The world can be a hard place when you are different. It takes courage to make a stand and say this is who I am, this is what I want and damn the world if they don’t understand me. Here are 16 celebs that had the courage to do that and made it in society despite being different.
- Santa Khurai
Khurai opened the first beauty salon run by a trans woman in Manipur, thus leading the way for many others to open up their own salons across the state. After she shut her salon in 2010, she led the All Manipur NupiMaanbi Association (AMANA), a coalition working towards raising awareness of the rights of the transgender community.
2.Satya Rai Nagpaul
A cinematographer by profession, Nagpaul has spent years as a gender activist with his organization Sampoorna, a network of trans and intersex Indians.
3.Kalki Subramaniam
Kalki Subramaniam is a trans rights activist and has led the way by being a successful entrepreneur. She was the first trans woman to star as a lead in an Indian movie. She runs an NGO called Sahodari Foundation which works for the welfare of the trans/intersex community.
4.Living Smile Vidya
She is an actor and writer from Chennai. She was the subject of the award-winning Kannada documentary Naanu Avanalla…Avalu, based on her autobiography of the same name. The autobiography, Naan Saravanan Illai, Vidya was first written in Tamil and later translated into seven languages.
5.Anjali Ameer
She was propelled to fame when she was announced as the first transgender actress to work in a mainstream film, with Malayalam actor Mammootty playing the male lead.
6.Madhu Kinnar
Madhu Kinnar is the first trans woman to get elected mayor in the state of Chattisgarh. The then-35-year-old won the election by 4,537 votes against BJP’s Mahaveer Guruji.
7. Revathi
She is the author of books Unarvum Uruvamum and The Truth About Me. In fact, the latter has been included in the syllabus for third gender literature at the American College of Madurai.
8.Lakshmi Narayan Tripathi
She is a trans rights activist, who fought for India to recognize the third gender, giving many citizens the choice to identify as neither male nor female. She has also actively fought to repeal Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code.
9.Aryan Pasha
He is a Delhi-based lawyer who works with MARG, working for legal empowerment of the LGBT community. He is also working on a petition for gender-neutral laws in India, among many other things.
10.Gee Imaan Semmalar
He is a Bengaluru-based writer whose writings have appeared in Dalit Camera, WSQ Women’s Studies Quarterly, OPEN Magazine, and other forums.
11.Manabi Bandopadhyay
She was the first openly transgender college principal in the country. She was also the first transgendered person from West Bengal to have a Ph.D.
12.Vihaan Peethambar
Vihaan Peethambar is an LGBT activist and a media professional. He is also a board member of Queerala, an LGBT support group based in Kerala.
13.Padmini Prakash
Padmini Prakash was the first transgender news anchor in India when she started anchoring a primetime news show for Lotus TV in Tamil Nadu.
14.Christy Raj
He is a journalist based in Bengaluru who writes on trans rights and is closely associated with LGBT rights organization, Sangama. Along with them, he also helped iron out the loopholes in the 2015 draft of the Transgender Bill.
15.Joyita Mondal
She was the first transgender judge of a Lok Adalat in India. She completed her studies through correspondence and got herself a degree in law. In 2010, she was the first trans person from her district to get a voter ID.
16.Mona Veronica Campbell
She is a plus-size transgender model who graduated from NIFT, has a PhD to her name, and her own makeup label as well.
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