Dear Penguin Random House India,

We, concerned transgender people and our allies in India and abroad, write to express our urgent and deep outrage about journalist-author Nandini Krishnan’s latest book Invisible Men: Inside India’s Transmasculine Networks published by Penguin Random House India (henceforth Penguin India) on November 15th, 2018. In a context wherein transgender, intersex, and gender nonconforming communities in India are reeling from the Lok Sabha’s passing of the draconian Transgender (Protection of Rights) Bill 2018 (https://bit.ly/2V1KAfr ) the multiple recent hate crimes against trans persons, and the relentless dehumanization and misgendering of trans people in the media in the wake of such events (https://bit.ly/2BCTAk8 ) Krishnan’s book serves only to worsen the stigma and misunderstandings surrounding trans lives, rather than bringing them out of their alleged invisibility. We are appalled at not only the transphobic and unethical nature of the contents of the book, but also the seeming lack of due diligence and editorial oversight by Penguin India in its publication. For this and the reasons listed below, we collectively urge Penguin India to withdraw this book from shelves all over India, and cease promotion of the author and the book.

First, Invisible Men begins with a terrible foreword by writer-journalist Manu Joseph, a heterosexual, cisgender man with no track record of working with LGBTQIA+ communities in India. Joseph speaks of trans men in acutely objectifying and feminizing ways, referring to trans men as “women” seeking to “liberate themselves from their gorgeous female shape” and “fix agonizing penises”. Such ignorant and fetishistic commentary serves to undo decades of work done by trans activists and scholars the world over, who have inarguably shown that gender identity is not reducible to biology, and that the desire to transition is not one of mimicking some notion of an “original” or “real” (male) biological sex. Manu Joseph’s framework of transition as a “fixing” of angsty trans anatomies is just one among several examples of retrogressive claims in this Foreword. He describes transwomen as “muscular eunuchs” and as “men who strive to become women“ while to him transmen are “women who wish to become men”. He grandly declares that “gender is not a spectrum” and that those of us who disagree are charlatans. We thus consider the Foreword to be full of misinformation that is dangerous for transgender and gender nonconforming people. Additionally, Penguin India’s endorsement of Joseph’s sleazy and sexist Foreword in spite of the lessons delivered by the #MeToo movement, demonstrates how out of touch and contemptuous the publisher is of issues pertaining to gender justice in India.

Second, the book violates the dignity and privacy of several trans men in ways that have proven to be harmful to the interviewees, while also setting an extremely worrying precedent for future journalistic and non-fiction writing about transgender people. The author’s own understanding of gender is quite poor and her narrative repeatedly misgenders trans men. The author directly uses interviewees’ deadnames (pg.34, 140, 182, 185, 188, 227, 400, 402-403) and misgenders them with respect to pronouns. She routinely evaluates trans men - their bodies, voices, mannerisms - for femininity, for immaturity, to see if they pass her subjective tests to be allowed to be seen as male (pg. 40, 47, 66, 109-110, 112, 138, 151, 171, 208, 211, 227, 286, 296, 360, 392, 397-398, 407, 412, 422-423, 433), persistently inquires about why certain surgeries have or have not been undergone by the interviewees (pg. 12-14, 41, 116-117, 120, 124, 129, 133, 138, 166, 179, 204, 212-213, 245, 266, 323-325, 397, 405-406, 412-414, 441), and insistently probes interviewees with regard to menstruation (pg. 14, 103-104, 249, 360, 376, 400). While within the context of extended journalist-interviewee interactions, participants may reveal such information upon inquiry (although, see below for the interviewees’ direct testimonies about the violation of consent by Krishnan), the author’s obsessive focus on the biology of trans men is what is under discussion here. Krishnan phobicly circumscribes trans-ness as a failed attempt at real gender – never enough unless the right surgeries have been performed, never escaping socially and biologically ascribed gender markers, and so on. The misgendering is perhaps most stark in Krishnan's drawing of Shikhandi as a man with W shaped genitals - presumably a vagina. This crudeness is beyond disrespectful. Other illustrations also focus on showing trans men as having the bodies of women, including even the cover of the book. Many trans men have never ever identified as anything but men or boys, have never looked like that cover page, and have certainly never wanted to be represented by such an image. In other words, the author’s voyeuristic and condescending approach to transgender men directly contradicts their self-determination and renders them into perpetual objects of cisgender scrutiny. Regardless of individual consent, such a biologically deterministic and voyeuristic approach to trans men’s bodies is precisely what ratifies and emboldens mass media’s violations of trans, gender nonconforming and intersex people’s privacy. Let us not forget the public humiliation of gender nonconforming athletes Pinky Pramanik and Santhi Soundarajan (just two examples of the routinized sensationalisation of gender variance) that cost them their careers. A book published by Penguin India should do better than participate in this predatory media culture.

Third, the author repeatedly insists upon using a Brahminical and Hindu mythological lens as the interpretive framework for transgender subjectivity and embodiment. Imposing such a religion-based genealogy is factually dubious and has little to no bearing on the treatment and lived experiences of trans men in society. What is even more egregious is the forcing of such a lens onto non-Hindu communities of trans men (for example this group of Manipuri trans men https://bit.ly/2GE1Bsv ) thereby erasing the tremendous social, religious and political diversity of trans communities in India. The chapter on Manipuri nupa maanba (trans men) has already been debunked by the Manipuri trans community as a misrepresentation and erasure of the state’s indigenous and tribal cultures. Penguin India should on no account be lending its imprimatur to such majoritarian arrogance. 

Lastly, throughout the text, Krishnan’s interpretations of trans men’s behaviour rely on a series of harmful and false equivalencies between trans men and cis men’s lives that at times ignore and at others contradict her own observations about the ubiquitous discrimination and violence experienced by trans men at the hands of cisgender men (and women for that matter). She asks several interviewees leading questions to portray them as sexist and thereby trap them within a victim or villain binary. On the basis of such thin anecdotal evidence of her own creation, she then generalises and indicts the entire community. At one point she even baselessly accuses all trans men of being “more susceptible” to sexist attitudes than cisgender men! The book is littered with such ignorant generalizations by Krishnan, masquerading as thoughtful questions and provocative ideas about gender relations. That Penguin India would endorse such defamatory content is not only lamentable, but also legally actionable by the interviewees and trans men communities at large.

Several trans men have attempted to engage Nandini Krishnan about these problems, and have been falsely accused by her of not having read the text. When confronted with critiques of specific quotes from the book, the author has dubbed trans men as “trolls” and refused to engage us, citing our righteous anger and tone as the real issue instead. She has unequivocally stood by the phobic Foreword written by Manu Joseph despite being alerted about how that section alone has triggered distress and dysphoria in so many trans men. All these tactics employed by Nandini Krishnan amount to silencing, dismissing, and defaming India’s trans men communities, even as the author herself is gaining fame and profit within cisgender literary and academic circles. 

It is clear from the rushed timeline of the book and the shoddily spliced together chapters – some of which are comprised almost entirely of the intellectual labor of certain trans men (in the form of their original thoughts, speeches and writings) with minimal contribution by Krishnan herself – that the goal of this author and her book has been to capitalize on trans men’s stories at a time when trans issues are receiving some attention in the Indian media. We consider Penguin India’s contribution in promoting such an ignorant author to be deeply unethical.

We hold Penguin India responsible for not doing its due diligence of vetting the author on her ability to portray trans people in an informed, ethical way. As many of the courageous men, whose lives and stories have made Invisible Men possible, have testified in this article (https://bit.ly/2SsRsFg ) and the video embedded in it (https://bit.ly/2tyhCIJ ), Nandini Krishnan has breached her interviewees’ trust and privacy, and violated their consent within the book as well as in the afterlife of its publication. Krishnan has taken seriously problematic liberties with some of the working class, dalit, adivasi and bahujan interviewees who were interviewed in non-English languages. The book features not just their formal interviews, which were the only thing they felt would be used in the book, but also features their informal interactions with their friends and partners to which she was privy in good faith - but for which explicit consent was never sought and thus they never imagined would make it into the book. This puts such partners and friends’ privacy into serious jeopardy as some of them are not open as community members. As detailed in the video, Krishnan has included quotes that were uttered off the record - consent for which was either never acquired, or never properly explained/translated from English for the interviewees. She has used several trans men’s deadnames either explicitly against their will or at the very least by ignoring the private, off-the-record nature of some of the things they shared. Such abuse of English language fluency and violation of research ethics is appalling and unacceptable in a book published by Penguin India.

It is the interviewees and ours, the larger transgender, gender nonconforming and intersex communities’ and our allies’ demand that Penguin India withdraw this book. It would serve your publication house well to note that the harm inflicted by this book is not merely that of offense and hurt feelings (which themselves should have been enough for the author to feel remorse and issue an apology), but more gravely that of a breach of the interviewees’ consent, violation of privacy, defamation, and endangerment of livelihood. Our aim is not to stifle the author's freedom of speech, but rather to hold her and Penguin India accountable for the irrevocable harm already done unto the interviewees in the book, and to the trans community in general. Should the interviewees seek legal action against the publisher and the author, the larger LGBTQIA+ community will fully support them in that process. We hope, however, that Penguin Random House India will withdraw this book before such steps need to be taken. The creation and dissemination of knowledge is not a privilege one can enjoy without being accountable, but also a huge responsibility. We look to you to carry out your responsibilities to our communities, your readers, with the integrity and immediacy we are owed.