It has only been three years that Meera Singhania Rehani says she has been ‘passing’ as a cis-woman, after her gender-affirmation surgery. During COVID-19, she still did not pass, considering how she still had facial hair—she could feel the suspecting gaze of people at metro stations, confused eyes trying to gauge her gender, mentally placing her in preordained boxes. After the surgery, these gazes shifted.
It is easy to identify someone by their gender and stamp stereotypical traits that come with that gender – all before writing them off as an actual person. This kind of gender stereotyping takes on a different shade when it comes to trans individuals. Particularly those who are able to present themselves in a way that aligns with their gender identity. This leads others to perceive them as the gender they identify as, rather than their assigned or presumed gender at birth. To put it simply: when a trans woman, whose assigned birth was male at birth, is perceived as a cisgender woman—it is commonly referred to as ‘gender passing.’
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“People started checking me out in a sexual, voyeuristic way not to a trans woman but as they would to a cis-woman, this was a complicated experience for me,” she told VICE. “I’ve seen this with others, too, who have faced systemic marginalization all their lives only to suddenly have this wave of validation come in, it’s affirming, yes, but it also opened a sort of darkness in me where I did not want to be this social justice warrior but just another flawed human being.”
In a moving essay for the queer publication Them. on trans visibility and invisibility on the basis of whether one passes or not, clinical psychotherapist Nat Vikitsreth writes that “your survival is valid. Your transness is valid. And both remain valid no matter the extent to which you let the world witness your brilliance.”
Mumbai-based Sushant Divgikr, whose drag persona goes by Rani KoHEnur, would prefer confusing and befuddling people, instead of focusing on whether they are passing as a man or a woman.
“Passing is what? Passing for whom? I love the androgyny and the confusion on their faces when they can’t place me. One day I could be wearing a loose t-shirt with makeup, which might be confusing. On another day, I could be decked up with a femme face only for them to realise there is no chest, they are confused again,” they said.
For Divgikr, it’s been a journey. They admit overthinking it all, often asking themselves if they were too trans, too femme, too butch. Now, straddling across a hue of genders is not only liberating but life-affirming.
Binaries of life and death
In India, where both public and psychological spaces are gendered—how one is perceived can not only affect the opportunities one gets but can also be a matter of life and death. In September 2021, a trans woman in Tamil Nadu was allegedly murdered by her brother who did not approve of her trans identity. India’s official crime record database, the National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB), only officially started keeping track of such gendered crimes against trans people after the passage of the Transgender Protection Act in 2019. Bollywood, for its part, also amplifies these stereotypes—particularly those specifically related to gender ‘passing.’ In Masti, a cult comedy film released in 2004, the lead character rinses his mouth after he realises that the ‘woman’ he kissed was actually trans. Beyond India’s transphobic borders, cases of mistaken gender identities cut both ways. Earlier this year, in the United States, a cis woman was murdered because her killer perceived her to be a trans woman.
In legalese, and in the real world, such perpetrators of violence against queer people often seek refuge in a legal strategy known as the ‘gay panic defence’ or ‘trans panic defence’—accusing queer people of somehow triggering or provoking them with their sexual or even non-sexual advances.
When one’s gender becomes forever linked to life itself, it can naturally lead to a narrowing of self—the person is less likely to go out, attend parties, or assert themselves in public spaces. To what extent does this take a toll on an individual who grapples with gender as an ominous shadow hovering over every aspect of their lives? Ruchi Ruuh, a queer-affirmative relationship counsellor told VICE that not passing can intensify gender dysphoria, which is the distress associated with the incongruence between one’s gender identity and physical appearance.
“A non-passing transgender individual may feel anxious about entering public spaces or interacting with others and this anxiety can also develop further into depression as the person might find it challenging to express themselves,” she said. “This feeling of isolation with the fear of judgement or discrimination can be daunting for some individuals, as social withdrawal can lead a person to find it difficult to form relationships and trust other individuals.”
Radicalising gender
Zainab Patel, an activist based in Mumbai whose story of self-determination and making it big in the corporate sector against all odds moved the Indian Supreme Court during the same-sex marriage equality hearings, told VICE on a Zoom call that ‘passing’ is an old-school term that still becomes part of the problem.
“To me, it is about how well you present yourself because ‘passing’ still somehow means you need to fit into someone’s notion of what they ascribe to as standards of acceptability of a particular gender,” she said. “Even historically, during the women’s rights movements back in the day, many women had to pass off as men to occupy spaces and opportunities traditionally occupied by men.”
A similar feeling experienced by Patel filtered into Rehani’s dates, too. She admits that there have been countless cases where her dates have not realised, even to this day, that she is a trans woman. Does she owe it to anyone to be transparent about it all? Not, really. And there are no parameters, either. “There are some people with whom I might not like revealing that part of me to strangers and I certainly do not subscribe to the idea that every trans person must share their transness with others, after all, gender is a part of me, not the whole of me,” she said.
In the docu-series Rainbow Rishta created by VICE Studios and Amazon Prime Video, streaming now on Prime which spotlights affirming stories of queer love, gender often becomes an entity in itself—a live organism that similarly hovers over love, the elephant in the room which must be subtly understood, not swept under the carpet. One of the most moving segments is that of Daniella, an intersex person with a history of abuse, who will not let their past colour their life anymore—instead living life with hope and love, genuinely believing that happiness must triumph over all, not letting the complexities of gender, gender passing or anything in between spoil their pursuit to a nourishing, fuller life.
This idea of reclaiming one’s life that we see beautifully manifested in the stories of Daniella, or even Aishwarya Ayushmaan, a human rights lawyer by the day who moonlights as a drag queen in the night, tells us that spaces cannot be given up to the heterosexual world order.
Divgikr, who has voiced the title track of the series, similarly oscillates between many registers while performing or during drag shows—they might start singing an Asha Bhosle song in a femme voice only to catch everyone off guard and switch things up to a coarse, masculine register. This approach comes from a deeper understanding of gender and how it’s linked to performance.
“I want to challenge the notion that if you’re wearing a saree, you only sing feminine songs. Why is that? I can choose to sing a Frank Sinatra or a Deep Purple song, too.”
For Zainab Patel, though, the realisation that no matter how much you pass or not is not enough for the world came early on.
“I came with really broad shoulders, thick torso and big hips and I would still consider myself ‘passable’ as a woman,” Patel says. “I started noticing that many cis-women also do not pass as women or male-presenting people do not necessarily pass as men. In my case, I consciously introduce myself as a trans woman, only to be told by others that I should just stick to introducing myself to others as a woman, not trans.”
Clearly, there is no getting around. For Patel, she will always be too trans, too feminine, and her shoulders too broad—often coming from people within the community itself. “When you look at the hijra community, typically, and speak to the leaders of the hijra community, the concept of wearing women’s clothes or getting ritually emasculated was a process of getting rid of one’s manliness. So, although they donned feminine clothes and makeup and jewellery, they did not necessarily call themselves women but simply as hijra or trans.”
This radical approach then begs the question: How can passing work in this scenario when the individuals themselves do not want to be associated with the binaries of gender? Not only does this example bring home the point of the irrelevance of gender in the eyes of many, but also shows us that gender can never be, and must never be, considered the sum total of an individual’s existence.
At the end of the day, gender remains strictly personal. Ruuh, the counsellor, too, explained that some individuals want to be perceived as trans because they want to be proud of their own acceptance and the work they have done, alleviating their gender dysphoria.
“Some may choose not to ‘blend in’ and use their passing privilege to educate and challenge stereotypes about gender identity, so there is no one-size-fits-all approach to navigating gender identity,” she said. “Many individuals have improved mental health with more acceptance for their passing as a cisgender person and others might find the reverse working best for their happiness and self-esteem.”
As a character in American transgender author Torrey Peters’s fireball of a novel, Detransition, Baby put it: “I got to a point where I thought I didn’t need to put up with the bullshit of gender in order to satisfy my sense of myself. I am trans, but I don’t need to do trans.”
