Let’s go back to 2020 when the Covid-19 pandemic became a global public health emergency. While some may now feel a certain level of detachment from that time, for many others, the recollection of that period only serves as a reminder of enormous pain and grief. In the wake of the pandemic, while the world navigated the halting of normal life, there were communities forgotten by policymakers and ordinary people alike. In India, one such group was the transgender and gender-diverse (TGD) community.

The TGD community has historically existed at the socio-economic margins of Indian society. Some members—like the Hijra people—have a designated cultural role. Their presence is considered sacred and they are expected to confer blessings and good wishes on newborns and newlyweds. Despite their divine status, they are also discriminated against and ostracised, sometimes by the same people who, when convenient, give them godly status.

During the pandemic, the TGD community became an afterthought for healthcare systems, policymakers, and society at large. Many lost their livelihoods and were forcibly displaced, leaving them to navigate a food and housing crisis. Accessing life-saving gender-affirmative healthcare and COVID-19 vaccines was made impossible for them due to systemic barriers like mobility, financial capacity, and visible discrimination at police checkpoints and in health institutions.

The welfare schemes that were rolled out as a response to the pandemic were rooted in an archaic sex-gender binary that many times ignored the TGD community. The Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment offered financial aid of INR 1500 as a “subsistence allowance” for transgender persons. However, it remained out of reach for many. Picture this: you are promised aid and told that all you have to do is fill out a form online and submit some documents. But due to pre-existing structural barriers, you don’t have government-issued identification or a bank account, you don’t speak Hindi or English and therefore have reduced access to digital spaces. What are you supposed to do?

And this scenario doesn’t even account for the additional barriers created by disabilities, chronic illnesses, and caste discrimination.

A lesser-known theme from this period is how acts of mutual aid helped the community survive the pandemic. Drawing from a long history of organising and kinship, members of the TGD community across the country pooled resources and started peer support efforts to strengthen systems of care and interdependence. 

This manifested in initiatives like vaccination drives exclusively targeting the community, distribution of rations within trusted networks, and setting up community kitchens. Additionally, community members being able to offer each other emotional and mental support was crucial in coping with the harm that came with the pandemic. This mutual aid was a resistance strategy to both the pandemic and the systems that were neglecting our needs. 

Today, when we look back at narratives of the pandemic, it is clear that there has been an attempt by the mainstream political systems and the media to repackage the reality of the TGD community as “resilience.” Those who have somehow managed to live past the viral strains as well as systemic oppression, have been canonised as “survivors.” 

What are they the survivors of? The pandemic or the failing health system and policy infrastructure at the time that aided their marginalisation? 

It is a futile task to even begin to hold the state accountable. This isn’t the first time a marginalised group has organised to safeguard itself and assumed the responsibility that was originally the state’s. This isn't the first time that the TGD community’s mutual aid has been placed on a pedestal and lauded without a parallel critical inquiry into why a community that faces structural marginalisation was abandoned to its fate in a time of crisis, to begin with. Sadly, it is not going to be the last. 

The pandemic was a mass disabling event. Its consequences are still felt in the form of long Covid and the continued disenfranchisement of the TGD community much like that of many others. This impact does not exist in a silo but is an addition to the pre-existing stressors that the community has faced for decades. Yet whenever the community attempts to speak of policy reform, the role of the state and popular culture, resilience is the only theme that people in the mainstream seem to care about. 

Resilience as a concept within community settings has been historically used to denote the ability of a group to effectively bounce back from a crisis. Ideally, resilience would include a preparedness strategy that a group employs to safeguard their communities and sustain themselves beyond the crisis. But in reality, however, the term seems to have been bastardised and reduced to the bare minimum survival of communities despite systemic neglect. 

Ask yourself this question: Why is it that every time a tragedy occurs, we pat the backs of those who made it through and not look at the systems that caused that tragedy? 

Does the answer lie in the popular obsession with positive narratives of overcoming hardships? Or is it because we, as a society, are so habituated to being disenfranchised that when the ‘Other’ manages to make it through, we feel a sense of victory and joy? 

In any case, we affirm that stories of resilience are important as tools of hope for an individual or a community to hold on to. They stand as something tangible that serves as a reminder that life after tragedy, loss, illness, and harm can still have joy in it. In moments of despair, resilience brings the community together. 

However, it is vital to note who is telling these stories of resilience. Older members of the TGD community engage with these narratives as a way of showing the young members that life is worth living. When trans and gender-diverse people are not the storytellers, this resilience is weaponized by the majority to justify the harm they have faced and continue to face. It is used as a commercial selling point where the community has no autonomy over the narrative and continues to become a spectacle in popular culture. 

Thus, resilience is turned into something pornographic in a way where the mainstream audience feels shame in looking at the people affected, yet they are drawn to it to satisfy their curiosity and need for awareness.

We believe that it is time to move beyond resilience pornography. It is time to imagine a world built by the labour of the TGD community, one where trans and gender-diverse people are not celebrated for their survival but for the ways in which they thrive. 

In the current moment, both locally and globally, the future remains uncertain while their fight for collective liberation continues. So we call upon you, the person reading this piece, to join us in envisioning this world where trans and gender-diverse people thrive, where we all partake in critiquing and unsettling the systems which continue to fail the community. It is not an easy task and we recognise that. But liberation begins with ideas like these, ones that look towards the future and dream of a world yet to be made. 

‍

‍