Category Archives: Transgender

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Matam Gangabhavani v State of Andhra Pradesh and Ors WP No 16770 of 2019 (AP High Court)

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Reading Time: 4 minutes

Does a public appointment advertisement that fails to include transgender persons violate the constitution and offend the NALSA reservation direction? A single judge of the Andhra Pradesh High Court was faced with this particular question in this instance. Summarily, he found that though such advertisement offends equality, it does not violate the NALSA reservation direction because of certain context specific reasons. In this blog, I will deal with the equality analysis and the reservation analysis of the court.

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Medical Control of Legal Gender Recognition in India and the Nordic Countries

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Reading Time: 6 minutes

This blog is based on a talk that Dr Daniela Alaattinoğlu and I delivered recently at the University of Oxford. As we delivered the talk together, we have also authored this text together. As its title suggests, the main finding of the talk was that the medical field exercises immense control over the legal gender recognition of trans persons. Even when the law is based only on self-identification, and no role has been carved out for medical professionals, they seem to exercise a great influence in the desire and ability of a trans person to get legal gender recognition. Let us look closer at the Nordic countries and India.

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X v. State of Uttarakhand and Ors. Writ Petition (Criminal) No. 28 of 2019

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Reading Time: 6 minutes

On the 31st of May, 2019, a single judge bench of the Uttarakhand High Court decided whether a trans-woman’s allegation of rape should be recorded under Section 375 or Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860 (‘IPC’)? In deciding that the trans-woman had a right to self-determine her gender, ‘without further confirmation from any authority’, this case is a rare example of the correct application of the NALSA decision. It breaks from the trend observed in the Indian courts posts NALSA that when a person seeks to identify in a gender different from what the society has perceived her to be, the courts rely on a sex re-assignment surgery (and in one case, a psychological exam) to grant that right.

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