Revathi: A Life in Trans Activism by A. Revathi, translated from the Tamil by Nandini Murali, Tilted Axis Press, 2024
In November 2024, Tilted Axis Press published Revathi: A Life In Trans Activism, the story of transfeminine writer, actress, and community organizer A. Revathi’s experience at the intersection of the radical hijra community and the more traditional non-governmental bureaucracy. This memoir, originally written in Tamil, spread profound awareness of the transfeminine community in India when it was released in 2011; now, it is accessible to the English-speaking audience via Nandini Murali’s translation. A. Revathi, no stranger to a less than trans-friendly political climate, first wrote this text to critique the nonprofit industrial complex—a system in which state-sanctioned institutions prop up hierarchies of power and control—and share her experiences in making her NGO more inclusive and liberatory. In the United States especially, where even explicitly gay and lesbian nonprofits are prone to neoliberalism and transphobia while centralized government can border on the fascistic, this book has never been a more necessary read.
As an organizer at the nonprofit Sangama, Revathi wasn’t expecting to feel the same sense of belonging that she did in her hijra community, a subculture of transfeminine organizers who were assigned male at birth, which had helped her realize her own gender identity. But when she worked with trans men for the first time, she discovered the kinship she felt with others across the gender spectrum. Saying that she “literally lived their lives” after conducting interviews about their needs surrounding resource access, she found herself questioning the concept of binary gender as a whole. While lamenting that she would never be seen as a participant in an idealized binary, she eventually declared that “we need to go beyond male/female distinctions and learn to look at people as humans,” a sentiment that was less than popular with the binary and even transmedicalist establishment in the nonprofit world.
The first chapter of Revathi, “Biology Is Not Destiny,” begins in childhood, the most essential site of trans becoming: “Who am I? This was a question I often asked myself even as a child. I know it is not common for children to ask such questions. But then I was no ordinary child.” Echoing Lee Edelman’s view that to be queer is to disrupt normative and linear ideas of childhood (a dynamic that subtly prompts homophobes’ insincere pleas to “think of the children”), Revathi shares that her self-guided introspection, along with her trans femininity, set her apart as a young girl. Born in a small village in Tamil Nadu, India, she gravitated toward stereotypically feminine activities, such as domestic labor and visual art, from an early age, preferring women’s clothing and the company of other girls. Given the male gender role she was pressured into, her peers and even her relatives viciously mocked her: “Some even teased me, ‘Are you a boy? Why do you walk like a girl? Why do you wear girl’s clothes?’ I had no ready retorts to their teasing. I knew deep down that I am indeed a girl.” Sexually harassed in her teen years by a predatory and hateful cisgender male teacher, Revathi felt unable to report the incident or seek out support, as there was very little awareness of the trans experience around her. However, she found solace in the theatric cultural traditions that her community embraced, a space in which she could present as feminine: “A group of boys from the village asked me if I would like to dress up as a kurathi (female gypsy) and go around the neighbourhood singing, dancing and collecting money for the temple. . . To the world it must have seemed that I was playing a woman, but inside, I felt I was a woman.” Soon after, she began to explore the hijra community, befriending the few trans women and feminine men in Namakkal. She then left home to live with other queer people in Delhi and pursue medical transition. Economically coerced into survival sex work by a society that offered very few resources for trans people, Revathi found some level of solace in the hijra community, but simultaneously felt limited by its rigid hierarchies. When she experienced transphobic harassment, both from her clients and from law enforcement, even her mentor did not offer adequate support; as a result, she pivoted to mentorship in her own regard, guiding three younger trans women as they pursued medical transition, hoping to bring more inclusion to her community.
Rather than the typical ambition and neoliberal allyship of young professionals in the nonprofit world, Revathi found her way to Sangama through her chosen family: “Famila and my two other chelas were aware of Sangama even before their operation. I was skeptical and hesitant to go. I had no belief in such things. Who will work for people like us? But since Famila insisted, I went just to please her.” At the event that she begrudgingly attended, Revathi was exposed to privilege within the queer community for the first time, meeting English-speaking cisgender gay men and realizing that their knowledge of the hijra community was minimal. In a more apolitical text, this chapter might end with a message about assimilation into a broader cause or perhaps a cautionary tale about the necessity of being respectable. However, Revathi shares how she saw a potential in the space to be intersectional and accepting for the hijra community, eventually choosing to work there as an advocate for transfeminine experiences.
Many of the staff at Sangama expressed a deep fear of trans communities, having never interacted with them on a personal level. Still, rather than being intimidated by their biases, Revathi began to question the gender binary as a whole: “I realized that people judge trans people solely by our appearances, which is misleading. For example, some trans women look manly but dress in a sari. While others look feminine but have a manly voice. Why do we believe that if you are a woman you must be small built, have a soft voice, look soft, have breasts, long hair, and dress modestly?” (80). Partially as a result of this experience, she went on to co-found another, smaller organization that focused on crisis support for the hijra community. This led her to eventually speak to the South Asian Court of Women on Violence and Trafficking about the unique struggles that trans women faced, and even write a memoir that raised unprecedented awareness of the trans experience.
Overall, Revathi’s story is not the usual rags-to-riches narrative that panders to cis comfort, in which an unpalatably queer person becomes respectable as soon as they join the nonprofit world; instead, it shows the inherent queerness of expropriating institutional resources, of using one’s platform to advance trans liberation. The translated nature leads to a simplified form of language, yet in context, the work reads as both humanizing and otherworldly, making a deeply unconventional narrative of transness feel natural, accessible, and right. At a time when trans people in the US face not only unprecedented repression but a mainly neoliberal nonprofit scene that focuses on the experience of cis gay men, this book has never been more necessary, offering a framework for trans reclamation and negation of the nonprofit industrial complex.
mk zariel {it/its} is a transmasculine poet, theater artist, movement journalist, & insurrectionary anarchist. it is fueled by folk-punk, Emma Goldman, and existential dread. it can be found online at https://linktr.ee/mkzariel, creating conflictually queer-anarchic spaces, and being mildly feral in the great lakes region. it is kinda gay ngl.
*****
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