Double blows of Article 370 abrogation, pandemic push Kashmiri trans women to take up sex work
The community’s traditional work of singing and dancing at weddings and matchmaking has dwindled, while stigma makes it difficult to find other jobs.
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Three years ago, Khushi, a 21-year-old trans woman, was sitting by the Dal Lake in Srinagar with her friend when an elderly man approached with an offer: “5,000 rupees for sex?”
In a rage, Khushi said she slapped him and a tussle broke out. “People were laughing and shooting videos, but none of them supported us,” she recalled. The lack of support still haunts her but she has made peace with the stigmatisation that the trans community faces in Kashmiri society.
As an amateur make-up artist, Khushi was financially independent before the August 2019 clampdown, after the abrogation of Jammu and Kashmir’s special status, disrupted her business. Then the restrictions of the Covid-19 pandemic hit. For a year, Khushi lived off of her savings and small loans and worked as a daily-wage labourer in Srinagar. “I bought flour on debt. We had only tea and roti thrice a day to beat the hunger,” she said. “But soon we had nothing to eat.”
By the summer of 2020, she was out of job options. Helpless, Khushi ventured into the capital’s Sanatnagar area one evening with Noor*, her friend and a sex worker by profession, looking for her first client.
The transgender community’s source of livelihood has already shrunk and...
