New Delhi: Shreya Ila Anasuya, a fiction and non-fiction writer, has won the the Laadli Media and Advertising Awards for Gender Sensitivity 2017 for an op-ed published in The Wire. Her article, ‘Why We Should Pay Urgent Attention to a Campaign to Stop the Trans Bill 2016‘, won the Best Op-ed – (Western Region) award.
The article, published in December 2017, argued that the transgender Bill the government was planning to table would “not only run contrary to the landmark Supreme Court judgment that acknowledged the fundamental rights of trans people but harm trans and intersex communities in India”.
The Laadli Media Awards were set up to “honor, recognize and celebrate the efforts of those in media and advertising who highlight pressing gender concerns”.
Anasuya highlights how the draft Bill the Centre circulated begins with an inaccurate and dangerous definition of the word ‘transgender’.
It says that a transgender person is someone who is “neither wholly female nor wholly male, or a combination of female and 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 (sic).”
Sampoorna offers the following definition: “Transgender persons are those individuals who are socially, legally and medically categorised as being either male or female, but who assert that this is not their self-identity and/or expression. Transgender people may or may not be intersex.”
Her article also talked about the campaign that activists were running against the Bill, and why it should be supported.
In other words, the diverse individuals and communities that make up the trans, intersex and gender-variant people of India are doing what they have always done – navigating very hostile waters, and clearly articulating their right to dignity and absolutely basic services like education, employment, healthcare and protection from violence and discrimination, that should be available to any citizen. But the government has demonstrated time and again that it is not listening. These efforts need urgent and widespread public attention and action. It is more than past time to make them listen.
In addition to the award for her op-ed in The Wire, Anasuya was given a jury appreciation certificate for a long form report on India’s asexuality networks published on Deep Dives.