24-04-2025
Opinion What the UK can learn from India about trans rights and inclusive feminism
On April 16, the UK Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling in For Women Scotland Ltd v The Scottish Ministers, clarifying that the terms 'woman' and 'sex' in the Equality Act 2010 refer exclusively to biological sex assigned at birth. This interpretation allows organisations to lawfully exclude transgender women from single-sex spaces — such as hospital wards, shelters, and sports categories — even if they hold Gender Recognition Certificates (GRCs). Given the scope of the Equality Act, the ruling carries far-reaching implications for trans people in the UK.
This judgment is political in nature — it reverses hard-won protections and significantly affects how trans women access public spaces. Many trans people fear increased vulnerability in an already transphobic and patriarchal society. It is worth noting that anti-discrimination laws in the UK and India are structured quite differently. India does not have a comprehensive anti-discrimination law; constitutional rights are largely enforceable only against the state. However, certain provisions — such as the abolition of untouchability or prohibition of child labour — apply horizontally to private individuals. Article 15(2), for instance, ensures that no citizen can be denied access to shops, restaurants, hotels, or places of public entertainment on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex, or place of birth. This horizontal application can, at times, clash with the freedom of association, where individuals claim the liberty to exclude others based on personal conscience. While anti-discrimination bills have been proposed in India, none have been enacted. Nonetheless, the Supreme Court clarified in Kaushal Kishor v State of UP (2023) that constitutional silence on the horizontal application of rights should not be mistaken for prohibition — the state has a duty to protect citizens' rights and interests.
In the UK, the enthusiasm expressed by petitioners over the exclusion of trans women reveals much about the prevailing social climate. For example, many argue that allowing trans women to participate in women's sports is unfair. This 'common-sense' stance, often grounded in a narrow view of biology, reflects deep-seated prejudices. This issue was brought home to me by the Ultimate Frisbee team at the National Law School in Bengaluru, where the sport is played in a gender-inclusive format.
Curious, I turned to the work of Payoshni Mitra, an internationally recognised athlete rights activist who has campaigned against invasive sex-testing in sports. Mitra and her associates advocate a transformative approach to sports policy — one that affirms trans, intersex, and gender-diverse athletes instead of framing inclusion and fairness as mutually exclusive. Their work proposes four guiding principles: Lead with inclusion, decentre regulatory science, invest in community and youth sport, and double down on gender equity.
Zooming out, we must ask: Why are some feminists advocating the exclusion of trans people from the category of 'woman'? Feminist movements of the 1970s and 1980s helped us understand gender as a social construct and opened space for alternative forms of care, community, and resistance to binary thinking. So how did some radical feminists — many of them lesbian — become vocal opponents of trans inclusion, especially in the US and UK?
In her essay 'On Liking Women' (2018), Andrea Long Chu challenges the idea that this is simply a generational divide between older second-wave feminists and younger queer activists. Trans-exclusionary feminists, she argues, are often highly networked and active online, with a 'fascinating relationship to trolling.' Their insistence on defining gender strictly in terms of sex assigned at birth ignores the diversity of gender experience. Chu points out that trans women are not aspiring to become women — they are women. Reassignment surgeries are not only personal choices to feel comfortable in their body, but also about making universal claims on womanhood.
In India, feminists have largely refrained from excluding trans people from the category of 'woman.' Since the 1980s, the 'women question' has remained open-ended and contested. Across national autonomous women's conferences and women's studies forums, a singular or normative definition of 'woman' has been consistently challenged. As a result, the category has remained inclusive and self-reflective.
Feminists have also shown that under colonial law, 'woman' was never a uniform legal subject. In the revised edition of her landmark work Women and Colonial Law: A Feminist Social History (2025), Janaki Nair shows that women in India have always been internally differentiated by caste, class, region, and ethnicity. Legal discrimination does not impact all women equally. Feminists in India have often had ambivalent relationships with the law; some groups have questioned feminist involvement in pursuing criminalisation and punishment, seeking alternative modes of engagement and resistance.
Cultural historians, too, have highlighted how trans identities in India are often shaped not by law but by regional cultures and ritual practices. As Gayatri Reddy shows in With Respect to Sex (2005), hijra identity in South India cannot be reduced to legal categories like 'third gender'. Many hijras understand themselves through moral economies of izzat (honour), memories of religious importance, and past roles at the tomb of Prophet Mohammed.
The bonds of friendship between feminist queer people is apparent in Bengaluru, where trans persons — otherwise marginalised in public — have led queer mobilisation and have shaped the imagination and conscience of queer communities. Recently, I had the good fortune of documenting a series of 'townhalls' or open discussions organised by a non-funded queer peer group called All Sorts of Queer (ASQ) in Bengaluru, a 10-year-old, non-funded collective that began as a group for lesbian, bisexual, and transmasculine people assigned female at birth. Over time, it expanded to explicitly include non-binary individuals assigned female at birth. Recently, in response to questions about belonging and direction, ASQ hosted a series of 'townhall' discussions — online and offline — to reflect on identity, inclusion, and collective ethics. Rather than react to anonymous online criticism, the group chose dialogue, openness, and risk as a way to preserve trust and safety within the community. At a time when exclusion is often framed as protection, these collective practices of reflection, care, and solidarity remind us that the feminist and queer project has always been about expanding, not narrowing, the possibilities of belonging.
