Dr. Trinetra Haldar Gummaraju doesn’t care what names you have called her in the past. She only insists that now you call her doctor. One of Karnataka’s first trans women medical doctor's life is an essay in overcoming the odds that seemed forever stacked against her. Here is her story.
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00:00You have called me a lot of names, you know, my entire life, but this day forward you will call me doctor.
00:30As I transitioned in medical school, as I came out to people and as I realized, you
00:43know, how healthcare works for the transgender community in India, I realized that there
00:48is such a gaping hole.
00:50We really don't get the healthcare that we deserve, be it with gender affirming surgery,
00:55gender affirming therapy of any kind, including psychological counseling, including dermatological
01:01services, you know, and including a lot more specialized sort of healthcare.
01:07We don't get even the bare minimum.
01:09I realized that I would like to help and ensure that that, you know, lacuna is filled.
01:20When did you realize that you were heterosexual or when did you realize that you were cisgender
01:25or not transgender?
01:26The best thing that we can do is ask society instead, that when did you know that it was
01:32okay to make a child feel like they were a circus animal instead of asking us, when did
01:38you know you were different?
01:39We should be asking people around, we should be asking teachers and parents, and when did
01:45you know it was okay to treat a child like they were so different?
01:52When I was about three or four years old, I was very comfortable calling myself a girl.
01:58I was very comfortable experimenting with stereotypically feminine gender roles.
02:04My mom would dress me up in her jewelry, in her makeup, and I loved it.
02:12I think everybody around me realized that I was in fact more comfortable, you know,
02:18identifying and expressing myself as a girl.
02:22And that was a social emergency, you know, that people were like, okay, what do we do
02:27about this now?
02:30And that's when I started getting teased, bullied for it.
02:34You know, this neighbor would come and tell me that I should not be this shame to my family
02:40and to my parents.
02:41So it wasn't some intrinsic visceral epiphany that we have that, okay, you know, we are
02:46not like everybody else.
02:48It is when people come to us and discriminate against us that we realize that we don't belong.
02:58When I was about 10 years old, I saw a psychiatrist who was not trained to handle this because
03:03my parents had taken me to her actually.
03:06And she told me that something was wrong with me because I was not spending enough time
03:12with a masculine influence in my life.
03:14I was behaving in a very feminine way.
03:17So it was quite disheartening to hear that from a doctor.
03:22And even from the best of doctors, you hear similar things.
03:26So I would really like to change that for, you know, the generations to come.
03:31I want no transgender person to go through that ever.
03:48I was assigned male at birth, but my gender identity was always female.
03:54I always identified as a girl.
03:56So, you know, that mismatch between assigned gender and identified gender can be called
04:01gender incongruence.
04:02And that gender incongruence gives a lot of discomfort to a lot of people, physical, emotional,
04:08psychological, and for many others, the discomfort is not very severe.
04:13So depending on how severe the discomfort is, you know, there are a variety of options
04:19that a transgender person has in order to feel comfortable with their identity.
04:24And that may include legal changes, social changes, medical and surgical changes, or
04:29sometimes next to no changes at all.
04:32It really depends from person to person.
04:35Because I was an easy target for them, because I was very different from all of the other
04:48boys, right?
04:49It was so easy for them to pick on me, to beat me up, to sexually harass, to molest,
04:55and basically do whatever they wanted.
04:58And there were people in school, there were teachers in school that played along and just
05:03pretended like nothing was happening.
05:05There were people in the apartment complex.
05:07It was just happening from every direction.
05:10There were teachers who would throw me out of class for dressing a certain way.
05:13There were friends that thought I was just asking for attention.
05:17And there were a lot of trolls online, you know, so there was a lot of bullying and harassment
05:22that came my way because I was different.
05:34It took a long time to sort of make my peace with the fact that if I were to come out of
05:39the closet, if I were to live my life in an authentic kind of way, then there will always
05:44be people who will say things.
05:46And I have to sort of be strong there and, you know, empower both myself and the entire
05:53community.
05:54Once you get to a certain point in your life where you are completely sure of who you are,
05:59where you will not take nonsense from people, people really are intimidated by that, you know.
06:06And I enjoy that.
06:08I really enjoy that people are now scared to say things because I do experience that.
06:14Because of my social media following, because of who I've become and who I am becoming,
06:20people do think twice before they say something or before they do something.
06:25That's a huge step forward in my life.
06:28You have called me a lot of names, you know, my entire life.
06:31But this day forward, you will call me doctor.
06:34And that is the day that I kept working towards.
06:37And I'm so glad that it's finally happened.