{"id":33604,"date":"2018-10-30T13:12:06","date_gmt":"2018-10-30T07:42:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=33604"},"modified":"2018-10-30T13:12:06","modified_gmt":"2018-10-30T07:42:06","slug":"against-gender-rights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/against-gender-rights\/","title":{"rendered":"Against gender rights\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thehindu.com\/opinion\/op-ed\/against-gender-rights\/article21120545.ece\"><strong>Against gender rights<\/strong><\/a><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Context <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The decision to re-introduce the 2016 Bill on transgender rights makes a mockery of democratic norms<\/p>\n<p><strong>What has happened?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The transgender community and its allies have erupted in anger over the decision of the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment to re-introduce the original Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Bill, 2016 in the winter session of\u00a0Parliament.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Why the protest?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Despite resistance to the 2016 Bill followed by a year-long process to redraft it to reflect the demands of the community, the Ministry has taken the decision, and without a single change<\/p>\n<p><strong>Journey of the Bill<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>SC\u2019s recognises fundamental rights of transgender persons<\/strong>: Supreme Court in its landmark decision in NALSA v. Union of India as a victory recognised that transgender persons have fundamental rights<\/li>\n<li><strong>Private member\u2019s bill<\/strong>: The judgment was followed by a private member\u2019s Bill, <strong>the Rights of Transgender Persons Bill, 2014<\/strong>, which was unanimously passed in the Rajya Sabha<\/li>\n<li><strong>Rights of Transgender Persons Bill, 2015<\/strong>: Instead of introducing it in the Lok Sabha, the Ministry uploaded its own Bill, the Rights of Transgender Persons Bill, 2015, on its website in December for public comments\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Changes<\/strong>:The 2015 Bill, which was largely based on the 2014 Bill, did away with the national and State commissions for transgender persons and transgender rights courts<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The Bill was fairly progressive since it granted a transgender person the right to be identified as a \u2018man\u2019, \u2019woman\u2019 or \u2018transgender\u2019<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>A highly diluted version of the bill faces backlash<\/strong>: However, the 2016 Bill that was finally introduced in the Lok Sabha, came as a shock. A highly diluted version, it also pathologised transgender persons by defining them as \u201cpartly female or male; or a combination of female and male; or neither female nor male\u201d<\/li>\n<li><strong>Expert standing committee<\/strong>:Met with backlash, the Ministry set up an expert standing committee on social justice and empowerment to examine the Bill. The standing committee invited public comments and thereafter held multiple rounds of consultations<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Report of the committee<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Its report, released on July 22, 2017 criticised the 2016 Bill for its stark deficiencies<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>It recommended <strong>re-drafting the definition<\/strong> of a \u2018transgender person\u2019 to make it inclusive and accurate<\/li>\n<li>It further recommended <strong>providing for the definition of discrimination<\/strong> and setting up a grievance redress mechanism to address cases of discrimination; and granting reservations to transgender persons<\/li>\n<li><strong>Equal civil rights to Transgender persons<\/strong>: Its major recommendation was that the law must grant equal civil rights to transgender persons (marriage, divorce and adoption), thus opening the door for the legal system to take steps to undo its oppressive heteronormative (the presumption that heterosexuality is the norm) and cisgendered (the presumption that people\u2019s gender identity is aligned with their anatomical sex) foundation<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Reintroduction is against the policy<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The Ministry\u2019s decision to re-introduce the 2016 Bill disregards the pre-legislative consultative policy which requires Ministries to grant a minimum of 30 days for public comments and to place a summary of feedback\/comments received from the public\/other stakeholders on their website<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Against gender rights\u00a0 Context The decision to re-introduce the 2016 Bill on transgender rights makes a mockery of democratic norms What has happened? The transgender community and its allies have erupted in anger over the decision of the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment to re-introduce the original Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Bill, 2016&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/against-gender-rights\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Against gender rights\u00a0<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[555],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-test-1","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":{"total":0,"cached_at":"","cached_date":1704828772},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33604","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/61"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33604"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33604\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}