How COVID-19 exposes family transphobia, healthcare issues of transpersons

For 21-year-old Priya, a Mumbai-based volunteer with an NGO, the coronavirus lockdown restriction is threatening to upend everything she has fought for in the last five years.

Priya, who hails from a middle-class family, identifies herself as a “female born in a male body”. But the lockdown-imposed home isolation has awkwardly placed herself under the constant gaze of her transphobic family members who she says are now constantly after her to renounce her hard-earned identity as a transwoman and even get married.

“They want me to cut my hair short and become a boy again,” says Priya over the phone from a “safe space”, away from the watchful eyes of her “aggressive” elder brother and “transphobic” parents.

According to her, she had successfully completed her social transitioning as a woman, meaning she is now a publicly recognised transwoman, and was in the process of officially initiating her gender transition, when the lockdown happened.

“Before lockdown, I was at office most of the time. Now I am living with my family 24x7. They refuse to acknowledge my identity as a woman and keep addressing me by my dead name,” says Priya, who was Ajay before she abandoned her birth name.

“I have never felt like a male,” she says, adding she experienced the internal conflict even when she was as little as four years old. “It didn’t bother my family much then. Gradually, my parents, relatives and cousins started mocking me and kept taunting me to behave like a boy.” Since Priya was also a studious student in school, academics took precedence over battle for identity for a brief period.

Then one day, hell broke loose, when a picture of hers dressed as a woman, with makeup and all, leaked from her phone, while she was doing her second year engineering. “My mom was shocked and was in complete denial. My brother became violent and aggressive. They were afraid of the consequences, if my father came to know about it.”

Her father, a small-scale businessman, finally came to know about it, when one of her college mates who had a crush on her came home and confronted him and even threatened to kill her after she spurned his advances. Priya was a popular as transwoman in college, winning beauty pageants.

“My parents, instead of protecting me, made me feel ashamed and locked me up in my room,” says Priya. That’s the first time she felt abandoned by her family. The next day, she ran away from home. She was eventually coaxed back to her house citing her mother’s poor health and her academic future.

Now, years later, the coronavirus lockdown has instilled in her with an eerie sense of déjà vu. “I no longer have access to community friendly space I had before. I am facing micro aggression and transphobia every day.”

Studies show that Priya’s situation is not unique or even a third world problem. Around 73 percent of the 1.3 million trans youth in the US are not in “very supportive” households.

The challenge faced by Shreya, a colleague of Priya who completed her transition into a woman in 2008, is of a different nature. With travel restrictions and priority of doctors shifting towards coronavirus patients, her mandatory bodily checkups, every three months, have come to a halt.

“My doctor has prescribed some medicines over the phone,” says Shreya. “But it’s not working. I am already experiencing side-effects like bleeding, lack of sleep, anxiety and hearing loss.”

The difficulty in accessing healthcare for non-COVID patients, especially transpersons, is acknowledged by Dr PS Bhandari, consultant plastic surgeon at LNJP hospital, New Delhi, who specialises in sex reassignment surgeries.

“Any non-COVID treatment is going to be extremely difficult now,” he says. “Even if you get appendicitis and go to a hospital, they will ask for a COVID-19 test first. Unless there is a whole dedicated department to treat transsexuals, they will never get priority in treatment,” says Dr Bhandari. He calls for greater support and understanding from family members towards transpersons.

Dr Narendra Kaushik, chief plastic, cosmetic and reconstructive surgeon at Olmec, a centre dedicated exclusively for transgender surgeries, says the number of queries relating to sex-change and medical guidance have increased since the lockdown began. “We get around 60 calls per day,” he says. The centre which used to conduct up to 70 surgeries per month is hoping to resume surgeries, suspended since March, gradually by August.

Transitioning from one gender to the other is a multi-step process consisting of psychological evaluation, hormonal treatment and surgery. It can take anywhere from three to five years and sometimes even more, depending on the extent of transition an individual wants. The surgery is also risky and irreversible.

But for people like Priya and Shreya, it’s their determination not to fit into boxes made by society that drives them to go under the knife. But it’s not going to be easy. Priya’s parents have already initiated marriage discussions. “They have started talking about finding a bride for my brother. I know where that conversation is going to go,” says Priya, hinting how she is going to be the next in line. The family is also planning to relocate to Rajasthan, their home state. “If that happens I have no option, but to become a boy,” says Priya referring
to her conservative-minded family elders. “They are trying their best to change my mind. I don’t know how long I will be able to resist.”

Sangeeth Sebastian is a senior journalist based in New Delhi with a keen interest in transforming cultural attitudes around sex, religion and masculinity.