My friend Tista, is a vocal proponent of Transsexual rights, is also the first Transsexual woman in West Bengal (India), to get married through a social celebration, with another Transman Dipan, surrounded by friends and family. Her celebrations were no different than the weddings of a heteronormative society that follows a gender binary. It was full of happiness, and hope for a new beginning.
However, the union wasn’t so simple after all.
Tista was born a man with the soul of a woman. As a child she was diagnosed with gender dysphoria, she was made to undergo electroconvulsive therapy. As a marketing executive of a company, she was asked to collect dues from clients, by exhibiting “eunuch-like qualities”(!)
Beating such odds she stands today as the first Transgender woman with a Voter I.d card in Bengal. To achieve her identity as a woman was a battle, that someone from an overwhelming cisgender society may not ever be able to comprehend.
Dipan was a kind and compassionate human who was a Transmasculine in metamorphosis. He loved the barest hint of stubble. He was scared of facing people posing indignifying questions, like, what do his sexual organs look like or if he still menstruates. He was misread and misrepresented. He was disowned by his near ones, when he decided to undergo a sex-reassignment procedure.
Transgenders have been brutally treated by society and have always lived in the fringes. More than the celebration of their love, for Tista, her wedding was a political and ideological stand for her, a remarkable achievement for a long-persecuted community.
For social non-conformists like Tista and Dipan, marriage is something that they were against as it takes their identity away…however, it became instrumental in affirming their identity as a woman, and a man, as people and as social beings.
Feelings do not have genders. Tista and Dipan’s marriage is more than what their bodies tell.. theirs is a union of love and of liberty.
About Adusyanti Chatterjee
I grew up loving photography but managed to buy my first camera much later in life after I started working. I graduated to a DSLR in early 2012. I am into fulltime professional photography since 2016 December. My preferred style of work is reportage, and documentary. I earn my living mostly off weddings, and I also do Documentary/Journalistic photography. My heart lies in Humanitarian and Environment related Documentary projects.
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