A talk by Katherine Pratt Ewing on her paper co-authored with Baishakhi Taylor
"From Man to Woman: The Trans Self as Moral Exemplar in Bengali Public Life"
Paper to be presented at the Columbia South Asia University Seminar, October 23, 2023
Time: 6:00pm - 8:00pm
Location: Faculty House, East Campus
Directions: https://facultyhouse.columbia.edu/content/directions
Abstact: Our selves are formed in the mirrors of the social world and through empathic bonds of acceptance and warmth with the people who share our everyday lives. We consider the struggles of two people who have undergone sex realignment surgery to become middle-class women yet have maintained public identities as transgendered in order to serve as moral exemplars for this stigmatized minority in Kolkata, India. Manabi Bandyopadhyay serves as Vice Chair-Person of the West Bengal Trangender Persons Development Board, offers many newspaper and TV interviews in which she narrates aspects of her life story, and even braved the stresses of an all-too-brief stint on the reality TV show Bigg Boss Bangla to increase public acceptance of people who transition. Ranjita Sinha is an active advocate for third gender rights who in 1996 began a community-based organization (CBO) for transgender people; campaigns for equal access to health, jobs and education; and in 2023 was included in a Templeton Foundation-funded study of 100 moral exemplars across the world sponsored by California State University. These two have publicly transitioned from man to woman during a time of dramatic social, legal, and political changes in the political and legal situation of transgendered persons in India, and they actively seek to change the social mirrors in which they are reflected. At the same time, they navigate tensions between their publicly presented life stories and often difficult interpersonal relationships that show persistent evidence of a profound but historically contingent gap produced by the ways that they unsettle sexual difference and disrupt social mirrors of the self.
Katherine Pratt Ewing is Professor of Religion and Director of the South Asia Institute at Columbia University.
Baishakhi Taylor is Associate Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs at NYU Abu Dhabi.
