"My entire life, everything I have achieved, I've done so with a lot of difficulties," said Dutee Chand. All photos provided by Dutee Chand.
All of 17, Chand, back then, was already being called “a sure shot Olympic medallist.” And that’s when the troubles began. In 2014, just days before she was to set off for the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, Chand was told by the Athletics Federation of India that she can’t compete. There was no case of doping, or lack of fitness or even underperformance. It was a last-minute “gender test” that involved doctors taking her blood tests, visually examining her naked body, and sending her for a magnetic resonance imaging exam to see what’s inside. What’s worse: She had no clue what was happening.But before she became the poster girl for queer pride, Chand was the first female athlete to challenge deep-seated patriarchy in sports.

“As a kid, nobody had asked me any such question about the way I played, looked or how my body was,” she told VICE. But the youngster, who hails from a weaving community and has lived modestly since childhood, realised she can’t give in. “I decided to challenge them,” she said. In that simple decision to speak out and challenge the authority, she broke a pattern of silence in India, and even the world.For four years, Chand wasn’t allowed to play, but it brought together scientists, activists, athletes, and bioethicists to rally in her support. Jiji Thomson, who was the Sports Authority of India director general when Chand was tested and banned, said in the 2015 VICE interview that such cases are common when it comes to athletes from the third world countries. “I've never heard of an athlete facing a similar ban from the developed countries," said Thomson, "This is definitely discriminatory against the athletes of third world countries."A common pattern in all these cases is public humiliation.
“Where will we put them? There's no third category—women, men, and supermen," Eric Vilain, a UCLA geneticist, told The New York Times about the controversy around hyperandrogenism in female athletes.
"When I started running, people in my village ridiculed me; they said it’s not a woman’s job to run, [and I should] get married and have kids instead. But when I got fame, they stopped questioning.”
“Like any kid, I wanted to tell my parents that I’m a lesbian, and about my relationship to seek approval. But they’re from a village, you know. Naturally, they were unsettled by this. But when I explained, they agreed,” she said. “It was my sister who was not happy about this and started harassing me and my partner every day. She wanted us to break up. That’s when I decided that she scares me now, but she can’t scare me forever.”There’s still a major taboo around the LGBTQ community in India, despite the Supreme Court bringing down the gavel on centuries of discrimination and violence. But when Chand came out, she was also inundated in a giant wave of love and empathy. “Everyone is scared of parampara and sanskriti (culture and tradition) even now,” she tells me. “If a girl wants to marry a boy of different community, the society will say no. If a girl wants to marry a girl, they’ll say no. If you don't have kids after you get married, they’ll say no. This is the world we live in. But I saw the strength my story gave to many others. A lot of people have congratulated me, and encouraged me.”When gay sex was decriminalised last year in September, she realised she could finally come out.

