Padmini Prakash is India’s first transgender news anchor

The United States isn’t the only place experiencing something of a cultural transgender revolution. It’s happening in India, too, where the country recently witnessed a broadcast by Padmini Prakash.

Prakash, 31, is India’s first transgender news anchor. She works at the Tamil language channel based in Coimbatore in the state of Tamil Nadu.

She’s done all sorts of work — everything from transgender rights activism to teaching dance to acting in a soap opera to competing in transgender beauty pageants. Prakash worked for Lotus News, based in Coimbatore for about a month before she was promoted in August to anchor its 7 p.m. broadcast. Read More 

15 Responses To The Question: “What Does The Word ‘Queer’ Mean To You?”

Fifteen people in their 20s and 30s describe what 'queer' means to them.

“Queer is what you make it.”
“I know many people use ‘queer’ as an umbrella term, and I understand why they do, but I think it’s really reductive to forget that while it may be an umbrella term for some, it’s very specific for others. Queer is what you make of it — and, for me, being queer means that my sexuality is not fixed, that it can evolve over years and that I can be sexually and romantically attracted to various degrees to the spectrum of gender identities that exist. When people ask me what my sexuality is, I say queer, and if they don’t know what that means, I’ll say that I don’t label my sexuality at all — I have a very complicated relationship with the term ‘bisexual’ because of the associations of promiscuity that my LGBT-phobic straight peers attached to it. In that instance, bisexual felt like a word that I could not control in my own social circles. Queer feels like a term that I can make my own.” —Andrea Garcìa-Vargas, 23

Read them all

Meet Television’s Groundbreaking Intersex Character

In the Season 2 premiere of MTV’s Faking It, which explores the spectrum of sexuality, a main character reveals that she was born with an intersex condition. Here’s what went into that decision — and why it was so important to get it right. Read More

Brazil schoolboys wear skirts to support trans classmate

A group of boys at São Cristóvão do Colégio Pedro II high school in Rio de Janeiro wore skirts to class after a transgender student was fined for breaking the school's dress code. Seventeen-year-old Maria Munez, born Mario Munez, recently came out as transgender by wearing a skirt to school but was fined for not wearing trousers. Read More

Nearly 300 Latin American, Caribbean LGBT advocates attend Peru meeting

The Gay and Lesbian Victory Institute co-organized what it described as the “first-ever gathering of LGBT political leaders” from the region alongside Promsex and Caribe Afirmativo, LGBT advocacy groups from Peru and Colombia respectively. Gay and Lesbian Victory Institute President Chuck Wolfe said:

“The LGBT community is global, and there is a growing need for out people around the world to become engaged as public leaders in their own communities.” Read More 

Bestselling author calls India's colonial anti-gay law ‘our collective sin’

Author Chetan Bhagat has spoken about India’s anti-gay law to say that it contradicts the country’s culture:

"Section 377 is not an Indian law but an inheritance of British law. The same law existed in over 40 colonies of the British empire. Most have junked or modified it to decriminalise homosexuality.

We have held on to it as if it is part of India’s cultural heritage, whereas it is nothing but a relic of an unscientific, Victorian past. Of course, the final question is this: Why should the selfish, non-homosexual, growth-seeking Indian care? Well, we should." Read More 

First member of Chile’s armed forces comes out to fight homophobia

Member of the Chilean Navy, 24-year-old Mauricio Ruiz has come out as gay and says his superiors support him. He told the press conference that, as a gay man in the armed forces, he had ‘no reason to hide.’ ‘In life there's nothing better than to be yourself, to be authentic, to look at people in the eye and for those people to know who you are.’ Read More

Out and Proud Gay Kenyans

As part of an ongoing series looking at gay rights around the world, DailyXtra talks with one of Kenya’s highest profile LGBT activists. Monica Mbura is a Kenyan judge who is one of the few out lesbians in the country. Watch Now 

90% of China young people accept gays

An overwhelming majority of Chinese young people are fine with gay people, according to a recent survey conducted by internet giant Baidu, the Chinese version of Google and Wikipedia, and asked 7,000 internets users born in the 1990s their views on love, friendship, consumption, family and employment. Read More

Hong Kong holds its first ever international symposium on LGBTI rights

York Chow, chairperson of Hong Kong Equal Opportunities Commission, said "In mapping out our approaches to promote LGBTI rights, we should look at what has been done in other jurisdictions. This symposium is an important opportunity for mutual learning, with the goal to achieve equal opportunities for sexual and transgender minorities." Read More

Europe's terrible trans rights record: will Denmark's new law spark change?

Denmark has become the first European country to allow legal change of gender without a medical expert statement. In one leap, Denmark has changed its law on trans rights, taking it from a country where transgender people were forced to undergo sterilisation in order to be legally recognised as a different gender, to one of the most progressive countries on the issue in the world. 

Unlike in most of the countries that allow new gender recognition, trans people in Denmark now do not even need a medical expert statement, but can simply self-determine. But there are still 20 European countries where sterilisation is a requirement, including much of Eastern Europe. Read More