"I’d never questioned my gender before I came to America; growing up in India, I’d always identified as a girl."

"Of course, India has a gender hegemony of its own — one I arguably benefitted from in many ways and suffered from in others. I am upper-caste, upper-class, Hindu, and also a Tamil woman who didn’t look like the models in the Fair & Lovely commercials. I was the only Tamilian in most rooms I was in, a fact my North Indian classmates consistently reminded me of. Still, the popular conception of what a woman or a man was felt more fluid. I grew up among Sikh women who didn’t tame their body hair, men who would hold hands platonically with their male friends, and children who cross-dressed for play (almost every boy had a photo of himself dressed up as a girl by his mother for fun).... [And there] is our third-gender community, or hijras, as they are commonly known...."

Writes Supriya Ganesh,  "My Strange Dysphoria/Growing up in India, I never questioned my gender. When I moved to the U.S. at 18, I began to feel disconnected from my body" (New York Magazine).

"I came to the U.S. thinking it would be where I would get to explore my queerness without cultural taboo or shame. In some ways, this was certainly true, but I also began to feel dysphoric. In college, I opted to live in what was known as the 'party' dorm right off of frat row and would frequently see hypermasculine men and hyperfeminine women, largely straight and white, flit between my dorm and the houses. In trying to mimic their presentation, I became aware of my body as an economic landscape that could be mined to impress a gender presentation upon it....  I felt increasingly disconnected from my body, punishing it for something it could never be. I would chemically straighten my curls, contemplate a nose job, and get waxed on a schedule I took more seriously than some of my classes, so that I wouldn’t be the ungroomed, hairy brown girl. And still, it felt like I was consistently dehumanized in a way white women were not, no matter how they presented. When I performed femininity appropriately, I was exotic; when I didn’t engage in hair removal for a summer because I wanted to spend that money on textbooks instead, I was repulsive and mannish...."