Many NLUs have reservation for women. Can it be extended to include transgender persons as well? By which I mean, if you are a transgender person, you should be able to apply under the women quota which is also horizontally reserved.
Nailed it! This is why it is always better to have the voices of those being spoken about actually be heard.
The BS that is (was?) being spewed on this thread is so toxic that I wonder how hostile the rest of India is to transgender people going outside the educated lawyers bubble. As a cis man, this was an eye opener.
Have put some detailed thoughts on the issue. Sorry if this is too much information or condescending etc: 1. My position is reservation should be absolutely granted but not at the NLU level, but under the Union and state lists. NLUs are unfortunately elite spaces and do not cover other public law universities which maybe more accessible to transgender, intersex students who come from various socio-economic backgrounds. 2. Also how does one decide upon the number? Upon what basis is it done? This should not be done without a Commission/committee/welfare board that goes into the issue at a deeper level, with country/state wide consultations with trans and intersex groups and communities with proper census data (the 2011 data has been contested as inaccurate by grassroots activists). 3. The Nalsa judgment (2014 SC) already stated that transgender persons should be granted all possible reservations including classifying us under socially and educationally backward classes (which is not correct). However, extending all reservations is as per the Constitutional scheme. Horizontal reservations is the way to go. 4. Reservations are not a solution, but a small step to representation. They are a way of ensuring seats in public universities and employment, which are public goods by the State have to be shared among various communities. 5. Reservations for trans persons do not become meaningful without policies, scholarships, concessions in fees and marks, changes in categories and forms, additional gender-neutral accomodation and washroom facilities among other things. 6. State govts and Union govts have the power to take decision on reservation, while NLUs have to at the very least make a policy and sensitise their administrations! How many have done that? CLAT fees is rs. 5000 and there exists no concession in that. How many trans persons do you think can afford that just to give one attempt at an entrance exam? or CLAT Coaching? 7. There are some organisations which do help out marginalised communities access coaching, but they are few. 8. Also some of the people here used 'third gender'. My humble request is there are persons and social groups identifying as third gender, however it cannot and should not be used as an umbrella category. Please use transgender persons as the word instead. Third gender when used as a catch-all term is rooted in traditional norms in a caste-based feudal society. As already pointed out by several trans activists including Grace Banu, that if I am third gender, then who is the first gender? Cisgender men? (or simply 'male') Are constitutionally protected categories supposed to reinstate hierarchies, the very hierarchy the Constitution seeks to discourage through 'equality, liberty and fraternity'? 9. Also for those who are asking how 'third gender' as a word got recognised by the Supreme Court, there are already publicly available writings around the petitions that were filed and the judgment. 10. For people raising science as a basis, or saying someone identifies as thing (hence transgender isn't real), or who we are is an illness, I would suggest you to read trans scientists, medical folks and researchers as well. Or is supporting trans persons only about citing cis authors and writers and not paying attention to what we have to say? 11. The culture wars across countries around single sex sports and bathrooms etc are about engaging with gendered spaces and hoping for a genderless world. For now, additional accomodations and washrooms are non-existent in Indian campuses. Start there? 12. As far as the mention of trans, non-binary persons already in NLUs go, I partially agree. Yes we must always start with the assumption of trans persons already existing in a space. But that doesn't mean the space is not a barrier for many other trans students who are not part of it or the existing students as well. 13. Changing name and/or gender on documents apart from affirming medical procedures come with their own problems and most universities don't even help out trans persons. 14. Also please start with your placement cells, student committees and faculty sensitising employers (your own campus including) on the possibility of trans students or candidates who might seek jobs with prospective employers? Like go beyond the tokenism of stating terms to actually talking about our lived realities as well? When employers ask for past employment, several trans, queer friends who had to do sex work, begging, toli-badhai, or faced transphobia and hence couldn't do your fancy internships and moots struggle to answer such questions. Get employers to actually recognise that! 15. Question not just NLUs but bar councils as well. If you are enrolling for being an advocate, have you noticed the lack of T category on forms? No concession in enrollment or support to trans lawyers through those financial aid schemes? 16. Even now, civil judge exams of several states, the latest being Madhya Pradesh and Uttarakhand do not even have a separate category on forms apart from Male and female. Or is it the assumption that transgender persons who may not have M or F on their forms won't ever apply to become a civil judge? 17. Also people who have negative attitudes about existing reservation policies, (I am assuming) don't seem to engage with how the existing reservation schemes don't even get implemented well due to casteist attitudes by administrations and faculty (which may be unknowing or deliberate). 18. The goal is quality legal education should be meaningfully and equitably accessible to all. If you want to be negative (anonymity on internet gives freedom, which includes people wanting to be nasty and rude), go ahead but not interested in engaging with you :) 19. Just a caveat, all of these points have been borrowed from arguments of various trans queer persons as well, not entirely my own. - Kanmani R, a transgender woman lawyer, Delhi-NCR.
Any debate on trans people will ultimately conflict around the issues of sports and single-sex spaces. And I would argue what 8.1.1 says would be a minority opinion. I don't think most women will support gender-neutral bathrooms. I mean, you could establish a third set of bathrooms, but completely eliminating women bathrooms is not an initiative that will get you support. As for the examples that you have cited (moving forward with the notion that a bathroom would mean a couple of cubicles with some space for the washbasin and some vacant area) A plane bathroom is a space that you'll not be sharing with anyone. As in, there is no space outside of the bathroom, so multiple people do not interact with one another. Unlike a normal bathroom wherein the washbasin, hand-dryer etc., will be outside. Regarding homes, I don't think random people from the street come and use your bathroom, do they? It's just the people that you know that use it, i.e. the family. Again, in a workplace, you generally will be aware of the people. So the chance of random people using it is low? As for the argument that the origin lies in racism/morals, I don't think that bolsters your argument in any way. Regardless of the origin, most people don't seem to have a problem with sex-separated bathrooms. So an allegedly evil origin doesn't mean it has to be abolished. Anyway, most feminist organisations in the UK support single-sex bathrooms. So... As to why bathrooms have to be sex-based, reasons vary between privacy, dignity, safety. This ties into the larger argument of single-sex spaces, specifically in relation to women, e.g. women prisons, shelter homes. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/inmate-sues-government-over-keeping-trans-women-in-prison-t7w2t5lx8 When you argue that trans people be made comfortable, does it come with the notion that their being comfortable is supreme irrespective of what others think? I really cannot agree with that point.
Quote:
As a cis woman I can assure you that after 35 years of living
I don't think your assurance matters much, considering that, on the other hand, we state India to be one of the unsafe places for a woman. Just because predators aren't deterred from accessing bathrooms doesn't mean you throw caution to the wind and open it up. Based on that argument, why have laws itself considering that criminal activities continue to happen? As for the assault question, the number does not matter. (Fully condoning assaults on trans people) When you create a separate standard, the criticism will be higher. E.g., special laws for women. (Even though the number of exploitations may be on the lower side, each one is met with a huge uproar. Why? Special or different standards.) In the same way, you are allowing what are essentially 'biological men' to use the women's bathroom. So you don't need a lot of violations. A few are more than enough.
Also, what exactly is 'toxic boys hostel culture', 'free playground for depravity' supposed to mean? I mean, what do you think happens in the men's hostel?
I am an intersex transgender person with a disability and there are three sexes biologically, namely male, female, and intersex and the term 'intersex' signify a wide spectrum of biological mix-up of sexes, and more than 60 thousand are born as intersex in India every year where sex is unambiguous from the start. Intersex and transgender must get their right to education, and the state reservation is the only path to the solution of the widespread discrimination. whether you like it or not trans getting a reservation as a cabinet note has already been moved.
We trans persons living in obscurity with no access to public school and trans children with disabilities have no place to study but enroll themselves at NIOS. Myself 15-year-old a trans intersex person and currently in my 10 class at nios hoping to enroll myself at NLU with gov scholarship. DSM is a manual for mental illness and knows it as I am a person with mental illness. - My usage of English may be incorrect due to economic backwardness as a Hindi medium student so don't consider the letter but the spirit that matters. The history may no longer be history without trans persons when I come.
In Tamilnadu no one from the trans community applies for 4 class jobs despite their backwardness, It shows transgender is truly the most marginalized group. A Dalit cannot be identified with his face and body but a black person or trans person can easily be identified and that is where discrimination starts, right from the sight of a person.
The number of upvotes to the transphobic comments on here is quite scary. It's 2021, WE ALL KNOW GENDER IS A SPECTRUM AND BEING A TRANSGENDER PERSON IS NOT A DISORDER. I agree with my fellow NALSARite at 10.1, R, please don't allow this hateful crap to be published. LI is starting to resemble Breitbart and reading stuff like this is detrimental to people's mental health.
What about understanding of the law when the Supreme Court of this country has recognised a third gender? I ask since this is a forum for lawyers, not biology experts.
And still you don't face the reality that so many different communities have been and are being discriminated against by people including those from 'unreserved' categories. As for nobody having any transphobia, what rubbish! Ask any trans person about their experience and they will tell you absolutely the opposite. I mean literally any of them.
Ignore the wokes, listen to the science. M and F are the only two genders, he and she the only two pronouns. If someone is a transgender like Caitlyn Jenner, it merely means that a man underwent surgery to change his sexual organs and become a woman. So in this case he became a she. If a man likes to wear women's clothes and is attracted to other men, then he is still a man (a gay man) until such time he changes his sexual organs (and then becomes a transgender woman).
Dekh bhai. Transphobia kisi ko nai hai. If this has been the one and only reservation proposed for the first time - positive response aata, log discuss karte, +- argue karte. Just that now there are already so many reservations on so many grounds all the bloody time, that we are just fed up.
Kabhi kabhi to mann karta hai bol do sari seats reserve kar k aapas me hi baat lo - problem solved.
Gender neutral bathrooms are something I can get behind of. However, given the rising number of cases of sexual harassment, assault, etc. in the campuses, I don't really think the parents will want their young adult children to stay in gender neutral hostels. Sad, but true. The freedom that's there so far is not used responsibly, and the admin in most places are singularly inept to deal with it. I've myself stayed at GN hostels while doing my Masters. Pretty decent experience. Maybe, hopefully, people around me grew more mature and responsible by then. I hope to see such hostels on an undergrad level too in my lifetime at least in this country.
Explain to me why bathrooms need to be gendered at all? Have you ever been on a plane? Do they have gendered bathrooms? What about in our homes and communities? Do you think every workplace you’ll work in will have sex segregated bathrooms? Did you know that sex segregated toilets are actually a fairly new historical phenomenon that traces its roots not just to moralistic movements aimed at keeping women out of the workplace but also at racist movements that tried to segregate white and black? How many people are assaulted/ harassed because of trans people going into the “wrong” bathroom anyway? And how many trans people are harassed because are made to feel unsafe if they go into the “wrong” bathroom? Replace urinals with stalls and make all bathrooms gender neutral. As a cis woman I can assure you that after 35 years of living in metro cities I have never in a public restroom seen anything that men could misconstrue as being sexual. Surely predators aren’t deterred from preying on young women because they are in a bathroom? And surely you know that trans people are much more likely to be victims of abuse than perpetrators. Do I need to carry a photo of my genetalia to identify myself every time I need to pee? Or is there an inspector that will check? Or a birth certificate? It’s all so freaking arbitrary. All that matters is that there are adequate facilities for people who need them.
Most universities across the world don’t have sex segregated hostels. What are we nuns and priests? We won’t be able to resist ourselves if we live in the same building? Are male students that unreliable that they can’t live in the same building without raping and assaulting women? In 2021?
This isn’t being woke at all. This is just common sense. Sex segregation creates a lot more problems than it solves. I honestly think toxic boys hostel culture would see some moderation if there wasn’t this isolated consequence free playground for depravity in every law school. And I think it’s about time we treat young adults as young adults not as ticking sex bombs about to explode at any moment. Don’t make women trade away their freedom for protection. And don’t displace blame / responsibility from perpetrators of abuse to victims of it.
That hypo you propose is literally so rare it’s not even worth engaging with. The fact that trans students I know got beat up in sex segregated hostels is not rare. It’s an epidemic within the community.
I was hoping someone asks that. To show precisely what you said. That dingaringamuses like these still exist and very much exist in LI. So pay no heed.
R, why has this transphobic comment even been published? Being trans is NOT a 'mental illness'. And to any trans kids reading this rather toxic thread, don't let it mess with your head. You'll find some really nice, accepting people in law school, despite the fair number of transphobic assholes emboldened by the anonymity this site offers.
There's no such thing as a transgender. Gender is not a spectrum and it's not non-binary. You're one of the two and if you feel like the other, then you have a mental illness - gender dysphoria. You can keep having reservations for every kind of mental illness, unless it's so severe for it to be classified as a disability.
Whether trans people need reservation or not can be debated (maybe +10 marks in CLAT can be done instead) but I agree with 10 and feel the following MUST happen:
1. Gender neutral hostel and bathrooms 2. Immediate expulsion of students who rag trans persons 3. A culture where everyone is asked to declare their pronouns and trans people are made welcome
As important and necessary it is to create a safe environment for people of all genders and orientation, I just cannot agree to your gender neutral bathroom and hostel argument. Does it mean creating a new bathroom and hostel for non-binary? Male, Female and Non-binary category? Or having one bathroom common all genders? Or maybe, just use the bathroom according to the genitalia? I won't know how to react if a bearded senior follow walked into the girls' bathroom and proclaimed that he identifies as a female and hence he will use the girls' bathroom. Even in such cases, the transwoman must really be a trans woman, not some ally man identifying as a woman. I don't know if this appears transphobic, but man, I can't digest some much woke tokenism
Dude. Sigh. I have known of trans people / gender fluid people that have graduated/ are attending the top three NLUs.
You can’t have the same solution for every damn problem. What they need is a safe campus and gender neutral hostels and bathrooms and the certainty that they will not get beat up or worse in the name of “ragging” and education that doesn’t exclude them at every step. Let’s start with stuff that will actually make a difference instead of stuff that will just make us feel good.
To be honest, I couldn't tell the difference. If OP is a trans person or genuine LGBTQ+ activist, it's an acceptable thread. But yes, I do fear it's more for trolling.
Trans people seem to be the least represented people at NLUs. Most NLUs have never had even one trans student ever. In fact, has any NLU in history ever had a trans student?
Keeping this in mind why don't we have just 1 seat per batch in all NLUs reserved for trans people? 1 seat is nothing much, yet it will be of hugely symbolic importance and make NLUs more inclusive.
The BS that is (was?) being spewed on this thread is so toxic that I wonder how hostile the rest of India is to transgender people going outside the educated lawyers bubble. As a cis man, this was an eye opener.
1. My position is reservation should be absolutely granted but not at the NLU level, but under the Union and state lists. NLUs are unfortunately elite spaces and do not cover other public law universities which maybe more accessible to transgender, intersex students who come from various socio-economic backgrounds.
2. Also how does one decide upon the number? Upon what basis is it done? This should not be done without a Commission/committee/welfare board that goes into the issue at a deeper level, with country/state wide consultations with trans and intersex groups and communities with proper census data (the 2011 data has been contested as inaccurate by grassroots activists).
3. The Nalsa judgment (2014 SC) already stated that transgender persons should be granted all possible reservations including classifying us under socially and educationally backward classes (which is not correct). However, extending all reservations is as per the Constitutional scheme. Horizontal reservations is the way to go.
4. Reservations are not a solution, but a small step to representation. They are a way of ensuring seats in public universities and employment, which are public goods by the State have to be shared among various communities.
5. Reservations for trans persons do not become meaningful without policies, scholarships, concessions in fees and marks, changes in categories and forms, additional gender-neutral accomodation and washroom facilities among other things.
6. State govts and Union govts have the power to take decision on reservation, while NLUs have to at the very least make a policy and sensitise their administrations! How many have done that? CLAT fees is rs. 5000 and there exists no concession in that. How many trans persons do you think can afford that just to give one attempt at an entrance exam? or CLAT Coaching?
7. There are some organisations which do help out marginalised communities access coaching, but they are few.
8. Also some of the people here used 'third gender'. My humble request is there are persons and social groups identifying as third gender, however it cannot and should not be used as an umbrella category. Please use transgender persons as the word instead. Third gender when used as a catch-all term is rooted in traditional norms in a caste-based feudal society. As already pointed out by several trans activists including Grace Banu, that if I am third gender, then who is the first gender? Cisgender men? (or simply 'male') Are constitutionally protected categories supposed to reinstate hierarchies, the very hierarchy the Constitution seeks to discourage through 'equality, liberty and fraternity'?
9. Also for those who are asking how 'third gender' as a word got recognised by the Supreme Court, there are already publicly available writings around the petitions that were filed and the judgment.
10. For people raising science as a basis, or saying someone identifies as thing (hence transgender isn't real), or who we are is an illness, I would suggest you to read trans scientists, medical folks and researchers as well. Or is supporting trans persons only about citing cis authors and writers and not paying attention to what we have to say?
11. The culture wars across countries around single sex sports and bathrooms etc are about engaging with gendered spaces and hoping for a genderless world. For now, additional accomodations and washrooms are non-existent in Indian campuses. Start there?
12. As far as the mention of trans, non-binary persons already in NLUs go, I partially agree. Yes we must always start with the assumption of trans persons already existing in a space. But that doesn't mean the space is not a barrier for many other trans students who are not part of it or the existing students as well.
13. Changing name and/or gender on documents apart from affirming medical procedures come with their own problems and most universities don't even help out trans persons.
14. Also please start with your placement cells, student committees and faculty sensitising employers (your own campus including) on the possibility of trans students or candidates who might seek jobs with prospective employers? Like go beyond the tokenism of stating terms to actually talking about our lived realities as well? When employers ask for past employment, several trans, queer friends who had to do sex work, begging, toli-badhai, or faced transphobia and hence couldn't do your fancy internships and moots struggle to answer such questions. Get employers to actually recognise that!
15. Question not just NLUs but bar councils as well. If you are enrolling for being an advocate, have you noticed the lack of T category on forms? No concession in enrollment or support to trans lawyers through those financial aid schemes?
16. Even now, civil judge exams of several states, the latest being Madhya Pradesh and Uttarakhand do not even have a separate category on forms apart from Male and female. Or is it the assumption that transgender persons who may not have M or F on their forms won't ever apply to become a civil judge?
17. Also people who have negative attitudes about existing reservation policies, (I am assuming) don't seem to engage with how the existing reservation schemes don't even get implemented well due to casteist attitudes by administrations and faculty (which may be unknowing or deliberate).
18. The goal is quality legal education should be meaningfully and equitably accessible to all. If you want to be negative (anonymity on internet gives freedom, which includes people wanting to be nasty and rude), go ahead but not interested in engaging with you :)
19. Just a caveat, all of these points have been borrowed from arguments of various trans queer persons as well, not entirely my own.
- Kanmani R, a transgender woman lawyer, Delhi-NCR.
I don't think most women will support gender-neutral bathrooms. I mean, you could establish a third set of bathrooms, but completely eliminating women bathrooms is not an initiative that will get you support. As for the examples that you have cited (moving forward with the notion that a bathroom would mean a couple of cubicles with some space for the washbasin and some vacant area)
A plane bathroom is a space that you'll not be sharing with anyone. As in, there is no space outside of the bathroom, so multiple people do not interact with one another. Unlike a normal bathroom wherein the washbasin, hand-dryer etc., will be outside.
Regarding homes, I don't think random people from the street come and use your bathroom, do they? It's just the people that you know that use it, i.e. the family.
Again, in a workplace, you generally will be aware of the people. So the chance of random people using it is low?
As for the argument that the origin lies in racism/morals, I don't think that bolsters your argument in any way. Regardless of the origin, most people don't seem to have a problem with sex-separated bathrooms. So an allegedly evil origin doesn't mean it has to be abolished. Anyway, most feminist organisations in the UK support single-sex bathrooms. So...
As to why bathrooms have to be sex-based, reasons vary between privacy, dignity, safety. This ties into the larger argument of single-sex spaces, specifically in relation to women, e.g. women prisons, shelter homes.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/inmate-sues-government-over-keeping-trans-women-in-prison-t7w2t5lx8
When you argue that trans people be made comfortable, does it come with the notion that their being comfortable is supreme irrespective of what others think? I really cannot agree with that point.
Quote: I don't think your assurance matters much, considering that, on the other hand, we state India to be one of the unsafe places for a woman. Just because predators aren't deterred from accessing bathrooms doesn't mean you throw caution to the wind and open it up. Based on that argument, why have laws itself considering that criminal activities continue to happen?
As for the assault question, the number does not matter. (Fully condoning assaults on trans people) When you create a separate standard, the criticism will be higher. E.g., special laws for women. (Even though the number of exploitations may be on the lower side, each one is met with a huge uproar. Why? Special or different standards.) In the same way, you are allowing what are essentially 'biological men' to use the women's bathroom. So you don't need a lot of violations. A few are more than enough.
Also, what exactly is 'toxic boys hostel culture', 'free playground for depravity' supposed to mean? I mean, what do you think happens in the men's hostel?
I think the link attached below kind of presents a balanced view, respects both sides instead of dismissing the claims of one side entirely as done by 8.1.1.
https://www.fawcettsociety.org.uk/blog/sex-and-gender-identity-finding-a-way-forward
We trans persons living in obscurity with no access to public school and trans children with disabilities have no place to study but enroll themselves at NIOS. Myself 15-year-old a trans intersex person and currently in my 10 class at nios hoping to enroll myself at NLU with gov scholarship. DSM is a manual for mental illness and knows it as I am a person with mental illness. - My usage of English may be incorrect due to economic backwardness as a Hindi medium student so don't consider the letter but the spirit that matters. The history may no longer be history without trans persons when I come.
In Tamilnadu no one from the trans community applies for 4 class jobs despite their backwardness, It shows transgender is truly the most marginalized group. A Dalit cannot be identified with his face and body but a black person or trans person can easily be identified and that is where discrimination starts, right from the sight of a person.
- R
- R
In other words, penis = man, vagina = woman.
It's not that hard, people.
Kabhi kabhi to mann karta hai bol do sari seats reserve kar k aapas me hi baat lo - problem solved.
Replace urinals with stalls and make all bathrooms gender neutral. As a cis woman I can assure you that after 35 years of living in metro cities I have never in a public restroom seen anything that men could misconstrue as being sexual.
Surely predators aren’t deterred from preying on young women because they are in a bathroom? And surely you know that trans people are much more likely to be victims of abuse than perpetrators. Do I need to carry a photo of my genetalia to identify myself every time I need to pee? Or is there an inspector that will check? Or a birth certificate? It’s all so freaking arbitrary. All that matters is that there are adequate facilities for people who need them.
Most universities across the world don’t have sex segregated hostels. What are we nuns and priests? We won’t be able to resist ourselves if we live in the same building? Are male students that unreliable that they can’t live in the same building without raping and assaulting women? In 2021?
This isn’t being woke at all. This is just common sense. Sex segregation creates a lot more problems than it solves. I honestly think toxic boys hostel culture would see some moderation if there wasn’t this isolated consequence free playground for depravity in every law school. And I think it’s about time we treat young adults as young adults not as ticking sex bombs about to explode at any moment. Don’t make women trade away their freedom for protection. And don’t displace blame / responsibility from perpetrators of abuse to victims of it.
That hypo you propose is literally so rare it’s not even worth engaging with. The fact that trans students I know got beat up in sex segregated hostels is not rare. It’s an epidemic within the community.
- R
1. Gender neutral hostel and bathrooms
2. Immediate expulsion of students who rag trans persons
3. A culture where everyone is asked to declare their pronouns and trans people are made welcome
Or maybe, just use the bathroom according to the genitalia?
I won't know how to react if a bearded senior follow walked into the girls' bathroom and proclaimed that he identifies as a female and hence he will use the girls' bathroom. Even in such cases, the transwoman must really be a trans woman, not some ally man identifying as a woman.
I don't know if this appears transphobic, but man, I can't digest some much woke tokenism
You can’t have the same solution for every damn problem. What they need is a safe campus and gender neutral hostels and bathrooms and the certainty that they will not get beat up or worse in the name of “ragging” and education that doesn’t exclude them at every step. Let’s start with stuff that will actually make a difference instead of stuff that will just make us feel good.
- R
Keeping this in mind why don't we have just 1 seat per batch in all NLUs reserved for trans people? 1 seat is nothing much, yet it will be of hugely symbolic importance and make NLUs more inclusive.