The Daily Populous Friday June 27th, 2025 night edition
Authored by thepinknews.com and submitted by FlyingScript

A court in India has decreed that trans women are women.

In a landmark ruling for the country, after rejecting claims that womanhood was preserved only for those who can bear children, the High Court of Andhra Pradesh ruled that trans women were “legally entitled” to recognition as women.

Presiding over the case, justice Venkata Jyothirmai Pratapa decided that tying the definition of women to pregnancy was “legally unsustainable” and contradicted India’s constitution, which emphasises equality before the law.

Quoting a Supreme Court decision from 2014, which legally recognised the rights of “third gender” individuals, Pratapa said that prohibiting trans women’s right to identify as women “amounted to discrimination”.

The case was brought to the high court in 2022 after transgender woman Pokala Shabana looked to use a section of the Indian penal code to seek protection from her in-laws, whom, she said, had been abusive towards her.

The court sided with trans women. (Getty)

Her husband’s parents petitioned the court to deny her use of Section 498A, which protects women from cruelty by a husband or relatives, arguing that it only applied to cisgender women. They claimed that trans women don’t meet the legal definition of women under Indian law because they cannot get pregnant and said Shabana’s allegations of harassment lacked evidence.

However, the judge said that articles 14, 15 and 21 of the constitution, which guarantee a variety of discrimination protections, including the right to life and personal liberty, meant trans women’s rights to be recognised as women superseded the law.

“A trans woman, born male and later transitioning to female, is legally entitled to recognition as a woman,” he wrote in his ruling. “Denying such protection by questioning their womanhood amounts to discrimination.”

Trans activist and artist Kalki Subramaniam told the Washington Blade that she was relieved and delighted to see the court “upholding our basic human right to be identified as what we want.” She went on to say: “For [the] transgender community, especially trans women, this verdict means a lot.”

The Indian government has been under mounting pressure to modernise its laws and policies on LGBTQ+ rights. Same-sex marriage is still illegal, despite growing support for its legalisation.

Prime minister Narendra Modi’s government have previously labelled same-sex marriage an “elitist” viewpoint that “seriously affects the interests of every citizen”.

An affidavit establishing the government’s views on same-sex unions, in 2023, proclaimed that marriage was valid only between “biological males and females [and that] this definition [was] socially, culturally and legally ingrained into the very idea and concept of marriage and ought not to be disturbed or diluted by judicial interpretation”.

Share your thoughts! Let us know in the comments below, and remember to keep the conversation respectful.

The_Amazing_Emu on June 26th, 2025 at 16:05 UTC »

They’ll get the same protection as other women in India?

DontBelieveTheirHype on June 26th, 2025 at 15:43 UTC »

Reading deeper into the article... it says this was petitioned because a trans woman wanted protection from abuse, but in Indian law that only applied to biological women - so that means men in India have no protection from abuse?

Own_Neighborhood_839 on June 26th, 2025 at 15:16 UTC »

it seems indians are more favorable to the trans community compared to the rest of the LGBTQIA+ community, most probably due to the historical context