The trans euphoria of chosen names and the bureaucratic battle to claim them
Choosing a name is an experiment with meaning and perception, playing hide-and-seek with social memory—the state takes all the fun out of it
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Coming home to my body: Finding my nonbinary self
I believed that cosplaying ‘normalcy’ by pretending to be cisgender would be the easiest way to live my life. Accepting my ‘nonbinary’ self gave me a way out of that trap.
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For Years, I Lived In Pieces. Embracing My Queerness Made Me Whole.
Loneliness led me down the path of self-harm, which almost cost me my life. Healing began when I came to terms with my queer identity.
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A trans person’s struggle for dignity doesn’t stop even when they die
An in-depth look into the deaths of two trans women–one in Kolkata and another in Goa–reveals how trans people face systemic violence in death, as they do in life
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Kissing boys behind curtains: Growing up as the queer son of a Calcutta courtesan
Nautch Boy chronicles Manish Gaekwad’s coming of age, set against the backdrop of a kotha
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“To be both an athlete and a darling”: How a game of women’s cricket helped me see the transness I longed for
Excerpted from 'On the Brink of Belief: Queer Writing from South Asia,' edited by Kazim Ali and published by Penguin India.
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I thought they were ‘butch’ or ‘masc’. They made me question labels
How two women from Mumbai’s fishing and dabbawalla communities taught me that gender can’t be put in a box
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What the scars on queer bodies tell us
Scars are often seen as symbols of pain. Can they also be markers of agency and growth?
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Innerwear seems trivial. Until an entire community is deprived of the right ones
Makeshift solutions are uncomfortable and imports are expensive. So queer people are now building the undergarments that help them be seen.
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Why a disabled man can never be ‘man enough’
The liberation of disabled men doesn’t lie in trying to fit into normative standards, rather, they must embrace their otherness.
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How Trans men tackle the gym cis-tem to exercise their masculinity
Gym infrastructure and its culture reinforce rigid gender norms, forcing trans men to restrict themselves from fully owning this space.
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The queer codes we wear on our hair
From buzz cuts to bleach and blue hair, queer people in India negotiate gender, caste & religion strand by strand.
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