Discovering one's gender and sexuality
K.P.M. Basheer
http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-kerala/article2819423.ece (http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-kerala/article2819423.ece)
Before becoming A. Revathi, she had been a he.
Before turning a writer and campaigner for the rights of sexuality minorities, she had been a sex worker. Before returning to her family at Namakkal in Tamil Nadu, she had lived in "Hijra parivars" in Delhi, Mumbai, and Bangalore begging and doing sex work — the traditional livelihoods for India's transsexuals — for several years.
Doraiswamy, an effeminate boy who found pleasure in dressing like a girl and doing a woman's conventional household chores, had left home at the age of 16. Unable to stand the physical torture meted out by "his" elder brothers for behaving like a girl, and tired of the taunts and jeers of society, Doraiswamy had got into a train that took him to Delhi. That journey was the beginning of Dorai's discovery of his gender identity.