#Born Perfect – It’s simply how we are

April 4, 2024

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How does it feel to be born differently? How does it feel to grow up without fully knowing who you are, and how to connect with others? How does it feel to finally be able to proudly stand by yourself and say “I am perfect!”? All of that can be answered through “Born Perfect”, a new digital campaign, led by Aanandh, one of the young activists who graduated from Intersex Asia’s Fellowship program, in partnership with Intersex Asia and Dalit Queer Project. The campaign aims to shed more light on the lives and activism of intersex individuals in India, and from that, advocate for the rights of intersex individuals.

We had a chance to sit down with Aanandh, listen to his story, and better understand the motivation behind his long journey, from struggling to understand his identity to leading his first digital campaign for the intersex community in India.

Q1: Hello Aanandh, it’s great to be able to chat with you finally! Can you tell us about yourself, and how you found your identity and engaged with the Intersex movement?

I am Aanandh, an Intersex Transman from Kochi, Kerala. I was born with what they call “ambiguous genitalia”, and it was a blessing for me that my parents and a doctor decided to not perform surgery and raise me in a gender-neutral way until I grew up and decided the gender on my own. After my encounter with Dalit activist Sathy Angamaly and later Dr. Rekha Raj and Sahayatrika in 2015, I learned about my identity and officially became an activist. I’ve passionately shaped the landscape of the Intersex and transgender community in India. Since then, I’ve been a driving force in advocating for the rights and well-being of my fellow transgender and Intersex individuals. I also served on the Transgender Justice Board in Kerala since 2015.

In 2021, I became the first Intersex person to run for Lok Sabha elections, earning recognition as one of the most influential Dalit individuals by Outlook magazine. I’ve also graduated from the Fellowship program of Intersex Asia in 2022, fulfilling a vital role as a peer counselor, while completing the bachelor’s degree in Electronics and a Master’s degree in Theatre. My advocacy and educational achievements were honored with the prestigious Kerala State Transgender Excellence Award in October 2022, which further solidified my passion, and pioneering status in the transgender and LGBTQ+ rights movement. Currently, I am pursuing a one-year course in Management and Entrepreneurship from Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai.

Q2: Wow, that’s a lot of achievements. You are truly a beacon of inspiration to the community. Recently, your “Born Perfect” campaign has gained quite a lot of attraction. Can you tell us more about it?

Sure! “Born Perfect” is a social media campaign that aims to shed light on the life and activism of Intersex individuals. I chose the campaign name #BornPerfect because being intersex is stigmatized and there is still a social taboo around it. Intersex people are considered as people born with a disability, which is completely false!

With this campaign, I seek to empower intersex voices and foster understanding, empathy, and support for this marginalized community. Through personal stories and video testimonials, we intend to shed light on the issues surrounding intersexuality and promote a more inclusive and accepting society. To answer why we choose the social media video format over other media, it’s because we believe that digital content is the smartest documentation method and it gives great visibility and publicity for the content we create. It simply has no geographic limitation. In this digital era, documenting the life and activism of intersex people is crucial in raising visibility and promoting the rights of our community.

Q3: What reason or event that motivated you to create this project? Why did you choose the name “Born Perfect”?

For the past decade, intersex activists have been saying that we were born perfect, and unwanted surgeries on intersex infants should be stopped. For a long time, these words have been strongly rooted in my heart. As a part of my fellowship program with IA, we had a watch-together session where we had to showcase videos or short films from our native countries. When I searched “Intersex India” I found no result. From then I started to think about how to create digital content for our movement and intersex lives. The social media campaign was one of the ideas sparked at the time. Then when I got an opportunity to make this campaign possible, “Born Perfect” was the first name that came to my mind. And I think that it’s kind of a positive affirmation of ourselves and a strong message to the society that thinks we are bad luck. We’re not bad luck, we’re simply perfect!

Q4: You believe we’re all “Born Perfect”, but at the same time, everyone also says that nobody is perfect. What do you think about these two statements?

From my childhood, my parents were forced by close relatives and others to do corrective surgery on me. Luckily my parents gave me the choice to decide whether to undergo surgery or not. The same people who say nobody is perfect, discriminate against us because of being queer, being black, being short, or anything that doesn’t fit into societal norms. So I don’t believe in heterosexual norms and statements like this. For such a long time, these people discriminated against children like us and pushed us to the edges of society. I believe this is the time to reclaim who we are and proudly say that we are born perfect!

Q5: During the production of your project, did you face any difficulties?

The only difficulty was, some people were reluctant to share their experiences in front of the camera. Everything else went smoothly. Through the production of this project, I felt really sad because our people are still struggling for their basic human rights. Things like accessing health care, good career opportunities, and being able to become financially independent are challenges for many of us. Still, there is no concrete support from the government.

Q6: What do you think about the intersex community and movement today? What change do you want to see in the future?

The intersex community is gaining momentum and more people are coming out without hesitation. There is good acceptance from society, academia, and intersex-led organizations are also there. I came out to the public about my intersex identity in 2016. At that time I could not find anyone else like me in India. Now the situation has changed, and there are many people with intersectional identities. I am so happy that people listen to our stories and they are trying to support the community in different meaningful ways. There is still a lot more to do. In India, intersex is usually perceived as part of the transgender umbrella, which hinders our recognition and movement. We want to change that, we need recognition. We also need to stop non-consensual corrective surgeries on intersex infants. In legal documents, like birth certificates, there is no provision to mark intersex identity. It is a monumental task for an intersex person to change their name and gender in legal documents, resulting in most intersex people hesitating to do it. There is no mental health support for school-going intersex children as well. From our work with many organizations, we learned about other intersex individuals, and there are many of us across the country. However, exact statistics are not available for effective welfare measures to be taken. Our government needs to improve on that front. We need to ensure intersex individuals are taken care of.

Q7: Do you have any special message for all the readers?

Allyship will not come without effort. Please spend more time and effort to better understand intersex persons and their lives. We need allies to build solidarity and strengthen the intersex movement. If you are an intersex person reading this, don’t feel that you are alone. There is a large group of people out there. Reach out, you are not alone! Together we can make a better world!

Thank you Aanandh for your time. We’re proud of you, let’s keep fighting for the intersex community’s future!

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The #Born Perfect campaign videos can be viewed here:

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