A. Revathi

A Revathi is a Namakal-based writer and an activist working for the rights of sexual minorities. She is also a transwoman and belongs to the Hijra community.

Personal life

Revathi was born as Doraiswamy, a male in a peasant family in Tamil Nadu. Right from her childhood, she experienced violence in her school and her family for her 'feminine' ways. As a child, she didn't like playing with boys and preferred playing with young girls and dressing up as a woman in her mother's clothes. Throughout her childhood, she also felt a deep unease of belonging to a wrong body. As a young Doraiswamy, Revathi went through immense mental turmoil and confusion over his gender identity. However, when she first met a group of people from the kothi community during a school trip to Nammakal, she felt a sense of kinship and decided to run away from her hometown in Salem to Delhi with them so that she could be true to her gender identity. In Delhi, she started living with the Hijra community. It was during this phase that she underwent a sex-change operation. Post her operation, she was rechristened as Revathi by her guru. While she was able to express herself freely, she had to undergo physical and sexual violence coupled with economic hardship. She had to resort to several odd jobs to survive including dancing at weddings, begging and sex work. After some months, tired of her life in Delhi, she ran away and went back home, where she wasn't made to feel welcome. She endured taunts and insults, but did not take it lying down. She subsequently left her home in Tamil Nadu and moved to Bangalore for work. While she initially took to sex work, she finally got a job at Sangama, an NGO working for the rights of sexual minorities. Here, she was exposed to activist meetings, learnt more about her rights among many other things. While she started off as a peon in the organisation, she rose in the rungs and finally ended up as the director.

Her literary work and other achievements

Revathi published her first book in Tamil called Unarvum Uruvamum (Feelings of the Entire Body), which is a collection of real life stories of the people belonging to the Hijra community. It was during this process that she decided to come out with her own autobiography because she felt that she would be able to bring out the problems of her community through her lie story. That's how the book 'The truth about me' was both, which was translated by feminist historian V Geetha. She cites a very prominent Tamil Dalit writer Bama as one of her main inspirations. She is one of the first members of the hijra community to write a book. Her works have been translated in more than 8 languages and acting as a primary resources on Gender Studies in Asia. Her book is a part of research project for more than 100 universities. The American College in Madurai has included ‘The Truth about me: A Hijra Life story’ as part of third gender literature syllabus.

Film career

Revathi also made history in 2008 by making her acting debut in a Tamil film Thenavattu which had two transgender lead actors.