Thread by @kanmanisays, I have been reading a couple of media & legal articles around [...]

I have been reading a couple of media & legal articles around trans & intersex persons' in India.
Some Notes:
stop using the word 'transsexual' as a universal all encompassing term, it amounts to medicalising the entire range of trans identities!
1/

How different are you from the Transgender Persons (POR) Act, protested & resisted by trans persons, communities that it medicalises & reduces us to what everyone else thinks of & controls our bodies? That we are not who we are, if we don't go through surgeries?
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Unless the context explicitly requires, do not use the word 'third gender' as a universal term to refer to all trans persons, unless the persons involved use the term for themselves.
Example- Like saying - "no space for third gender apart from 'male' & 'female' "
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Third gender when used as a universal term & not as a specific term, for anyone who uses the term for themselves, reinstates a hierarchy. Why are cis men, first gender? It completely erases the presence of trans women & trans men as women & men
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Do not use the terms 'transgendered' , 'intersexed'-
our identities are not simply a choice, a past tense, a before & after!
Have you used the words, ‘straighted’, ‘heterosexualed’? Then, why us?
5/

We are not simply ‘a transgender’, ‘transgenders’, ‘trans-gender’.
‘Transgender’ is an adjective in English! Not a noun like man/woman. So use, transgender person, transgender man, transgender woman etc.
It’s like saying “a beautiful, a pretty”, which doesn’t make sense!
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The term 'transgender' is a description that tells something about a noun. It’s not the entire noun itself!
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Do not use transsexualism, transgenderism, etc.
We are not a phenomenon, a process. This furthers a cis gaze. We are human beings. Our personhood isn’t limited to our trans identities. We are not solely ‘ideologies’ or ‘phenomenons’ or 'subjects' to test/study.
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We are not just ‘them’ or ‘these’ or ‘that’ or ‘this’.
While using each of these terms solely to refer to us, example- ‘these people’, it’s like saying ‘these computers’.
We are not things!
9/

Stop using the term ‘hermaphrodite’ to refer to trans & intersex persons.
We are not animals! We are human beings! Why do you use sub-human derogatory terms to refer to us human beings?
10/

We are not 'born' as some 'gender/name assigned at birth' A to become B. We were called as A, when we were/are B!
Focusing on our childhood, when did this all begin, when did you realise/know, often are invasive Qns.
Why this obsession? That's cis gaze for you!
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To cis persons-Why don't you ask yourself, when did it all start for you? At which point were you conditioned to be transphobic & other prejudices?
Invert the mirror to you, typically shown in movies to portray us trans women looking at ourselves.
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Because what do you seek to prove? That we are solely authentic if we were 'always' feminine or masculine? Some of us were ourselves in our childhoods. Some of us know much later, as adults married or not, having children or not.
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What proof in our minds do you wish to conjure? What evidence of our pasts are you unknowingly searching to establish our identities in our present selves? Which aspects do you wish for us to discard to make us more palatable to everyone?
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Don't deadname/misgender us in a story w/o informed consent if context requires. Deadnaming is where you use the name we were called by the world. Instead use the names we use for ourselves! It's not 'preferred' name. It's our name!
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Do not solely point to how persons from our communities use terms for you to justify your prejudice. Yes, there is internalised homophobia, transphobia & other forms of shaming, stigma even in our communities. But that’s for us to sort out.
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Many trans & intersex persons, communities hardly have the vocabulary often, if not always, because access to education, employment & rights is still a long way to go for so many of us.
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Also it’s a bit rich to talk of education & not realise access to English itself is a privilege. In practice, when it comes to hiring people from marginalised communities, especially trans, intersex & non-binary persons.
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It’s not a question of simply fluency, but also a range of knowledge, information, resources, the networks that share them, & the resulting spaces in English, which often isn’t open to many in our communities.
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Hire queer, trans, intersex persons to give your org some sensitisation on how to report/write a piece if it’s involving us.
Most of all, hire us to write about us. Pay us well. We can tell our own stories! Not every story requires cis het folks to put themselves in it!
20/

Just because your piece uses the right terms, doesn’t mean they or you are not transphobic. It just means you have finally started using terms which are human for us.
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It’s rich to claim you have pieces, terms on us, but in your teams one cannot find even a single trans, intersex or non-binary person. Esp when there is no genuine engagement with our communities, our issues but suddenly we shall solely become ‘exhibits’ for someone’s career!
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Our communities have seen this exploitation for long. People would want to make films, write books, stories on us, but after we reproduce our experiences, we are done for. The persons will disappear & we won’t even be well paid for our labour/absolutely no ethical engagement.
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And many of these works, while building someone else’s career in cis persons’-led spaces with absolutely no trans persons, means very little or next to nothing for us in any realistic way.
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