#a. revathi

When Revathi’s powerful memoir, The Truth About Me, first appeared in 2011, it caused a sensation. Readers learned of Revathi’s childhood unease with her male body, her escape from her birth family to a house of hijras (the South Asian generic term for transgender people), and her eventual transition to being the woman she always knew she was. This new book charts her remarkable journey from relative obscurity to becoming India’s leading spokesperson for transgender rights and an inspiration to thousands.

Revathi describes her life, her work in the NGO Sangama, which works with people across a spectrum of gender identities and sexual orientations, and how she rose from office assistant to director in the organization. Today she is an independent activist, theatre person, actor and writer, and works for the rights of transgender persons.

In the second part of the book, Revathi offers the reader an insight into one of the least talked about experiences on the gender trajectory: that of being trans men. Calling several female-to-male trans persons her ‘sons’, Revathi puts before us their moving, passionate and sometimes tragic stories of marginalization, courage, resistance and triumph.

And so the Twitter Spaces uraiyadal began with Revathi, theatre artiste, author and trans activist, narrating her journey from a village in Salem to Delhi, equipped with just Rs 350 and a bare bones address — all this when she was just a teenager. How did she even know that she would find her answers in Delhi? A chance friendship with lungi-clad transwomen in her village that led her to Dindugal’s Seiveer Amma and the Delhi transwomen who come to her during the temple festival season. “All of them looked like real women; I was so awed. It was there that I was able to live as a woman — I put on my sister’s paavadai-sattai and wore a wig. It felt like a world that was made for me,” she recounts. A few months later, she — who had barely seen a train till that point — found herself boarding one to Delhi. 

Taking off from Revathi’s journey, Thanuja pointed out that the society keeps transwomen in constant motion — in search of even the most basic of their requirements. While the sex affirmation surgery had Indian transwomen reaching out to Delhi and Mumbai, women in Malaysia and Singapore were moving to other countries for it. That’s how the late Asha Amma —  M Asha Devi, a prominent figure in Malaysia’s trans rights movement — made her way to India. In the years to come, after Malaysia bans the surgery and Singapore makes it prohibitively expensive, other women would go to Thailand.

Even if it meant cutting short the recovery period to just two days and returning home in an eight-hour bus ride, urine bag in tow, narrated Thanuja. The situation, while different in other countries, comes with its own set of problems. While Sri Lanka aids and assists in every legal way, going as far as changing the details in one’s birth certificate, there is very little social acceptance there, she said. While the Western countries have far more facilities and awareness, its people have very little tolerance for the trans community. 

A. Revathi

Gender: Transgender woman/Third gender (Hijra)

Sexuality: N/A

DOB: N/A

Ethnicity: Indian - Tamil

Pride Reading 2022 – One: My Life in Trans Activism by A. Revathi @ZubaanBooks

I have touched on the question of Pride before here on roughghosts. Each year as June comes around I face the increasing onslaught of rainbow enthusiasm with trepidation. It brings up a lot of complicated emotions for me as someone who technically falls within the LGBTQ spectrum but has never managed to find a home within that space. I am not ashamed of who I am, but I feel no thrill of…