• A chat with Dinika and Thilina

Sri Lanka, while remaining for the most part a conservative society, has made some headway, especially over the past few months, when it comes to discussing and recognising LGBTQ+ issues. 

With the most recent conversation between the community and the Inspector General of Police and also the private members’ bill proposed in favour of decriminalisation of homosexuality, Sri Lanka appears to be moving, albeit at a snail’s pace, in the right direction. 

Despite Lankan authorities’ general reluctance to grant legal recognition for the LGBTQ+ community, we are surprisingly in a fairly good place when it comes to one specific aspect of queer rights – identification for the tansgender community (a transgender person is someone whose gender identity or gender expression does not correspond with their sex assigned at birth). 

This is largely in thanks to the Ministry of Health, which has issued a circular that provides for the issuing of a Gender Recognition Certificate – a legally recognised document which allows the Lankan trans community to change their identification documents so that they align with their gender, subject to conditions. 

However, simply acquiring legal documents does not solve all problems and when it comes to the rights of the Lankan transgender community, there is much to be desired. The LGBTQ+ community remains one of the more vulnerable groups, subject to discrimination and violence at the hands of authorities such as the Police and even general society.

The patriarchy 

Even in spaces where the spotlight is on trans issues, it is mostly focused on transgender women while transgender men are often left out of the narrative. 

This can be attributed to any number of things; the cultural obsession with feminine beauty, women’s appearance receiving more attention, women’s actions being more commented on and critiqued, etc. It really does boil down to the patriarchy – in a world where women have such burdens it makes sense that people will focus more on trans women than trans men. 

Despite the community not receiving as big of a spotlight, trans men face their own unique set of challenges. To further explore the lives lived by transgender men in Sri Lanka, The Sunday Morning Brunch reached out to Dinika Welagedara and Thilina Anoma – both of whom are LGBTQ+ rights activists and members of the Young Activist Collective (YAC), supported by the ‘Bridge to Equality’ project. 

While they both shared that their journeys had not been easy, they did interestingly mention that they believed transgender women received a greater share of the spotlight primarily because trans men had a slight upper hand, largely thanks to the patriarchy. 

“Trans men tend to experience a lot more positives than trans women. Since we go from being a woman to being a man, we are stepping up in the social strata and because our culture hinges on men and their decisions and power, it is seen as getting a promotion,” they said, adding that they were able to ‘pass’ more comfortably and seamlessly in society when it came to visuals as well. 

They noted that trans men experienced the patriarchy from both sides; as those who experienced the oppressions of the patriarchy as women and then as part of the group that enforced the patriarchy. 

Entering society 

Both Thilina and Dinika shared that as they had attended all-girls’ schools, their school experience had been largely positive, owing to the fact that they had been admired for presenting themselves in a more masculine way than their classmates. “You are considered a strong girl and your general masculinity isn’t criticised as much, with many adults assuming you are a tomboy and will eventually grow out of it,” they said. 

However, once one has to leave school and mingle with a more mature and mixed crowd, things start to change. Thilina shared: “I was selected for a Government university and even though I was already presenting as my male self in society, my family did not know, so I registered as a female student at the university. In doing so, I was also staying at a female boarding house. I was able to socialise as a male but eventually the older girls at the boarding house started to notice and they started to talk, but I didn’t wait to see if it would develop into an issue. I dropped out of university before that,” he said. 

Similarly, Dinika shared: “I didn’t want to apply to go to university because I knew that if I were to do so I would not be able to complete my transition process. By that point I had had enough of being subject to discrimination and there was really a lot of fear,” he said, adding that university would have been the first time he would have had to socialise and interact with a large group of males. “I had previously only ever been exposed to males in tuition classes and there had been some challenges there. When you are from an all-girls’ school, the tuition class is the first place you meet a male crowd and when you get to a place where both genders mix, there are complications,” he said.

They shared that the majority of trans men in Sri Lanka tended to hide their identity and opt to pass as cisgender men, which could lead to certain complications. “I know a transgender man who worked in a workshop as a welder. When he underwent his top surgery, he was unable to take medical leave because his employer didn’t know he was trans. He went to work with his fresh wound bandaged and his tissues tore. This was challenging for him because he couldn’t take leave as he was unable to show the medical reports which would reveal his identity, so he had to suffer,” said Dinika, noting that to come out to an employer could be much worse, as you may never receive employment opportunities if you revealed your trans status, which was largely why members of the trans community tended to hide their identity. 

Role models 

Thilina shared that when he was first discovering his identity, there had been challenges in finding a community and a support system and in truly identifying the lived realities of a trans male in Sri Lanka. “When I first discovered the term and the trans identity, I searched it up and found transgender women but could not find any transgender men. I searched everywhere to relate to someone. There are some in organisations but there is no one who has publicly come out as a trans man, someone who is sharing their process and their life. For instance, in other countries you have such people vlogging their entire life, the transition, and vocal change, but I didn’t see any public figures here who could show us the lived realities.” 

The duo shared that they had been lucky enough to have had a certain degree of privilege owing to even the simplest of things like access to the internet, which could go a long way. 

They shared that often, it was a lack of access and awareness that caused many of the initial challenges for trans men: “Even though we realise at a young age (I was about four years old when I realised that I was different), many go through the steps of discovery,” said Thilina. Dinika added: “Many start off thinking ‘oh, I am a lesbian,’ because they like girls and they are technically a girl. Eventually you start to despise that tag because lesbian would indicate that you are a girl and you reject that internally. In my case, during my O/Level years, I thought I was non-binary and slowly started to notice how I didn’t like it when I was misgendered by being called madam or miss. That was how I eventually realised that I was a trans man.” 

Thilina and Dinika are youth activists who have dedicated their efforts to support their community. They are active on social media and are outspoken spokespeople for the LGBTQ+ community, particularly for transgender men. Thilina has amassed a large following on his TikTok account for sharing his experiences as a trans male in Sri Lanka and they both noted that they hoped to create awareness, provide information, and serve as a support system to those in the community who may be looking for someone to lean on.