Jeans-wearing women give birth to transgenders, claims Indian professor

KERALA: An Indian professor has stirred up a controversy with his remarks that women wearing jeans and shirts “will give birth to transgenders.”

Rajith Kumar, who is a college professor in Kerala, has drawn government attention after his remarks were reported a large sections of the press in India.

The state government said it planned to initiate legal action against the professor and bar him from government-sponsored awareness classes in schools and colleges.

“Rajith Kumar has not withdrawn his controversial statements so far. The government is mulling initiating legal action against him,” Health Minister KK Shylaja said in a statement.

“He has been propagating superstition and making anti-women remarks continuously,” she said. Kumar, a Botany professor at Sree Sankara Sanskrit university in Kalady, during an awareness class for students in Kasaragod, reportedly said that women wearing jeans, shirts and dressing up like men “will give birth to transgenders.” There are over six lakh transgenders in Kerala, he said.

He also said that children of parents who are not of good character turn out to be “autistic and suffer from cerebral palsy.”

Earlier, he had made disparaging remarks against girl students while addressing them at a women’s college in the state capital, following which a student had booed him and walked out in protest.

“If mothers wear jeans and shirts and dress like men, they will beget children who are transgenders. While children suffering from autism and cerebral palsy are born to parents who are not of good character,” the professor had said.