‘No support from family, friends’

Bhartesh Singh Thakur

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, January 28

A PU study on transgenders has found that most of them are abandoned by their families and friends and receive no support from their biological parents.

Squadron Leader Mandeep Kaur Chawla (retd) of UILS interviewed 52 transgenders. Among them, 31% were illiterate, 27% had basic education, 12% were matriculate and 15% were intermediate. Only 15% in the sample were graduate and above.

According to the study, 86.5% of transgenders reported that there was no family support after their identification as transgender in childhood. The study revealed that 84.6% felt there was no maintenance of ties and relations with family, while an equal percentage reported that support from old friends had vanished.

More than 67% transgenders reported that the family did not accept their gender identity, while 28.8 % said family discriminated and ill treated them. “Considering being transgender as a disease, sense of embarrassment to family, family not accepting cross dressing and family itself evicting them are the other reasons,” said Squadron Leader Chawla.

The data also revealed that most of the transgenders were not given their share in the family property.

As many as 48 transgenders (92.3%) have Aadhaar cards, but only 28.8% declared themselves as transgenders in Aadhaar cards. “Discrimination against transgenders is so rampant that they don’t want to take any chance and declare in the vital identity document that they belong to the marginalised group. Fear, shame and non-acceptance by society are some of the other reasons cited by them,” said Chawla.

Access to govt hospitals

An average transgender belongs to low or lower middle income group so government hospitals are the only refuge for the majority of the community. The study found that 75% of transgenders in the sample said government hospitals were difficult to access and 9.6% responded that they were very difficult to access. However, over 15% said they were easily accessible to them.

The study found that 79% of transgenders responded that HIV infection was prevalent in the community, but the rate was not very high, while 19% said that it was high.