Talia Bhatt
Writer and radical transfeminist whose work focuses on the topic of epistemic injustice against transfeminized populations globally and the challenges endemic to formulating a comprehensive and cohesive Third World Feminism.I publish my essays to Substack. Some of my writing is available as the essay collection Trans/Rad/Fem, to be followed with Brown/Trans/Les this winter.My lesbian fiction can be found on itch.io and Amazon, and includes a Bollywood-inspired desi romance Dulhaniyaa and the upcoming literary anti-romance Estro Junkies.I am also the co-host of Cracked Ivory, a podcast on feminist literature and discourse.
Nicky’s never getting on oestrogen. She’s too late. The waiting lists are years long, and private clinics are shutting down. She’s rotting in the apartment she shares with her childhood friend Daniel, the insufferable twink Jeff, and Kyle with his helicopter mother and arranged marriage—and there’s no way out.Until Daniel knocks on her door with news of an underground online contest. It awards hormones and surgeries to anyone willing to grow the biggest breasts—so long as they claim they’re cis men, and no fellow competitor can prove otherwise. The prize for these men? A million dollars. For Nicky? Her salvation.Except not all’s as it seems. Daniel is actually Katherine, a trans woman terrified to come out—what if she loses her oldest and only friend? Jeff, hopelessly enamoured with Kyle, turned to the contest to make himself more attractive. And for Kyle, only a million-dollar victory could unshackle him from the life of an eldest desi son.As their lies and desires set the roommates on a collision course, the question remains: what kind of man would compete to take oestrogen? Answer carefully. Online, someone is always watching.Sisters of Dorley meets Stag Dance in this absurdist, satirical drama exploring transfeminine love, community, and identity in times of panic, scarcity, and crackdown.
Dulhaniyaa
Esha Arora is the last person anyone would've expected to acquiesce to an arranged marriage. Outspoken, opinionated and forward-thinking, she's made her thoughts on these archaic institutions clear. But to her family’s surprise and joy, when a good rishta for her hand comes along, Esha agrees to abruptly quit her MFA program in the States and returns to India to be wed.In the pursuit of extravagance, Esha’s mother arranges a dance instructor for her. Knowing the wedding isn’t actually about her wishes, Esha reluctantly agrees.That’s when Billu, a cyclone in a salwar and dancer extraordinaire, bursts into the monotony of Esha’s pre-wedding existence. Slowly, it dawns on Esha she isn’t nearly as resigned to her fate as she thought—but can she un-make a commitment so easily? Will she confess her feelings to Billu before the latter exits her life, or will she be consigned to her role of dulhaniyaa?A Bollywood-inspired desi lesbian romance, Dulhaniyaa is a story of class, queerness, and the struggle to accept your identity when it comes in conflict with your family and culture.
Brown / Trans / Les
How does one articulate a cohesive feminism in a culture whose most-spoken language lacks a word for 'misogyny'?
In Trans/Rad/Fem, radical transfeminist Talia Bhatt attempted to provide a thorough, materialist framework for understanding the oppression of trans women particularly and all queer people generally as an indelible component of patriarchal misogyny. A key facet of that oppression is epistemicide, the totalizing erasure of knowledge, language, and history in order to prevent the marginalized from so much as being able to conceptualize, let alone articulate, the terms of their oppression.Transmisogyny is far from the only force that is animated by epistemic injustice, however. Few cultures illustrate the truth of that assertion better than the land of Bhatt's birth, a nation dogged by internal contradictions and fractious violence along the lines of caste, class, religion, nationality, and more, before even considering the matter of sex.In this text, Bhatt attempts to reckon with the sheer scale and magnitude of the challenge that her motherland poses, and asks: is it even possible to articulate something akin to "desi feminism" or "Third World Feminism" without flattening, homogenizing, and simplifying the ills of a land ravaged by forces as disparate as colonialism, communal violence, and homegrown theocratic fascism? The answer, she hopes, is "yes".
Trans / Rad / Fem
Can a synthesis of trans liberation and feminism be easily arrived at? This collection asserts that, as a matter of fact, we possessed the answer to that question decades ago.
Second-Wave feminism is, today, nearly synonymous with ‘transphobia’. Any mention of this era or the movement of ‘radical feminism’ conjures images of feminists allying with right-wingers and the authoritarian state, providing legal justification for outlawing gender-affirming care and spreading deeply evil caricatures of trans women to rationalize their exclusion as feminist subjects. In the ensuing struggle to reconcile trans rights with feminism, the specter of the trans-exclusionary radical feminist has often reared its head in opposition. One may be tempted to conclude that the Second Wave, as a whole, has done irreparable harm to feminist, queer and trans politics, and must be discarded entirely.But is that truly the case?This series of essays aims to reconstruct and reintroduce the radical feminist framework that its misbegotten inheritors seem determined to forget and in doing so boldly makes the claim that transfeminism, far from being antagonistic to radical feminism, is in fact its direct descendant. It shows how a comprehensive social theory of transsexual oppression flows almost naturally from radical feminist precepts and dares to declare that a materialist, radical transfeminism is the way forward to seize the foundations of patriarchy at the root.