Identity, safety, and the transgender experience in India

Neysara Transcript

Sabrina Merage Naim
From Evoke Media I'm Sabrina Merage Naim. With me is Kassia Binkowski, and this is Breaking Glass, a series of conversations with women around the world who are shattering glass ceilings and challenging social norms. They are audacious, gutsy, and their stories are echoed across borders and generations in a rallying cry that is changing the narrative for women everywhere. Today's conversation takes us to Amsterdam, but largely takes place in India, where we're speaking with Neysara. Neysara is the founder of Transgender India, an online portal which empowers thousands of transgender people across India with awareness and knowledge to make informed choices and find community. She also started the first ever trans-specific online discussion forum in India called Talk, which allows trans people around the country to question and discuss issues about gender, life, career and transition.

Kassia Binkowski
Sabrina, this conversation is sensitive and inspiring. And it's just another example of a guest that opens our eyes to an experience, which to be honest, we didn't know very much about. Neysara is incredibly brave and vulnerable with us today, she walks us through her own experience transitioning, the personal and professional ramifications of that decision that she's endured over the years, and what she's doing to advocate for transgender rights across India.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Kassia, we learned so much in this conversation and are reminded of just how wildly diverse the stories and experiences are of individuals around the world who are fighting for gender equity. Take a listen. Neysara, thank you so much for joining us today, we're really interested in diving into a conversation that will touch on both personal issues and your journey, but also really what's impacting a whole community in India, and even around the world. So thank you for being with us.

Neysara
Thank you very much, Sabrina, for having me here. I'm excited to be in the show.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Absolutely. So I want to start with your story at the moment you recognized with complete conviction that you were not living in the gender that was right for you. That you did not identify as a boy or a man, take us back to that moment. What did that feel like?

Neysara
Yeah, this was very long back when I was a child. And I always knew that the world that I was born into does not... has got something wrong about me. And I didn't know what was it and I was more close to my female cousins. And I didn't want to play much with my male cousins. And though I liked them, I really like my male cousins as well, I love them and all that. But I was not interested in the typical games that these other main cousins of mine were interested in. So, this was very early, maybe I was four or five by that time. But I didn't know any better. I only knew that I am comfortable around women. But when I was around 10, I was watching this show that was reporting about strange things in the world. I was a very curious child. So I was watching this television. And then one of the items they had was this person who was becoming a woman from a man. And this was a shock. I mean, this was presented very, in today's terms very crass and very crudely. But for me as a child, it was, "yes, that's what I am". That's completely what I want to become when I grew up. So as I grew up, I learned more about transition. There was very little resources available then back then. As a child, you could only see transgender people on the street, and these usually are the victims of society. They have been pushed, they have been outcasted. That's the only role models that I could find then. But then that also scared me, made me scared of, "is that what I want to become"?

Sabrina Merage Naim
Can you paint a picture for us a little bit more around your childhood? What part of India where did you grow up? Did you have siblings? You talk about your cousins, but it sounds like from such an early age, you recognized that there was something different about you, but you didn't have any sort of insight into what that really was. Even at ten, which is still a young child, you had a clearer view of "this is what I want" without any understanding of what some of the broader implications societally, culturally or familialy would be. Just paint us a little bit of a picture of what kind of upbringing did you have? Talk about your family, talk about where you're from.

Neysara
I was born in south of India, in a place called Mangalore. It's a small town, I mean, small city. I had two sisters, and a brother, and they were elder to me, I was the last one. My family was not that well-to-do. But it was a close knit community that I was living in. We had a huge family. Uncles, aunts, and everyone living together, and everyone had a say in your life. So it was a close knit community, that's where I was born. But what I want to stress here is that I was born to sestina parents, heterosexual parents, and no one in my family that I or my parents knew had gender dysphoria, or transgenderism, or whatever you call it. So this is a point that drives home that it can happen to anyone's child. Anyone's child can be transgender. It's not a gene that makes us transgender. So maybe there is a biological underpinning, but it's not hereditary, or it's not something that will only happen to certain class of people. No, it's just happens. It's just a variation in the nature and it can happen anytime, to anyone.

Kassia Binkowski
So I want to reiterate something that you opened this conversation with, you said right away that you were very young when you realized the world didn't get something right about you. Which is so different from saying, "there wasn't something right about me, there was something wrong with me", which I think is an assumption, a stereotype that so much of society places on the transgender community. I think it's so eloquent how you pointed that out right away, that growing up, you realized the world had something wrong about you. So I just want to acknowledge that. Were their experiences over the course of your childhood that really shaped your own sense of identity, your own self awareness?

Neysara
My sense of identity, I would say, was very intrinsic to me. Other than few psychological characteristics that I get from my parents. Very early in my childhood height, I learned to hide it. I learned that this world is not safe for a child like me to live in. So I have to hide a part of me.

Kassia Binkowski
Did you experience that firsthand in any way? Or was that just an observation you were making as a as a child about the world?

Neysara
Yeah, I experienced it in my family. As I told you before, I would play more with my female cousins. So there would be family members who would say to my parents in front of me, "why is your child playing with girls and why don't they go play cricket with boys"? That was one way of my family telling me that "okay, this is not tolerated", so that as a child you feel ashamed. Why are you not interested in a certain kind of play? That was one way of society telling me, and a second way was the bullying that you experience in the schools, because you are a bit effeminate. Children are also fed with this gender stereotypes so that they expect everyone to behave a certain way, or to speak a certain way. So yeah, I did experience a lot of bullying in school. But that made me realize that I have to hide this. And then I learned to hide myself. I put on a mask again. My mask got me straight, or cis. So, that's where I learned to hide myself.

Sabrina Merage Naim
You have briefly told the story of the sexual assault and molestation you experienced as a child, are you comfortable sharing that story and how it impacted your decision to come out to your family?

Neysara
Yeah, I would like to talk about it. This was very early in my childhood, this is one of the first memories of my life that I have, of someone sexually molesting me. I don't know how much of it has to do with my identity or sense of myself, because current scientific research says it doesn't. But it was some family members, and I was too young to understand it. And, I stopped this person when I was 13, or 14, from abusing me, but it went on for quite a long time. It was something that I didn't know as a child. I also thought I was willingly participating in it, but it was also painful. A child cannot participate in such kind of an act. Now I know that but as a child I didn't. And I was very scared to say anything to anyone because in India, we have this culture of shame that if you are a victim of a sexual assault, or sexual abuse, the society victimizes the victim. There's a lot of taboo placed on you and you are outcasted. And not just you, also your society. So the abuser also used to scare me as a child that, "okay, if you speak about it, outside, to people, your sister will not get married. Your parents will be ashamed." But by the time I was 13, or 14, I knew that this had to stop and I stopped it.

Kassia Binkowski
Neysara what changed for you? When did you work up the courage to end that? To speak out against that abuse but also to speak to your family, to come out to your family, about wanting to transition?

Neysara
As I told you, I had put a mask on, and I had learned that the world that we live in is a very transphobic world. It still is, but those days, it was very, very transphobic. No one in my family was trans, and no one had heard of a child coming out as trans. Maybe they knew a bit about being intersex, but they didn't know about a child being trans. Also, the image of transgender people being outcasted, to an extent, that the only thing they can do is beg or do sex work on the outskirts of society had scarred me. So I had made sure, I had promised myself, that I want to first finish my studies, get a job, and then I would come out. So I finished my studies. I got a job. And then it was time for me to come out because this was a life goal.

Kassia Binkowski
Can I stop you for one second?

Neysara
Yeah.

Kassia Binkowski
I just want to acknowledge, and I'm curious whether you would change that decision looking back now, but it seems like such incredible foresight to have had. To protect your future in that way, to know that you needed to see that through or that might be compromised, that might be taken away from you. That opportunity for education. I think that's something that just speaks volumes about who you are as a person. You're being aware of the incredible risks that you were going to have to take.

Neysara
Yeah, thank you. We, as humans, sense danger and it's there in all of us. Any animal knows how to sense a situation where it's dangerous for it. The same was the case with me. And so yeah, it took a lot of perseverance, that, "okay, keep going, keep going". Especially, you know, in college or in university when you can't hide yourself fully.

Sabrina Merage Naim
So let's recap for a minute, because I think it's important to share the journey, which is that from a young age you knew, as you said, that the world had something wrong about you. Then you were exposed, still at an early age, to the possibility that transitioning existed in the world, that that might be something that you could do. But during that time, you were experiencing sexual molestation from a male member of your family. From my understanding from the ages of about four to 13 or 14, when you finally stopped that. However that impacted your decision to come out to your family or however that impacted your connection to your sexual orientation is a question, but I'm sure that had a big impact on your identity, as your upbringing was marred by that experience. Once you were able to have the foresight to say, "this is what I'm going to do, I'm going to wait until I go through my education, I'm going to graduate, I'm going to do well in school, I'm going to have a job", that's when you decided to come out to your family and to start the transition process. So you were about 23 at that age, how did your family and community respond? Who supported you?

Neysara
Man, that's when all my worst fears came true. I initially wanted to make sure that my economic sustenance was stable, so I came out to my employer first before my family because I knew I needed a place to go even if my family forsakes me. And employer was easier to change than family, so I came out my employer. Initially it was like, "yeah, go for it we are with you", but within two days, I was fired. And they said "you cannot do this when you're working here. decent people work here". So I said, "Okay, I am decent, but I am decent in spite of transition, and in spite of being transgender, and I can't forsake my happiness for having a job". So I was fired. And then I came out to my family. That's when all my worst fears came true. My immediate family, as in my father, was quite receptive. He still loved me. I'd lost my mother by then. But the news quickly spread outside my immediate family, and that turned out to be dangerous. As I said, in India, we have this extended family where everyone has a say in your life, and they saw it as a shame on the community and on the family itself, and they wanted to undo this shame. It was my brother in law and some of my other family members, they got abusive towards me. They started beating me and telling me that I have to not do all this nonsense and they will get me married to a woman, and I have to live through that, or else they're going to kill me. Initially, I didn't take it that serious that they're going to kill me. But the way they started hitting me after that, I knew that they were not concerned if I lived through it. So then I had to run for my life. That's when I realized, what have I gotten myself into? I didn't know what to do, because all of this happened so suddenly. I knew that my family would be angry, but coming to kill me is something that I didn't expect. I somehow ran out of that place, and I didn't know where to go. But there was a thought in my head then. Right now, if I don't agree to them that I have to be a straight person, they will kill me. But if I agree to them to be a straight person, maybe I may kill myself. So I thought, okay, either way it's dangerous. So let me give it a try. If I have to die anyway, let me try. Let me die trying. So I ran out of there and I didn't have any place to go. The only person I knew who would be supportive was a friend of mine, who was gay. He was also in the closet then. And he was Muslim. So I just asked him, "please give me your mother's burkha. Let me just hide myself, there are people looking for me".

Kassia Binkowski
If you're comfortable sharing, I would love to hear more about kind of the physical, mental and emotional journey for you that unfolded over the next two years. So you started your transition in 2006, you were 23 years old. You were living in anonymity, you know, quite literally under a burqa to hide yourself. What did that look like for you? What experience unfolded for the next two years during that physical transition?

Neysara
I thought I was a crazy person. I thought, "what am I doing, I have literally ruined my life". Because in India, we have these transgender communities, where usually, people call it a safe place for transgender people; the outcast transgender people have made their own society. But this society also has a lot of its own flaws. For example, that was the first place I thought I could go, because I thought, okay, there are people who would understand me. And I went there, and again, the society has its own power structures, and they want you to earn for them, and the only way they accept your earning is when you do sex work or begging, because that, usually, it is better paying than regular job. So the attached condition was that if we have to help you, if we have to provide your shelter, then you have to sell yourself, which was not acceptable for me. So I literally put myself in a more difficult situation where I had to fend for myself.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Let's talk about the cultural implications for a minute and exactly what you just said, which is the observation that you've shared before. Being trans is being less than human in India. You transitioned, like we said over the course of two years, and then overnight, your education was discredited. You lost your government IDs, you couldn't apply for jobs, or start a business and you were literally running for your life from the people who were closest to you. In what ways did your life change after the transition, after that two years, where you had completed the procedures that you needed to complete, what happened then?

Neysara
The end of transition came, and I got confirmation from my family that they would not kill me. They would tolerate me being an outsider, but not coming close to any place where my home was. So that was a confirmation for me to come out. But then the existential question was, "who am I in the law in the eyes of the law?" Because I have created this new person out of nowhere. Is this person, a citizen of this country? Who is this person? Is this some refugee? Because, I don't own my education anymore, because it's on a different name, and I can't even go to my employer to ask for a job. So it was completely stripping away my identity, and there was no way to get it back. And that was a very difficult time, because I didn't have money to fend for myself. And that was a time that I thought, "okay, this is the time that I probably have to sell myself". And I was on the verge of almost selling myself. The problem is, for transgender people, when you go through transition in India, especially in those days, there was no way to transfer your previous identity to your current identity, or to even build a new identity. There were no provisions to do that. So the only way I could get my identity back was by frauding, so I frauded my identity. I built a whole new person. Providing fake documents, printing out some IDs, so that I could just get something to show to employers or to start a business. You know, I am a person, how do I register anything? I had to fraud my own identity, because that was the only way I could even just exist.

Sabrina Merage Naim
So regardless of the certificates that you could not use anymore, you still were a highly educated person who had a certain amount of career experience that you could then adopt to starting a business which ended up being successful. And, during that time, you went from hiding your identity under a burqa to then hiding your identity as a biological woman.

Neysara
I could not have started a business, or, no one would have worked with me. If there was an openly transgender woman, the only way they would have worked with me was if I sold myself, that's the word they expect, and accept for transgender people to do. So it was very important then that I empower myself by hiding myself as a cis woman. And in a way, that's what I wanted to do, because I'd come out of so much trauma of being literally wanted to be killed. I was scared of being trans. I was done with being trans. I just wanted some stability, some calm in this entire phase then, and that's what being in stealth gave me.

Kassia Binkowski
So what changed for you? When did you decide to take that mask off, as you say in your in your TED Talk? When did you decide to share your story publicly and really move into this role of activism?

Neysara
Even though I was in a mask, I would slowly communicate with other transgender people over Facebook. A lot of people would approach me online to get tips: how to get ID's back, or how did you do a certain thing? Who is the doctor who's willing to treat? All those simple questions. How do I even come out to my family? Should I come out to my family? All these questions, a lot of people would reach out to me online. And so I created a whatsapp group. I added all the people whom I knew, so that they can ask each other a question so I could create a small support group for transgender people.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Let's just paint the picture of the Indian landscape for a second, as it relates to trans people. In 2014, India officially recognized transgender people and intersex people as a third gender, who are eligible for welfare and other government benefits. Of course, by this point, it was long after you were complete with your transition process so you did not have those benefits. What are some of the current government policies directed at the trans community?

Neysara
Whatever welfare you're talking about, is not accessible for transgender people because there's so much bureaucracy around it, that transgender people cannot access these benefits and welfare. This welfare that we're talking about in India is so little, and the discrimination faced is so huge, that they don't do any good as of now. Right now, the Indian government introduced a bill, a law called Transgender Persons Protection law. But this law is very discriminatory. It is like, earlier, we were not humans. But now we are subhuman. Let me give you an example. The law states that any sexual offense against a transgender person, including rape, is punishable by six months to two years. Whereas the same punishment for a cisgender woman, is from seven years to a lifetime. We are one of the communities that faces a very high rate of sexual offenses. So if you discount punishments for offenses against us, it's not a protection. And that's what this law ends up doing.

Sabrina Merage Naim
To your point, there's been a lot of criticism that gender shouldn't be defined by law, this will only facilitate more crime against the trans community. Explain a little bit more why that is. It sounds on paper like it's supposed to be to protect the trans community, but you're giving examples of why it's actually not protecting the trans community. Why would it facilitate more crimes?

Neysara
Your first question was gender should not be dictated by the law. That's what this bill is doing. For example, it's saying that you have to go through a sex change surgery to be identified as a woman or a man. It sounds logical on paper, but who is going to sponsor these sex change surgeries? We are poor people, 80% of India is so poor that it can't afford such expensive sex change surgeries. Especially for transgender men, surgeries are so complicated. It's not just one small surgery and done. So how can a government say go "spend a lot of money"? "Spend all your lifetime savings and then we will give you your identity"? That should not be a government's role, especially because we are such a vulnerable community. We don't have jobs, we are begging on the streets. How can we even afford such expensive surgeries?

Sabrina Merage Naim
And also, not all trans people want to go through gender reassignment surgeries, even if they can afford it, right? Not all trans people have that kind of ambition.

Neysara
Yeah. If I become a mother tomorrow, or I am my father's daughter, it's in my brain. I think that our sense of gender identity lives in our brain. It has nothing to do with the genitalia that we have. So it's like telling someone that "Oh, you can be a mother only if you give birth to a child", how insane is that? For me, motherhood is more about nurturing a child, and making a person than giving birth, which is a tremendous task. But for me parenting is more about making a person grow, even outside. So it's just like that when you say everything is related to a few inches of your body tissue.

Kassia Binkowski
Neysara, what is Transgender India doing to help this community now? Talk about your life's work and your role in activism today.

Neysara
As I told you, for me, the first time I realized about the possibility of transition was through a TV strange show. And that made me realize that information, right information has so much power. And it's so important to be delivered. And that's what I was doing in the WhatsApp groups. When we were running those WhatsApp groups, we realized the same questions were being asked again and again, and we had to repeat ourselves quite a lot of times. So then I realized there has to be a reusable way of doing this. So we started a discussion forum online, called Transgender India Talk, where people can come and ask questions. This is something that I know within myself, the first search that a transgender person comes up with is Google, that's where we first ask our question. "Am I transgender?" That's where we ask a question the first time so I wanted to reach to the reach people at that very moment. That's why we created a website called Transgender India. On Transgender India, we communicate information for safe transition, and people can make informed choices about their body and their life.

Sabrina Merage Naim
I can't imagine the value of creating connections and community in such a lonely and jarring time of your life. And that story, i'm sure, would resonate with a lot of people going through something similar. I'm curious now, after all of these years, and creating that sense of community, for thousands of people around India, what would you say are some of the biggest wins that Transgender India has accomplished for the community? Particularly to keep trans people feeling safe and secure in India?

Neysara
Every year, we have around 50,000 people coming to our website. And these are 50,000 unique people coming to our website. Transgender people. I think when anyone comes to our website, they come to our website with a purpose. And we also try to connect them to local transgender WhatsApp groups, so they can meet people in person. For me, that is the most impactful work that we do, where a transgender person in a small village doesn't feel alone. When you're alone, you are strange. When you are in a community, that strangeness goes away. You are not a crazy person. Everything becomes normal.

Kassia Binkowski
With all of these thousands of people who are visiting your site and participating in that community, if they walked away with only one message, what would you want that to be? What is the one thing that you want the transgender community in India to know?

Neysara
What I want them to know is I am me for the brain that I have. I am Indian, I am an immigrant. I am a gardener, all those identities of me live in my brain, even the identity that I am a woman. I am Neysara. That is something in my brain. It has nothing to do with between my legs.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Breaking Glass is a production of Evoke Media. Evoke is a nonprofit organization that exists in order to elevate the people and stories that are working to make the world a more unified and equitable place. Learn more at weareevokemedia.com