Open letter to the Transgender Committee of the University of Hyderabad
Tags: University, Housing, Transgender Rights, Open Letter, Transgender

To Prof P, and other members of the Transgender Committee

I am writing to you concerning a major issue that has complex and varied repercussions in society — and therefore, in the microcosm of society that is our campus: trans housing. The issue of trans housing is a contentious one under the best of circumstances, and it is definitely exacerbated by a shortage of available housing both in the wider society and on campus. Within campus, I understand that the allocation of a hostel room is not a guarantee, but a best-fit process of trying to accommodate those who need it most. Outside campus, it has been my experience that it is very very difficult to find rented/paying guest accommodation as an openly transgender person — people reject us at the outset without any reasons, and if pressed, call us beggars and slurs for sex workers. Even if accommodation is secured, it comes at a great cost, with us being forced to pay higher rents and refused legal lease agreements, making the housing very precarious.

This points to an urgent need for housing transgender students within the campus in a fair manner that takes into account the self-respect, lived experience, financial exigencies, and the social vulnerability of embodying a marginalised identity, while also accounting for that invisible entity known as ‘campus culture,’ the ethical standards of a world-class government university, and so on.

Upon inquiring about the university’s policies on transgender housing, I was not able to secure a face-to-face or telephonic meeting with any stakeholders from the administration, but I received an email from a public email account copying the university email account of the Deputy Chief Warden. [Note: the exact transcript is redacted here, but the key sentence in the correspondence reads “I am directed to inform you that at the time of hostel admission, transgender students may give their preferences.”]

This is a vague response — what does it mean to give a preference? Will this preference be unconditionally honoured? Will this preference be taken into a series of other factors that in combination decide where we will be housed, and if so, what are the other factors? Do any of these factors take into account private and personal characteristics of the student in question such as the shape of their genitals? Do we, as provisioned in the Transgender Persons (protection of rights) Bill 2019, undergo “medical screening” by the District Magistrate of Rangareddy district? Does an affidavit of self-identity, as provisioned in the NALSA judgement of 2014, suffice? Will we, as my worst fears indicate, be forced to live in hostels conforming to our gender assigned at birth?

Alongside these concerns, there remains a larger concern of housing transgender people in existing hostels as they exist now. The existing hostels are divided into men’s and women’s hostels. These divisions are very rigid both in general mindset and perception, and in the official hostel rules (such as that men aren’t allowed to enter women’s hostels and violation is considered a serious disciplinary offence). In a space so rigidly segregated, there would be various practical difficulties for transgender students of all identities in surviving and assimilating. The violence of housing trans women in men’s hostels or trans men in women’s hostels is obvious — we are forcing a student to occupy a space for a gender that gives them distress and dysphoria, and exposing them to the prospect of violence and harassment. However, there is a subtler violence in putting trans women in the existing women’s hostels as well. Transgender people forced into rigidly segregated cisgender spaces face many issues ranging from intrusive curiosity to physical and psychological violence when perceived as wrongfully entering gender-segregated spaces, such as bathrooms. To speak in plain language, trans women will be considered as predatory men invading women’s hostels.

Including to these concerns, there are transgender people with nonbinary gender identities, i.e., they are neither men nor women. I am one such nonbinary transgender person, and my personal preference is that I would feel comfortable neither in a men’s hostel nor a women’s hostel. To put it frankly, the men’s hostel is wrong for me because I am not a man and the women’s hostel is wrong for me because I have no intention of living as a woman. If somebody asks me if I’m a woman, the honest answer is ‘no,’ therefore I shouldn’t go to the women’s hostel — simple. And having lived in my body for 25 years, I know what will happen if I go to a men’s hostel, and I don’t want to go into the unsavoury details of it here.

I believe I have sufficiently established that housing transgender students in the existing hostels is not just a violation of the self-perceived gender identity of these students (‘preference’) but also subjecting them to an increased risk of violence.

To me, the only solution to this issue would be to have one or more gender-neutral hostels. How this will be logistically accomplished is a question to discuss next. To begin with I believe the only way forward is to take students’ explicit consent to agree to live in a gender-neutral space, explicitly agree to the possibility of encountering people of all gender identities in the hostel, and explicit consent to not discriminate against any other inhabitant on the basis of gender identity. (This is not a tall ask — students already do all these things in the classroom) I say this almost as a joke, but for good measure get their parents’ consent as well! With an explicitly demarcated gender-neutral space, the questions about “men in women’s spaces” becomes nullified, and students who have explicitly agreed to be in a gender-neutral space are less likely to be hostile to an unexpected gender presentation.

I think a gender-neutral hostel is plainly necessary in order to honour students’ preferences. It is only a true choice given to transgender students if the gender-neutral option exists; otherwise, you are asking us to box ourselves into a gender identity we may not be comfortable with and exposing us to gender-based violence. And to make myself crystal clear, I believe that absolutely no one under any circumstances should be forced to enter or live in a gender-neutral hostel. Everyone living in the hostel should have consented to it explicitly and in good faith (i.e., they are not in any way forced to choose the hostel, such as in situations arising from shortage of space.) Just as transgender students should have the choice to choose the gender-neutral hostel for themselves, they should have the choice to reject it for themselves.

As Audre Lorde said, ‘if I don’t define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people’s fantasies for myself and eaten alive.’ The existence of gender-neutral housing is crucial for allowing transgender students to define themselves for themselves, free of the trappings of having to crunch themselves into a fantasy of performing for gendered spaces.

Sincerely,

Arvind