TW: Medical transphobia, Medical trauma The TWEET Foundation (TWEET is short for Transgender Welfare Equity and Empowerment Trust) is an organisation formed of trans people, run by trans people and working for trans people. The community-based organisation (CBO) was registered in 2015, with a mandate of working towards the welfare, equity and empowerment of trans people. “It took us a couple of years to get the TWEET Foundation registered because of the red tape involved. A lot of us had our deadnames on our documents so that was another hurdle,” explained Abheena Aher, one of the founding members of the CBO and a trans rights activist. Abheena Aher They have had two co-chairs since the beginning, on principle. One of them is always a trans man and the other, a trans woman. In doing so, they aim to change the notion about trans men and women not coming together, by enabling them to work with each other on an equal footing. Healthcare Is HIV-Centric, Other Needs Ignored One of the CBO’s founding members and the current co-chair, Maya Awasthy, is a trans woman from the Hijra community. “Most organisations working with Hijra and trans communities focus on HIV- and STI-centric healthcare. But, as trans people, we have needs and aspirations beyond that,” said Awasthy. Maya Awasthy Given Aher and Awasthy’s prior experience of working in the advocacy space, the 45-year-olds joined hands with others from the community and formed the organisation with the aim of tending exclusively to the needs of trans people—be it accessing primary healthcare, educational and skill-building initiatives, or helping them update their legal documents. The TWEET Foundation also aids the trans community’s access into gender-affirmative healthcare, like surgeries and hormones. “Most trans people haven’t had the opportunity to finish their education or find a well-paying job and yet, we are somehow supposed to amass lakhs of rupees for procedures which should be available free-of-cost,” rued Aher, an activist with 25 years of experience working with trans communities. She also spoke about how trans surgeries are treated as a money-making business by private hospitals and the like. “There are so many genital complications, because to them we are guinea pigs, not human beings.” Has Legal Recognition Changed Anything? The Supreme Court reaffirmed trans people’s right to self-identification i.e., I am trans because I say I am trans, in a landmark judgment in 2014 (referred to as the NALSA judgment). Although the judgment was progressive, it has since been superseded by a regressive Trans Act, which talks of a ‘screening committee’ who will certify and therefore, qualify trans people as being trans. Not only this, the Act also compels trans* people to undergo surgical procedures if they want to identify within the binary. https://giphy.com/gifs/bollywood-indian-movie-gully-boy-3q3OBYZ7Jk8mvpkz2r “The NALSA judgment enabled trans people to be more vocal about our transness, but things on the ground haven’t changed much,” regretted Awasthy, an activist with over 15 years of experience. She recounted an incident where cops accused her of soliciting as she was walking down the road, just because of her non-conformity to the gender binary; at the time of this incident she was wearing a tee shirt and pants, while her hands were decorated with mehendi. They let her go after she told them about her background in the advocacy space and threatened to call other Hijra women, who would raise a hue and cry. But not everyone has the privilege to fight back. Awasthy spoke of trans-women being denied treatment by doctors, just because they are trans. “Trans women, who go to hospitals seeking medicines for common ailments like fever, are often rebuffed, for no fault of their own.” Health Professionals Need to Be Sensitised Gautam Ramchandra, a board member of the TWEET Foundation, had something similar to say. “When I was trying to onboard queer-affirmative doctors for a digita
