Sex Identity vs. Sexual Orientation: Understanding Transgender Category in India

Abstract

Emancipation and equality for the sexuality minorities in India is no longer a distant dream while taking into account the recent developments. The period of June- July 2009 drew the attention of academics, social activists and policy makers across India to the issues of sexuality minorities. During this period, their protests against discrimination were widely flashed in leading national dailies. The Delhi High Court legalized gay sex on July 2nd 2009 by declaring that the section 377, which criminalized some sexual acts of adults in private, though consensual in nature. It said that section 377 violated the fundamental right to live with freedom and equality guaranteed in the Indian constitution. It is indeed a landmark judgment enabling the third gender to exercise their rights. One can also understand that the Government of India is also cognizant of this trend. The Union Home Ministry claims that the section 377 of the Indian Penal Code defining ‘unnatural sex’ is an ‘absurdity in the present day’. Besides, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and the Ministry of Law called for an extensive public debate on this issue and stressed the importance of making the public understand and accept the changes proposed in the law and its repercussions if any. This paper attempts to analyze the conceptual problems in defining transgender and homosexual categories and tries to arrive at a conclusion based on a good deal of reasoning, which corroborates the claim that transgender people are to be differentiated from homosexuals and the liberation of the former would precede the latter.

Keywords: Transgender, Homosexuality, Hijras, Sex Identity, Sexual Orientation

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