā when told that I was one. To be fair, this was a bit more ignorant before her transition, a few years back and had also once commented on my breast size in public. Another, more prominent, trans activist unfriended me on Facebook around the time she found out I was a lesbian. Itās disappointing to learn how oblivious people can be, especially when the people in question should know better. Why is my sexuality such a problem to these people, and how does it matter anyway when I was unaware of it when I transitioned?
One could talk all day of femme invisibility and still miss the point that this also affects trans women, though of course more butch trans women are also erased. Just because Iām a woman who presents in a feminine manner (or am I really non-binary, since ultimately gender is a construct and oneās presentation a manipulation of certain cues?) does not mean that I want or desire a man.Ā This is obviously not an issue limited to trans women, as any cis femme will tell you. āI never thought you were into women?ā and āyou donāt look like a lesbianāĀ are two examples of what myself and umpteen other women have had to put up with hearing even from people who ought to know better. Even a few gay men have stared blankly in disbelief when Iāve told them this. Sometimes it doesnāt register, and they say illogical things anyway. āHIV infection rates are high, play it safe and use a condomā . . . as someone that doesnāt do penetrative sex at all, then what the fuck am I supposed to do with a condom?!
Thereās really not much in the way of spaces for queer trans women in India , and even then itās hard to say that there would be a coherent community as such. Most spaces for queer women also specifically exclude trans women, making it difficult to meet other queer women. There are exceptions (like ASQ in Bengaluru), but the general rule is that most LBT organisations do not welcome trans women ā not Sappho, not many of the others. Why? Because (a) I donāt exist and (b) I apparently benefit from male privilege (despite never having lived any of my adult life as a man). Itās not like I get much out of trans spaces either, given the focus on hetero-patriarchal conceptions of femininity and indeed the focus on performing such for the male gaze. Though to be more to the point about this, thereās just not a lot of commonality between us.
This isnāt to say I have a lot in common with queer women generally, because indeed there have been spaces that I didnāt fit into: when everyoneās ten years older than you and has a corporate job, then conversations can be a bit awkward if they even come at all. Even aside from the hostility that I faced at one point, Iām not sure how much I really fit into a group like WHaQ anyway.
Even if I found other queer trans women, Iām not sure that weād have a lot in common anyway. Most of them that I have met were/are married, having lived at least some of their lives as a heterosexual man. I really cannot relate to that experience, or indeed to the experience of having a ānormalā or stable career professionally. Nor can I really relate to these stories of family acceptance or the desire to change to their opinions, as someone who didnāt care about their denouncements and hasnāt spoken to her mother since 2010.Ā All trans experiences are different though, and I really donāt see the point in creating such dichotomies or distinctions except when addressing specific issues or past traumas. I also donāt get along with people well anyway, so itās exceptionally difficult to not find myself in isolation. Iām not going to suggest that this is only the result of my being a lesbian trans woman.
I donāt wish to make this only about myself, as Iām kind of an anomaly in the sense that I transitioned socially as a teenager and ended up in India only a few years after that ā I had/have my reasons for being here (which include passing, family drama, a friend circle in India but not really the US, and several personal reasons which may not be appropriate to elaborate on here). Furthermore, I seem to have a certain set of mental health issues to deal with as well, which are mostly unrelated to being a trans woman (but maybe they arenāt). My experience is solely my own and I do not wish to pretend that my experiences are universal. Indeed, there are many elements of privilege and the resulting social status which I have been afforded.
This story first appeared on Gaysi.com, a website for the desi gay community.