The All Assam Transgender Association (AATA) in a memorandum submitted recently to Social Welfare Minister Pramila Rani Brahma has stated that a cruel definition of transgender was given in the draft state policy on transgender formulated by the Social Welfare Department of Assam.
According to a report in the Assam Tribune, The AATA alleged that the transgender definition in the draft policy not only violates the respect, dignity and prestige of the transgender community but the essence of the NALSA judgement as well.
According to the policy, a ‘transgender’ means a person who is neither wholly female nor wholly male or a combination of female or male or neither female nor male and whose sense of gender does not match with the gender assigned to that person at the time of birth, and includes trans-men and trans-women, persons with intersex variations and gender-queers.
The AATA stated in its memorandum that the current policy includes persons with intersex variations under the transgender umbrella, reports The Assam Tribune.
The AATA stated that sex and gender are not same and both of them are separate concepts.
According to AATA, while sex is a biological or medical term to denote male, female and intersex, gender is a deep sense of oneself as a gendered being and may not have a one-to-one co-relation with sex.
The association also opposed the decision of the Social Welfare Department to appoint one of its senior most secretaries as vice-chairman of the state-level transgender welfare or justice board.
The association alleged that the department had assigned most of the functions to the district level board through the draft policy.
According to AATA, the draft policy has paralyzed the state level board with lesser function and empowered the district level board with more functions.