‘Parents who threw us out; why will they give consent?’ A trans man’s anguish over India’s new law
Part 1: ‘Where do we go now?’ A trans woman’s question as India rewrites identity law
Part 2: Born different, made afraid: Intersex lives at the margins of the Trans Bill debate
Part 4: ‘Parents who threw us out; why will they give consent?’ A trans man’s anguish over India’s new law
“My periods stopped. That was the first change after starting hormone therapy -- my first real ounce of happiness,” Ramesh says.
He is 29 now, a trans man from Vyasarpadi in Chennai. An activist for the past decade. The steadiness in his voice is recent. But the life behind it has been anything but.
Ramesh was found on the street as a baby girl, with no birth certificate or record of his origin. “Even my age is traced back to the day I was first taken for a vaccine,” he says.
Food, for instance, was conditional in his childhood. “There was no concept of saapadu (meal) at home,” he says. School provided breakfast and lunch. Dinner depended on whether his after-school work paid in kind. “If I didn’t get food there, I came back and slept, silently.”
He had been taken in by a couple in Sowcarpet—people he calls Periyappa and Periyamma—who were themselves living in precarious circumstances. “They had many children. Before me, they lost two sets of twins,” he says. “Maybe that’s why they picked me up and raised me as a girl.” Care, however, was out of the question.
By Class 5, he began to notice differences.
“I didn’t want to wear girls’ clothes. I liked shirts and pants. I used to shave my head,” he says. There were early crushes for girls, too, though he did not yet have the language for them. “I just knew I was different.”
School offered little room for that difference.
“I was always alone. Teachers saw me as a troublemaker,” he says. Even basic routines were negotiated with caution. “I never used the restroom. If I went in the morning, I would not till evening.”
Then came the watchman.
“He saw I was always by myself. He started talking to me, giving me food,” Ramesh recalls. “For the first time, I felt like someone was listening. I told him everything.”
That did not last.
“After some time, he started touching me,” he says. When Ramesh objected and threatened to complain, the man pre-empted him. “He said, ‘No one will believe you.’”
Ramesh complained anyway.
The account was turned on its head. “He told the Principal I was coming out of the boys’ bathroom with five boys,” Ramesh says. It was not entirely fabricated—he had once entered out of curiosity—but the narrative was recast.
“The school made me kneel on the ground until my guardian came,” he says. “When she (Periyamma) came, she beat me. Tore my clothes. The whole school was watching.”
That was the end of school for me.
Periods, the unexpected guest
“After that, I started working full-time,” he says. “I was at work one day when it happened.”
He was wearing a shirt and pants.
“Suddenly there was blood. I didn’t understand what was happening. I didn’t even move. I just stood there crying.”
Someone from work took him home. What awaited him was not care.
“They said I must have gone with a boy. That is why this happened,” he says. He was made to sit outside in the same clothes for days. “I wasn’t even bathed. By the third day, I began to reek, and neighbours complained about the smell.”
If the humiliation and lack of belonging weren’t enough, then came the breaking point.
“That night, I asked my Periyappa why he didn’t come to school for me or why he wasn’t there when Periyamma kept me out for two days,” Ramesh says. There was no answer. Instead, he got up, and his dhoti came undone. “He said, ‘Who are you? I picked you from the street.’ Then he wanted more.”
Ramesh ran away from home that night.
‘Pretending’ to be a boy
“It was midnight. I hid in a public toilet till morning,” he says.
For a week, he lived at a bus stop in Parry’s Corner. “But it wasn’t safe.” He found work at a tea stall. The owner assumed he was a boy (the bald head helped) and let him stay.
“Things were peaceful until another boy came for work,” he says. “He figured out my body. Then the abuse started from him.”
“I ran, again.”
In the beginning, it was easier. “I hadn’t grown as a woman yet,” he says. But as his body changed, so did the attention.
“I thought of cutting ‘it’ off. Or dying,” he says. “But one thought stopped me.”
“If I die, I should die as a man.”
He found a workaround.
“I started using cellotape. Tight, around the chest,” he says. Over it, the now-familiar shirt and pants.
The effect was immediate. “No one looked at me differently. No bad touch, no comments,” he says. “For the first time, life became easier.”
He continued for years—eight, ten—despite the damage. “Skin started peeling. Rashes. But life was still better.”
Change came through community
“I met someone who told me I can change,” he says. That led him to Selvam, one of the first trans men he knew in Chennai. Hormone therapy was explained to him—voice changes, facial hair, the possibility of alignment.
Ramesh began saving.
When he finally started treatment, the first change he remembers is not cosmetic.
“My periods stopped,” he says.
Top surgery came later, with support from Sahodaran, an NGO that also helped him secure his trans identity card. The process, he says, was not always sensitive.
“Doctors didn’t have much idea about trans men then,” he says. “Sometimes they asked us to undress fully when it wasn’t needed.”
“We spoke up. Slowly, things changed.”
Life before the recent Trans Bill changes was different. Back then, a guardian and self-affidavit sufficed for surgeries. Today, hospitals require parents’ video consent, a barrier for those who live outside family structures.
“Parents who threw us out—why will they give consent?” he asks.
He recalls a recent case. “Five people went for surgery the other day. Three didn’t have the video. They were rejected.”
For those already negotiating life outside family support, such requirements are barriers, not procedures.
“Jeevithame porattam dhan (Life itself is a struggle). Being able to do the surgery, living as who we are—that is our solution,” he says.
"Why are you taking that away from us?"