India has a long history of transgender people, with the transfeminine population often known as hijra. However in the caste system, the hijra were normally seen as the lowest of the low and were therefore shunned, shuttered away and kept silent. However in recent years they’ve found more of a voice, including getting official recognition of a third gender (which is what many of them identify as).
Now this growing voice has seen some of them out on the streets protesting a movie called I, from the popular director Shankar Shanmugham.
As reported by Gay Star News, ‘In the offending scene, a transgender make-up artist played by Ojas Rajini makes overtly sexual advances on the lead actor Vikram, who rebuffs her after finding out her gender identity. He then sings and dances around her while she suggestively eats a sausage and she joins the villains to plot her revenge.’
Anger at the offending scenes resulted in 35 transgender activists gathering outside the offices of the Censor Board offices demanding an apology and the removal of the scenes.
“We want Shankar to remove those scenes from the film. It belittles our community,” transgender TV personality Rose Venkatesan told the Indo-Asian News Service. “The way Shankar has portrayed Ojas’s character makes us look like some sex-starved individuals.”
The protests have had the effect of generating real controversy and even caused the director to hire police protection after protesters staged sit-ins outside his house.
However the actor who played the controversial role, Ojas Rajani, has defended both the director and the movie, releasing a statement saying, “Shankar didn’t try to demean my character of a transgender. In fact, he shot it so aesthetically that it doesn’t offend anybody, including the transgender community. It’s just part of a story of the film and I requested everybody to not get offended.”
The offending scenes sound similar to the way gay people have previously been presented in many western films – both as figures of fun and as sexually incontinent – but which thankfully most of the time we’ve moved past. However it looks like in India there’s still a way to go for the depiction of transgender people.
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