The courageous transgender, Lili Elbe

Einar Wegener (left) as Lili Elbe (Right).                                       (Image source: Google) 

When the country is rejoicing the Supreme Court’s recent verdict, scrapping the monstrous 377 section of Indian Penal Code and recognising the sexual rights of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender & Queer (LGBTQ) community, let’s take a moment to remember Lili Elbe, a Danish Painter, who is regarded as the first person to undergo sex reassignment surgery 1930.

Born as a man around 1880s, Einar Wegener was a successful landscape painter by the age of 22. He was widely appreciated as an artist for depiction of Danish Vejle Fjords. Einar went to the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, where he met Gerda Gottileb, who became his wife in 1904 and later helped him, albeit unintentionally, discover his feminine side.

Einar felt completely at home in women’s clothing and wig when one day Gerda’s model, a popular Danish actress Anna Larssen, could not show up. She asked her husband to pose for her.

Einar, who later changed his name to Lili, wrote in her diary, “Strange as it may sound…I liked the feel of soft women’s clothing…I felt very much at home in them from the first moment.”  He was called Lili by Anna.

Thereafter, Gerda, painted many portraits of Einar as a beautiful woman. They were liked by the art lovers and made for popular exhibitions. Until then Gerda thought it a game her husband played for her paintings. She thought her husband’s feminine moves and mannerism were part of that game. She dressed up Einar in women’s clothes and introduced him as his cousin in public events and to all those who enquired about the woman in the paintings.

But Lili was here to stay. Einar felt that he has discovered his or rather her true self. He would often secretly dress up in women’s clothes and look at himself in mirror for hours. Einar could never identify with a man’s body henceforth. He felt like a man trapped in a woman’s body. Lili even stopped painting as ‘this was a part of Einar’s personality and not hers’ and started living as a woman.

Gerda had a hard time coming to terms with the fact that she will never have his husband back but she supported Einar throughout. In 1925, they moved to Paris as this European city was more accommodating society than others.

In 1930, Einar underwent sex reassignment surgery in Germany under the supervision of physician Dr Magnus Hirschfeld. The complicated process involved removal of the penis, developing vagina and inserting ovary and uterus. After the last of the 4 or 5 surgeries wherein womb was transplanted into her body, she died in 1931 in Dresden. Her body rejected the transplanted organ. This is considered till date first sex change operation in the world, though some refute this claim.  It is also claimed that shrunken ovaries were found in her body by the doctors during the operation, suggesting it god’s mistake.

From the time of discovering her true self till her death, Lili Elbe, the name she officially took, wrote an account of her life in a diary, which was later published as her autobiography titled ‘Man into woman’ in 1933. Elbe was a river in Central Europe that flows through Dresden. In 2000, David Ebershoff wrote a book The Danish Girl based on her life which was directed as a film in 2015 by Tom Hooper.

Einar’s condition in modern terminology is called gender dysphoria and they are called transgenders. It is when one’s psychological and emotional identity as male or female are at odds with their biological sex. Today sex reassignment surgery to treat gender dysphoria is a far safer procedure and common throughout the world, including India, in both government and private hospitals.

However, it wasn’t easy then and it isn’t easy now to face the stigma associated with being a transgender or coming out as a transsexual. Supreme Court scrapping section 377 will come as a relief not just to homosexuals but to all those communities who are not aligned with the usual sexual identities.

Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra quoted great German thinker, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe “I am what I am, so take me as I am” and Arthur Schopenhauer, “No one can escape from their individuality,” in the 500-page judgement on section 377’s validity. Today Lili Elbe should be remembered for the immense courage she showed discovering and accepting her true self and refusing to budge by the societal norms and prejudices.

“Every woman deserves sanitary napkin”

33-year old Prachi Kaushik is running a social enterprise ‘Vyomini’ in Delhi which produces environment-friendly and low-cost sanitary napkins ‘Rakshak’. She made her aim to provide sanitary napkin to every woman.

She thought if talking about periods is a taboo, it’s not going be easy to work on menstrual hygiene? That was the first challenge Prachi Kaushik, a young entrepreneur, could think of while pursuing her dream of starting a social enterprise on menstrual health management.

But her determination to address social, economic and environmental issues associated with menstrual health stood against all. What topped her agenda was launching a low-cost and environment-friendly sanitary napkin.

She says that she had some idea it was not easy to take this issue into the mainstream. “The words periods and sanitary napkins made people uncomfortable. In a country where sanitary napkins are bought in a black plastic bag, as a woman making menstrual health management her career was bound to come with some baggage.”

Before starting on the idea of this project, she had an experience of over 10 years in the development sector and having worked with NGOs, she had a chance to motivate and educate hundreds of women from disadvantageous group on the issue of menstrual health.

However, taking this idea to another level by starting an enterprise single-handedly had its own risk factors and apprehensions. Mainstreaming an issue like periods, convincing her family to quit her job and keep aside the idea of marriage at the age of 32 were not easy decisions either since she did not belong to an affluent family.

“But what kept me motivated was my interaction with those poor women who shared their inability to afford sanitary napkins, even if they understood the importance of menstrual hygiene,” says Prachi. During her groundwork and communication with women from different parts of the country, it came as a shock as well as pained her to know that uninformed and underprivileged women across country were compelled to use harmful products as sanitary napkins such as sandbag, plastic, paper, leaves etc.  she knew that this could cause uterine infection and other reproductive health issues but those women were not to be blamed. Either they did not know harms of using these articles or could not afford the sanitary pads.

She quit her job with Delhi Government and immersed herself in researching for affordability, health and environment impact of sanitary napkins. In 2016, she started her social enterprise ‘Vyomini’ and launched sanitary napkin ‘Rakshak‘ this year with the help and coordination of her small but dedicated team of friends and a few professionals. Member of Parliament, Ms Meenakshi Lekhi launched ‘Rakshak.’ Mrs World 2018, Rumana Sinha Sehgal promoted ‘Rakshak’ on International Menstrual Hygiene Day in order to end period poverty.

She came to know that most commercial sanitary napkins available in market contain plastic which is harmful not just for environment but also pose great health risk to the users. She made a vow to make her product environment-friendly, and so sanitary napkins produced in her plants do not contain plastic or synthetic fibre. Most importantly, they are low-cost and produced by women from economically weaker background such as slums, jhuggi clusters. It is a product by them and for them. The enterprise is run from Delhi, from where she belongs.

Through her enterprise, women are made aware about importance of menstrual health by conducting workshops across different states. The focus of the workshops remains making women aware about menstrual health management as a large number of women are completely unaware about sanitary health products. Her organisation has reached out to over two lakh women in Delhi and NCR alone either by creating awareness or by providing the product.

Though, it appeared that this is an issue of only underprivileged women, it affects the all classes in terms of health and environmental impact. Sanitary napkins available in the market contain synthetic fibre and are almost impossible to dispose.

“My objective is to make as many women as possible to aware about harms of using plastic sanitary napkins, reach out to a large number of underprivileged women who do not have access to sanitary napkin and guide them on menstrual health management,” says Prachi.

After two years of launching Vyomini, sanitary napkin production plants are being run in Jhajjar and Hisar in Haryana, Sultanpur Mazra in Delhi, Bhubaneshwar in Odisa and Navi Mumbai in Maharashtra. The enterprise claims to having sold 5 lakh units of sanitary napkins so far, produced, marketed and manufactured by more than 500 underprivileged women.

“The product has also reached to women in Bangladesh and Nepal. People now call me padwoman.  Now I hope to reach out to a greater number of women in future. As a young individual it is my achievement but if seen from a bird’s eye view, it is an achievement of society as a whole,” she sums up