This book explores experiences of growing up—through childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood—of lesbian and gay individuals within their homes, schools, neighbourhoods, and among friends; their journeys of finding themselves and their communities while living in a heterosexually constructed society. It offers a glimpse into the lives of young children who often grow up feeling ‘different’ from their siblings, peers, and friends, and with constant messages about correct ways of being from parents, teachers, friends and counsellors/doctors. It describes unique challenges to growing up gay, alongside the complex processes involved in the decision of ‘coming out’. These are with reference to the specific socio-cultural-relational contexts of the participants. The book further discusses the experience of meeting others like oneself, forming intimate, romantic relationships, bonds of friendship, finding political solidarity, constructing families of choice, and locating the meanings of these in one’s own identity-development processes.
The book is based on an exploratory, qualitative study with young gay and lesbian persons in two cities of India, Bombay and Pune, and employs a life course perspective to explore the growing-up journeys of these young persons. The book includes layered narratives of the study participants along with an analysis of these growing-up experiences from a critical psychosocial perspective that is attentive to the subjectivities and the individual processes of making sense of an emerging non-normative sexuality within a socio-cultural-political context of homonegativity and gender binarism.
1.1 Looking for the Gay Subject in Childhood/s and ‘Growing-Up’ Literature
In attempting to understand ‘growing-up’ experiences of gay1 individuals in urban India, I would like to begin by contextualizing this work within the broad literature on human growth and development, growing-up and childhood studies. Existing work on the lives of persons with non-normative sexualities, specifically gay men and lesbian women in India, is focused on adults and their rights and concerns. Most of this work does not reflect on the growing-up years of gay and lesbian persons as a subject of study (though descriptions of the growing-up years do form a part of first person narratives and anthologies of gay persons). In this chapter, I primarily suggest that sexuality and its emergence are not a one-time phenomenon of adult or even adolescent life, but instead a process. While this process has been studied in-depth and commented upon by several scholars of life span studies, often this commentary is about the development of normative sexuality. With this narrative being the dominant one, it gets naturalized and universalized, in turn invisibilizing the growing-up stories of individuals with non-normative sexualities. While I am aware that sexual non-normativity itself is a diverse phenomenon, in this book, I will focus only on growing-up experiences of young gay and lesbian individuals.
Perspectives on Growing-Up and Childhood Studies
Childhood studies is one possible place to begin the exploration of research and literature on ‘growing-up’ years. Despite being an interdisciplinary field, childhood studies has been traditionally dominated by the discipline of developmental psychology and its theories of child development.
Developmental psychology is a branch of psychology that is concerned with studying childhood development and focusing on human growth across the lifespan. Developmental psychology divides the human life span into a series of age-graded segments, each segment characterized by physical, cognitive, emotional, and social development. Most texts of developmental psychology follow a chronological format from birth—or even inception—to death, with specified age limits for each period/stage, and certain milestones to be achieved in each of these stages. The origins of this discipline, in the post-war years, reveal that developmental psychology has primarily been concerned with the establishment of norms of growth and development. It has done so through developing technologies of measurement of mental/psychological/cognitive abilities and has, thus, produced a classification of age-related abilities. Over the years, developmental psychology has produced life stages such as ‘childhood’ (which may be further divided into study of ‘early’ and ‘late childhood’ or ‘infancy’, with ‘toddlerhood’ predating ‘childhood’), ‘adolescence’, ‘adulthood’ and so on, with a series of developmental tasks prescribed for each of these stages. It is primarily concerned with the statistical development of norms for each life stage and prescribing the same for the life span.
A critique of developmental psychology has arisen within childhood studies, and some of the main critical positions are concerned with the universality assumed by developmental psychology in understanding human growth and development, as well as the linearity accorded to these experiences. In addition, developmental psychology is seen as playing a role of regulation and legislation of what is ‘normal’; departure from or delays to which, would be seen as pathological, and requiring intervention. Children and mothers have been traditionally the primary unit of inquiry in this branch of psychology, and examples of the regulation mentioned above would be related to norms of adequate mothering and nurturance, with implications for mothers in terms of amount of time spent with children, taking up paid work outside of home, day care for children, and what Burman (2007) refers to as responsibility for the ‘moral performance of the next generation’ (79). By introducing ideas of physical and psychological maturation, and by claiming universality of development experiences across the life span, developmental psychology has ‘naturalized’ human development and, by extension, anything which falls outside the standardized norm is deemed ‘unnatural’. Cultural and contextual influences, including cultural and class variations in life expectancy, different perspectives on childhood, ageing, variations in family structures, and child rearing practices, are often ignored or treated as peripheral issues within this discipline (Burman 2007).
In addition to developmental psychology, one of the well-known contexts in which sociology has traditionally engaged with the study of childhood is that of socialization theory. Parsons and Bales (1956) describe the child as a being that needs to be moulded in order to be able to participate in society. This moulding/socialization of the child occurs in three stages. The first stage is referred to as ‘primary socialization’, where the child’s personality is shaped by the family, and the values and attitudes that are imparted by parents to the children. The second stage is that of ‘secondary socialization’. In this stage, the individual, usually a teenager or young adult, begins to become aware of societal expectations and what constitutes acceptable and unacceptable behaviour. The third or the ‘tertiary’ stage is when the individual as an adult is integrated into the larger society. Parsons states that the socialization of children and stabilization of adult personalities is the main function of the modern family. It is the family that serves as the primary link for the child to the external world. Apart from the family, there are other, secondary, agents of socialization such as the school, the neighbourhood, and peers that play a significant role in shaping childhood and adolescence.
A critical stance towards the traditional frameworks used to study childhood/s, within child development, developmental psychology, sociology, family studies, has emerged since the 1980s and ’90s, under the broad head of a ‘new’ sociology of childhood (Tisdall and Punch 2012). The Piagetian idea of child development, with its fixation on universal, standardized and inevitable developmental stages, justifying adult supremacy (James et al. 1998, 18), and Parson’s notion of adults as mature, rational and competent, whereas children viewed as “less than fully human, unfinished or incomplete” (Jenks 1996, 10), have been severely critiqued by these approaches. In fact, the idea of childhood, viewed in relation to the category ‘adult’, wherein childhood is seen as a temporary phase that will eventually end in adulthood, is fundamentally critiqued by thinkers within the sociology of childhood. Qvortrup (1994) explains this by describing the social construct of ‘human becomings’ rather than ‘human beings’ used in relation to children, which would explain the sparse attention given to studies of childhood within mainstream sociological research. One more conceptualization of childhood in this context is to think of children as dependants and needing protection; this views children as deserving of additional rights and protection and, at the same time also places restrictions on the enjoyment of certain rights and expects the exercise of certain obligations (Boyden and Hudson 1985). It is some of these conceptions of childhood/s, promoted within the traditional academic disciplines as well as in public opinion, that makes the ‘rethinking of childhood/s’ a difficult proposition. Mayall (2000) suggests that a major barrier in rethinking childhood/s, is the ‘pleasing and reassuring’ image of childhood that western psychology proposes. It is a conception of childhood as being innocent/uncorrupted by the realities of adult living and politics. Mayall states, ‘Just as women have been assigned to the private and the domestic, we are taught to think of children as growing up there too, in a happy domain which enables them to develop, unmolested by the stresses of public life’ (Mayall 2000, 246). In addition to the idea of being innocent and pure, there is also the conception of children as being unstable, unreliable, and incompetent; not having yet achieved ‘adult maturity’. This image of the child as immature, incompetent, dependent and passive is common in Western as well as Indian notions of childhood (Bisht 2008). Thus, one of the challenges in rethinking our notions of childhood/s is the adult dilemma of choosing between the autonomy, or agency, of the child, and protectionism that predominates the adult conception of childhood/s.
Yet another dimension to be considered in the discussion on the conception of childhood/s in various disciplines is that the child is thought of as an individual, as a member of a family, rather than as part of a social group. Thus the development of the child is thought of as an individual/intra psychic or interpersonal (dyadic, often referring to the mother-child dyad) process alone, unconnected to the social structure. Mayall (2000) refers to this as the individualization and familialization of childhood. Familism, Chaudhary (2004) argues, is a significant reality of Indian families, wherein the child is presumed to ‘belong to’ the parents and is assumed to be mirroring the parental social identities. Then there is also the scholarization of childhood, where the assumption is that the proper activity or rather ‘duty’ of every child is to be a pupil and being engaged in any other activity, especially paid labour is unacceptable. Qvortrup (in Corsaro 2005) suggests that childhood can be thought of as a structural form, moving beyond individualistic, adult oriented, time bound perspectives. Qvortrup asserts that childhood may be a temporary period for children, but is a permanent structural category in society. Childhood is exposed to the same societal forces as adulthood and children are to be viewed as social agents, who contribute to the reproduction of childhood and society, through negotiations with adults and the creative production of cultures.
Tisdall and Punch (2012) state that newer approaches to childhood studies, that have been critical of the traditional models of child development, have set up a counter-paradigm in childhood studies; these include a few principles or what the authors refer to as ‘mantras’ in childhood studies: “childhood being socially constructed, recognition and focusing on children and young people’s agency, and the valuing of children and young people’s voices, experiences and/or participation” (Tisdall and Punch 2012, 8). This implies that childhood/s is/are to be viewed, not as a universalist category, but as being constructed socially and, therefore, as being variant and diverse. The focus thus has to move away from studying of norms and instead shift to change, transitions, relationships, contexts, and cultural variations that are neither stable nor static. It is then necessary to be cautious about notions such as the ‘global child’, in favour of a ‘childhood in context’.
Children’s participation and agency is another construct that has been focussed on within childhood studies. The traditional view of children as passive recipients and dependants, such as in the process of socialization, is questioned here. “Socialization is not seen as merely involving adaptation and internalization, but is viewed as a process of appropriation, reinvention, and reproduction” (Corsaro 2011, 20); as a collective and communal activity wherein children negotiate, share, and create cultures with adults and each other. This process has been termed by Corsaro (2005) as Interpretive Reproduction. Symbolic cultures in children’s lives, such as children’s media (cartoon, films), children’s literature (fairy tales), mythical figures and legends (Santa Claus, The Tooth Fairy), are examples of how children engage with adults in co-creating culture.
Linked with the idea of children’s participation is the notion of agency. Researchers working on childhood and young people remind us that the idea of agency is a complicated one. Children and young people, with their specific generational position and inter- and intra-generational relationships, have several opportunities for as well as constraints to act. Robson et al. (in Tisdall and Punch 2012, 14) describe “a continuum of agency, which varies depending on opportunistic and constrained contexts, created and expected identities, positions of power/lessness, life course stage, and state of emotions and wellbeing”. Klocker (2007) suggests a notion of thick and thin agency that can be helpful in understanding this continuum of constrained agency of children and young people (85). In the context of this emphasis on children’s participation and agency, Bluebond-Langner and Korbin (2007) ask a crucial question, about vulnerability. Vulnerability may be in the context of structural restraints, or may include deprivation, which is interpersonal in nature, or may even be a lack of adequate internal/intrapsychic resources, or it could be the result of an interplay of all these.
Laying out some of the conceptions of childhood/s, as reflected within the dominant disciplines/fields involved in the study of childhood/s and critical perspectives on the same, I seek to apply some of these ideas to my study of growing up gay; ideas relating to children’s participation, agency in negotiating with normative/dominant prescriptions of a ‘good’ child, are explored in detail in Chap. 3, along with a discussion of vulnerability and difference from the dominant.
Queering Childhood Development Studies
In this section, I attempt to bring a queer perspective to formulations within developmental psychology about childhood, adolescence, and life span development. First and foremost, the life stage models within developmental psychology are based on assumptions of compulsory heterosexuality/heteronormativity and the gender binary. Compulsory heterosexuality refers to the assumption that development ‘naturally’ proceeds in a heterosexual direction. It also refers to the pervasive assumption in society that all individuals are heterosexual. Thus, for instance, descriptions of adolescence as a lifecycle stage in textbooks of developmental psychology are full of details such as developing interest in the opposite sex, finding information about sexual intercourse, contraception use, unwanted pregnancy, and so on (Hurlock 1981). Experiences of internal processes of adolescents who may not ‘fit’ into the above description, and who may have non-heterosexual fantasies, attractions, crushes, or who may have no sexual attractions at all, are missing in the literature of ‘normal’ growth and development.2 Similarly, all life cycle development research describes experiences of the stereotypical ‘man’ and ‘woman’; any person and experiences falling outside of these gender binaries and their life trajectories are neglected. In fact, a substantial amount of research within psychology, about what can be broadly termed as ‘sex difference’ research, has viewed gender as a fixed, stable, singular identity, and framed within the dominant discourse of heteronormativity. This conception of inherent differences between the sexes is based on the two-sex model, wherein it is assumed that only two biological sexes exist and that these occupy positions on two opposite poles of masculinity and femininity, with respect to various psychological traits and abilities including cognitive abilities, verbal and non-verbal communication, aggression, leadership, moral reasoning, and so on.3 Mainstream approaches to the development of gender, in children and adults, continue to function as key routes to legitimizing the binary gendered categories. Thus, theories of child development and the development of gender, within the framework of developmental psychology, close down any possibilities of “emergence of new forms of sexed/gendered subjectivities” (Burman 2007, 8) that goes beyond the heteronormative script.
The majority of literature in Developmental Psychology comes from the American and European contexts and it is from these contexts that claims, regarding the universal nature of lifespan development, are often made (Burman 2007). For instance, while describing ‘family’, the literature often refers to nuclear households with family members that consist of a married couple with children, living together. Cultural variations in these, such as joint family structures, and the role of the extended family, neighbourhoods, and community, are not taken into consideration. Families outside of the heterosexual unit may not even find mention and, thus, experiences of children growing up in households comprising of same-sex parents, friends, or ex-lovers, seen as family/ies of choice, are not reflected in this mainstream literature. Universalist assumptions about child development do not work at multiple levels; they certainly do not apply to children who do not fit into the gender binary, or to children and young people with same-sex sexual desires, but they may equally not be true for any child whose context would be different from that of a child growing up in a western, white, nuclear household.
Cross-cultural psychology, cultural psychology, and indigenous psychologies are some of the schools of thought that have influenced developmental psychology and have argued in favour of contextually shaped and culturally constituted (as opposed to universal) experiences of development. There has been a tradition of scholarly work in these areas in the Indian context. For instance, Saraswathi (1999) suggests that the stage of adolescence, particularly for young girls in India (as well as for boys, particularly from the lower socio-economic strata), may not be a distinct phase, and can be viewed more in the context of a child-adult continuity of expectations and life experiences. Girl children, for instance, receive extensive training in their natal homes in becoming good wives and mothers, and their life experiences at the parental home, such as primary responsibility for sibling care, exposes them early to the role of motherhood. Similarly, for boys, the need to earn before they learn reduces the possibility of experiencing a stage such as the play stage of late childhood. Saraswathi (1999), therefore, states that “adolescence is the invention of a technological, industrial society that is marked by a discontinuity between childhood and adulthood” (214). However, even these scholars, who have inquired into the role of culture and context in shaping development, have limited their inquiry to growing-up experiences of young boys and girls, and men and women, with normative sexual and gender expressions.
Yet another concern with mainstream childhood development theories, from a queer perspective, is the idea of ‘linearity’ and ‘time’ that underlies these theories of development. Most models of growth and development tend to focus on stages of development that follow a linear track through the life span and are marked by developmental tasks and milestones that are to be achieved at ‘appropriate’ times. How does this idea of linearity and age-appropriate time, work in the context and life narratives of queer persons, who may follow a less rigid/normative, even an imaginative, life schedule? In her book, Queer Time and Place, Halberstam (2005) describes the notion of queer time as existing outside of the institutions of heterosexuality, family, marriage, and reproduction. She states: “Queer subcultures produce alternative temporalities by allowing their participants to believe that their futures can be imagined according to logics that lie outside of those paradigmatic markers of life experience-namely, birth, marriage, reproduction, and death” (Halberstam 2005, 2). So, if one were to think of queer time in the context of life span development then it would be a way of being that does not follow a strict pattern, or script, or have milestones of birth, education/job, marriage, reproduction, that are often associated with heterosexual growing up and life cycle stages. Queer time and, consequently, space would allow for reinterpretation of the ideas of settling down, forming a family, becoming a responsible member of one’s family, extended family and community, tasks typically associated with becoming an adult.
Harvey (1990) states that, since we experience ‘time’ as some form of natural progression, we fail to realize or notice its construction. In fact, all time cycles, such as those described in life span studies, related to time of marriage, scheduling of (respectable/within heterosexual marriage) reproduction, are seen as naturalized and thus internalized. Harvey further asserts that different forms of time management, such as leisure, inertia, recreation, work, and family/domesticity, are adjusted to the schedule of normativity. However, some queer lives may follow a less normative life schedule, at times in response to the heterosexually constructed world around them. For instance, the process of a gay or lesbian young person knowing their sexuality, finding the language to talk about it, beginning to talk about it openly etc., would be a different process, in its complexity as well as the time taken for it, as compared to a heterosexual young person knowing about their sexuality. Thus, some queer persons, due to the normative structure of heterosexuality and gender binarism, would have a different life schedule compared to their heterosexual counterparts. However, there would be others who would follow a more imaginative life schedule as a result of challenging hetero-patriarchal structures of marriage, monogamy, biological family, and so on. This departure from norms, and creation of homosexual relationships as a subversion and resistance to social normalization [as described by Kingston (2009) in his article ‘Subversive Friendships: Foucault on Homosexuality and Social Experimentation’], simply cannot be understood or measured in terms of normative developmental tasks or age-appropriate time.
The socialization processes such as that of Parsons, described above, tend to follow a reproductive model, wherein the existing social hierarchies and inequalities (Bourdieu and Passeron 1977) are reproduced through the institution of the family and other secondary sources of socialization such as school and neighbourhoods. For instance, social hierarchies of women as subordinate to men, and children to adults, are reproduced within the family. Applied to the context of lives of gay and lesbian persons, socialization primarily serves the function of making the gay or lesbian child aware of the normative script and the ways in which they differ from the same, fairly early in life. In addition, the primary and secondary sources of socialization play the role of ‘correction’ of deviance in the gay or lesbian child, whose desires and experiences do not fit the standard/heterosexual script. I discuss this idea extensively through examples of lived experiences of young gay and lesbian children within their homes, schools and among their peers, in Chap. 3 of this book.
Throughout the book, I bring out the multiple ways in which lesbian and gay individuals—children, adolescents, and young people—actively participate and negotiate with their socialization influences. They actively look for language, images, role models, and spaces that are affirmative of their sexuality and difference. They also actively cope with, and work through, negative and pathologizing messages and make active choices about disclosure and non-disclosure about themselves. Thus, the traditional notion of ‘moulding children’ through socialization influences is challenged at several junctures in this book. Also, while highlighting agency and participation, I have discussed limits placed on individual agency by structures of power. I talk about vulnerability and dealing with difference at several places, particularly in discussing unique developmental challenges and sexual minority stress in Chap. 3.
Childhood studies researchers, are critical of traditional approaches to child development and are in favour of a socio-cultural contextual study of childhood/s, acknowledging the role of children in co-creating experience. However, even these theorists have seldom discussed experiences of gender non-conforming children, or children and adolescents with same-sex desires. In fact, partly because sexuality is seen as emerging during adolescence, there is very little work that has been done on childhoods of gay or lesbian persons. This book is an attempt to start this process of inquiry into gay childhoods and growing-up experiences.
1.2 Finding the Gay Subject in Psychological and Psychiatric Literature
Psychological, as well as sociological, literature on childhood seems to be almost silent on sexual and gender expressions of children and adolescents who do not fit the norm of the heterosexual gender binary. However, the same disciplines, particularly the mental health sciences, have historically engaged extensively with non-normative sexualities and genders as ‘deviant’, ‘abnormal’ and ‘unnatural’; that is to say, in ways that pathologize these sexualities and genders. In this section, I will explore this history of pathologization of homosexuality and the processes that led to its depathologization. I will then discuss the emerging area of study within psychology that focuses on LGBTQ lives, which has moved away from a language of deviance or pathology, and which, now, often employs a new lens of minority stress, vulnerability, risk to illness, and distress, as well as the need for affirmative practice.
History of Medicalization of Homosexuality4
In the second half of the nineteenth century, homosexuality, which until then had been a theme only of religious and moral discourses, became a subject of enquiry in science and medicine. This led to a large body of work wherein sexologists, psychiatrists, and psychologists classified and created a range of sexual perversions and abnormalities in contrast to the ‘within-marriage heterosexuality’. Thus, a range of ‘perverted’ sexualities were labelled and described in order to be able to define the ‘normal’ form of sexuality (Weeks 1981). Historically, the term ‘homosexual’ was coined and officially used much before the term ‘heterosexual’, to define that which was abnormal before describing the normal and the normative (Katz 1990). Krafft-Ebing (1922) was one of the first physicians to popularize the use of the term ‘homosexuality’, along with several other case studies of deviant sexual practices, in his work Psychopathia Sexualis, which viewed human sexual behaviour as a collection of terrible diseases. Beiber (1962), after a study of 100 homosexuals and 100 heterosexuals, concluded that the homosexual orientation was a result of a pathogenic family with a domineering mother and a detached or absent father. There were other psychoanalytical thinkers who attributed homosexuality to negative familial experiences or developmental issues. While Sigmund Freud himself did not view homosexuality as an illness and, in fact, considered all human beings to be born bisexual, he did describe homosexuality to be “a variation of the sexual function, produced by a certain arrest of sexual development” (Freud 1935). Other bio-medical theories, such as chromosomal abnormality or an excesses of hormones, have been proposed over time to explain the causation of homosexuality. Henry (1941), a psychiatrist, and his Committee for the Study of Sex Variants, scrutinized the bodies of homosexuals in an effort to document the sex-atypicality of their genitals and secondary sexual characteristics. Homosexual brains and nervous systems were also assumed to have some cross-gendered characteristics. LeVay (1991) argued that an area of the hypothalamus of homosexual men was closer in size to that of women than of heterosexual men. Some of the treatment methods that have been historically used to ‘treat’ homosexuals have included lobotomy, hypothalamotomy, implantation of testicular tissue of heterosexual men into homosexual men, induced seizures, electric shock, and behavioural methods such as masturbatory reconditioning, aversion therapy, and so on (Haldeman 1994; Silverstein 1991, 1996).
The influence of this thinking is reflected in homosexuality being classified as a form of mental illness in the first Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) of the American Psychiatric Association (APA) (1952). In the first edition of the DSM in 1952, homosexuality was classified under ‘sociopathic personality disturbance’. This was later changed and, in DSM-II, which was published in 1968, it was classified under the category ‘sexual deviance’.
Whereas homosexuality per se implies no impairment in judgement, stability, reliability, or general social or vocational capabilities, therefore, be it resolved that the American Psychiatric Association deplores all public and private discrimination against homosexuals in such areas as employment, housing, public accommodation, and licensing, and declares that no burden of proof shall be placed upon homosexuals greater than that imposed on any other persons. Further, the American Psychiatric Association supports and urges the enactment of civil rights legislation at the local, state, and federal level that would offer homosexual citizens the same protections now guaranteed to others on the basis of race, creed, color, etc. Further, the American Psychiatric Association supports and urges repeal of all discriminatory legislation singling out homosexual acts by consenting adults in private. [Robert Spitzer, Chair, APA 1973]
While homosexuality as a diagnosis ceased to exist in the DSM, a new variant—first in the form of Sexual Orientation Disturbance, and later Ego Dystonic Homosexuality—entered the DSM. It was only in the revised 3rd edition of the DSM in 1987 that homosexuality was entirely deleted from the list of mental disorders (APA 1987). Other classification systems of mental illnesses followed suit; the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) by the World Health Organization (WHO) removed homosexuality from its classification in 1992 (WHO 1992). It is thus important to note that there has been a long history of pathologization of homosexuality in the Euro-American context, and that the shift towards a position of depathologization within the mental health sciences is fairly recent.
In the Indian context, while most mental health practice continues to be guided by Euro-American models of mental health training and practice, the same does not seem to hold true when it comes to homosexuality. Mental Health Professionals (MHPs) in India have, at different points of time in history (after APA’s declassification of homosexuality in 1973), conducted various kinds of reparative, conversion treatments with their homosexual clients. For instance, the Indian Journal of Psychiatry carried articles in the years 1978, 1982, and 1983 about the use of electrical aversion and other techniques of behaviour therapy for ‘cure’ and ‘change’ of homosexual orientation (Pradhan et al. 1982; Mehta and Deshpande 1983; Sakthivel et al. 1978). Similar practices have been documented in other, more recent, studies about the use of masturbatory reconditioning, aversion therapy including mild electric shock, as well as hormonal treatments (Narrain and Bhan 2005; Ranade 2015; Kalra 2012). These methods have been internationally criticized, both on grounds of scientific efficacy as well as ethics (Serovich et al. 2008). In fact, the Yogyakarta Principles (2007) (Principles on the application of international human rights law in relation to sexual orientation and gender identity) describe any form of treatment aimed to cure/change sexual orientation as medical abuse. In 2001,5 responding to a complaint by a gay rights activist on behalf of a boy who had been administered aversion therapy and non-prescription drugs to ‘cure’ his homosexuality, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) had cited the Indian Penal Code (IPC), Section 377 (which criminalizes homosexuality), and refused to address the violation. Despite this history, there has been a lack of concerted dialogue among mental health professional bodies in India about the scientific position of Indian mental health professionals vis-à-vis homosexuality. Do MHPs in India accept the international position with respect to sexual diversity and affirmative practice with Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Queer (LGBTQ) groups adopted by several international bodies such as the APA, WHO, and others? Studies indicate that there have been large gaps and silences about homosexuality among mental health professionals in India. Parekh’s study (2003) focussed on the extent to which sexual minority concerns are represented in mainstream research publications of MHPs in India. This study reveals that, among 829 papers, published between 1974 and 2000 in the Indian Journal of Clinical Psychology (an official publication of the Indian Association of Clinical Psychologists), there were only two papers on the subject of homosexuality. Similarly, there were only four research papers related to homosexuality published in the Indian Journal of Psychiatry between the years 1982 and 1995; all these papers were case studies of homosexual patients and their treatment outcomes. This situation however appears to be changing. More recently Narrain and Chandra (2015) edited a volume titled Nothing to Fix–Medicalization of Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity, which contains articles by mental health professionals and gender-sexuality activists in India on a range of issues including the journey of a mental health professional in understanding sexual orientation, social origins of internalized homonegativity/‘ego-dystonicity’, and guidelines for counselling LGBTQ individuals and their family members.
The 2009 Delhi High Court Judgment decriminalizing homosexuality was a major boost for the LGBTQ rights movements in India. Soon after this, a couple of papers appeared in the Indian Journal of Psychiatry (IJP), the official publication of the Indian Psychiatric Society, discussing the need for depathologization of homosexuality in clinical practice (Kalra et al. 2010). In 2012, in an editorial, the IJP clarified its position vis-à-vis homosexuality, stating that it is a normal variant of human sexuality and underscored the need for more research on LGBTQ lives in India (Rao and Jacob 2012). Thus, like the situation in America that led to the removal of homosexuality from the list of mental disorders, in India too, the change in legal status of homosexuals, and a dynamic LGBTQ rights movement, has had a significant impact on attitudes of Indian MHPs. There have been more voices within the mental health fraternity who have been speaking in support of the cause of LGBTQ rights. In fact, a group of MHPs signed a petition addressed to the Supreme Court6 of the country in the context of an appeal against the Delhi High Court Judgment of 2009, by various right-wing groups, seeking to reinstate Section 377 (section that criminalizes homosexuality) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). The MHPs stated in their petition that it was their medical opinion that homosexuality is not a form of mental illness and that, on the contrary, a law like Section 377 causes tremendous psychological stress and trauma to homosexual persons.
A normal variant cannot be considered completely normal. It is, in fact, an aberration in the psychosexual development, caused by genetic and psychosocial factors for which the person is not responsible. There are research findings, which suggest that there are structural differences in the brains of people with homosexual orientation… Every biological function has a physiological goal and purpose. Sexual activity has two goals. One is procreation to safeguard the continuation of the species. The second one is the experience of pleasure, which in fact, is to facilitate the sexual activity and to strengthen the bond between husband and wife.
Homosexuality negates one of the goals of sexual activity procreation. Homosexuality has therefore, to be considered as an aberration in the psychosexual development caused by genetic and psychosocial factors…. (pp. 209–210)
In the context of this letter, I again wish to draw attention to what I have earlier referred (in the American context) as the relationship between law and medicine; both these, as tools of social control and regulation, work in tandem to maintain normative ideologies and define what is permissible, acceptable, normal conduct. It is amply clear, not only from the situation in India but the world over, that homosexuality has been one of those controversial issues that has been dealt with and, on occasion, resolved, not merely through what we consider ‘scientific knowledge’ and ‘fact’, but through the reconsideration of social/religious/moral attitudes and the opinions of medical/mental health professionals.
LGB Psychology: Newer Trends and Directions
De-pathologization of homosexuality and shifts in scientific understanding, from the deviance model to a more inclusive of diversity model, has impacted knowledge creation, research, education, and practice within the mental health sciences of psychology and psychiatry. Some of the early reflections of this impact can be seen in the work of psychologists who proposed models of gay and lesbian identity development. These stage models of development of sexual identity can be seen as early efforts to make visible a development process that was hitherto completely invisible. This work can possibly be seen also as research attempting to shift the question of LGB sexual identity formation from a pathological etiology—Why did this happen? What caused this deviance?—to a ‘how’: a description of the experience of development of same-sex sexuality.
- (a)
Identity confusion: In this stage people attracted to members of their own sex begin to become consciously aware that information about homosexuality directly or indirectly applies to them. They then begin to experience discordance between these feelings and the heterosexual identity they had assumed to be true for themselves. This causes anxiety and or confusion and people, while living with these uncomfortable feelings, may privately label their thoughts, feelings and fantasies as possibly gay, while maintaining a public image of heterosexuality.
- (b)
Identity comparison: During this stage, people may begin to accept the possibility that they may not be heterosexual after all. This admission to oneself, that they may be gay or lesbian, reduces confusion to some extent; however, it makes them feel alienated from others. There is an increased sense of ‘not belonging’ to society at large and specific sub groups such as family and peers. Accepting the possibility of being gay leads many to realize that all the guidelines for behaviour, ideals, and expectations for the future, that accompany a heterosexual identity, are no longer relevant in their lives. This loss of a heterosexual blue print for life can cause considerable grief for some.
- (c)
Identity tolerance: People may learn to tolerate rather than fully accept their gay or lesbian self-image. As their feelings of alienation from others increase, they seek out gay and lesbian communities to reduce their isolation. People perceive an increased discrepancy between the way they see themselves and the way others perceive them (heterosexual social image).
- (d)
Identity acceptance: More and more validating and ‘normalizing’ contact with other lesbians and gay men, helps people to increasingly accept oneself. While passing as heterosexual becomes a habit by this stage, some selective self-disclosures may occur at this stage. There may also be only limited contact with heterosexuals and this reduces feelings of alienation.
- (e)
Identity pride—There is a strong sense of incongruence felt between the positive ways in which gay and lesbian individuals have come to accept themselves and society’s devaluation of their identities. Thus they now not only accept but prefer their new identities over a heterosexual self-image and often an ‘us’ v/s ‘them’ dichotomy may be created. While the internal conflicts may be minimized by this stage, conflicts with a homophobic and heterosexist world outside may increase. People may be drawn towards rights based activism and engage more actively along these lines with the lesbian and gay community.
- (f)
Identity synthesis: The ‘homosexual v/s heterosexual’ dichotomy is relinquished and feelings of anger at the society reduce. Perceived social support and trust, rather than sexual orientation, become important criteria and people may place more trust in sensitive and supportive heterosexuals. Public and private aspects of the self become increasingly integrated into an identity that includes sexual orientation along with other dimensions of self.
Cass states that individuals may not necessarily pass through each and every stage of this model in a linear fashion. Moreover, identity development process may be foreclosed at any stage due to traumatic experiences or other life events.
Troiden’s model (1984) is one more such model that views LG development as mediated by both external factors (heterocentrism and sexual prejudice) and internal factors (such as one’s internalized homophobia and character strengths). More spiral than linear, Troiden’s model suggests that individuals move back and forth between stages, and that not all individuals will experience all stages or sub-stages. Coleman (1981–1982) proposed another model consisting of five stages: pre-coming out, coming out, exploration, first relationships, and integration. Grace (1992) describes stages of emergence, acknowledgement, finding community, first relationships, and self-definition and reintegration. D’Augelli (1994) provided a life span approach to sexual orientation identity development and emphasized six developmental tasks. These include: exiting heterosexual identity, developing a personal gay identity status, developing a gay social identity, becoming a gay offspring, developing a gay intimacy status, and entering a gay community.
All these models of gay identity development perceive development to be linear, invariant, universal, inevitable, and predictable across individuals who share some real or hypothesized commonalities (Savin-Williams 2001). Whether these models truly reflect experiences of young gay and lesbian individuals is questionable. Critiques have pointed out that most identity development models have evolved from clinical and anecdotal data (Gruskin, in Hunter 2007, 61) and have had small samples and weak research designs (Evans and Levine 1990). In addition, most of these models are proposed in the western context and are often based on white, gay men’s experiences and hence have been criticized for their ethnocentric assumptions. In fact, most of these models understate the importance of the social context within which the LG identity development occurs. While some of these models do refer to the idea of identity foreclosure and, in describing this, discuss the role of traumatic life events, these traumatic events, especially in the context of homonegativity, prejudice, and targeted violence, are not really explored; nor are the role of individual resilience, community solidarities, and activism for change discussed. Finally, these models minimize the tremendous variation in experience of LG individuals that is mediated by ‘context’ of social class, ethnicity, age, gender and other background factors (Kaufman and Johnson 2004).
Apart from work on LGB identity development models by individual researchers, the American Psychological Association founded the APsyA Division 44: Society for the Psychological Study of Lesbian and Gay Issues, in 1985, to engage with research, clinical practice, advocacy, training and education on issues related to minority sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender non-conformity. One of the seminal works of this Division was the creation of Guidelines for Psychotherapy with Gay and Lesbian Clients (APA 2000) that was a result of studies carried out with mental health professionals in America, and then in Europe with psychologists, to understand their current practices, including biased as well as exemplary practices (Garnets et al. 1991; Milton and Coyle 1998). In addition to these Affirmative Therapy Guidelines, APsyA Division 44 has also attempted to respond to the wide range of controversies and questions related to ‘Sexual Orientation Change Efforts’ and a range of conversion/reparative treatment practices to help clients change their sexual orientation. One of the results of these concerted efforts is the ‘Manual on Appropriate Response to Sexual Orientation’ (APA 2009). Similar efforts have been undertaken in U.K. by the British Psychological Society, which has developed a guidelines document titled ‘Guidelines and Literature Review for psychologists working therapeutically with Sexual and Gender Minority Clients’ (Shaw et al. 2012). In the Indian context, too, attempts have been made to document affirmative practices with LGB clients (Ranade and Chakravarty 2013a, b, 2016). However, since there is no taskforce or special interest group of mental health professionals in India working on these issues, these do not have the scope or the mandate necessary to influence mental health practice, education, or policy.
Another strand in the newer trends in mental health research with LGB identity is that of exploring the vulnerability and risk of LGB persons to various health and mental health problems. This kind of research mostly employs a public health approach to highlight the nature of stressors, stigma, and violence in the lives of LGB persons that puts them at a higher risk (compared to their heterosexual counterparts) for sexual health problems such as sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV, and for mental health problems such as depression, suicide, and substance abuse. There have been a range of epidemiological studies that suggest elevated rates of depression and mood disorders (Bostwick et al. 2010), anxiety disorders (Cochran et al. 2003), post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) (Hatzenbuehler et al. 2009), alcohol use and abuse (Burgard et al. 2005), and suicide ideation and attempts, as well as psychiatric comorbidity (Haas et al. 2010) among LGBT adults. Research with LGBT youth suggests that they face a greater number of stressful events, and have access to less social support, than their heterosexual peers (Safren and Heimberg 1999). In the Indian context too, a study conducted with 150 Men who have Sex with Men (MSM), in Mumbai city, indicated that 45% reported current suicidal ideation, 29% screened in for current major depression, and 24% for some anxiety disorder (Sivasubramanian et al. 2011). There have been a few other reports that have documented suicides among LBT persons. A study with 50 queer persons, who had been assigned female gender at birth (and many of whom identified as gender non-binary or transgender), indicates that as many as 20 respondents of the 50 had attempted suicide at least once, and some more than once; seven others had seriously contemplated suicide in response to the violence and lack of support in their lives (Shah 2015). Humjinsi, a resource book on queer rights in India, documented over 30 cases of lesbian couples committing suicide in a period of five years (Fernandez 1999). According to Deepa (2005), a lesbian-rights activist documenting cases of lesbian suicides in Kerala, most women committing suicide are from Dalit, adivasi, and working class communities, and have therefore been subjected to multiple discriminations. In terms of sexual health risk, specifically HIV risk, MSM and Hijras are considered to be core high-risk groups for HIV infection in India (NACO 2007). As per a report of UNDP (2010), the overall adult HIV prevalence is 0.36%, and that among Men who have sex with Men (MSM) in India the rate is estimated to be 7.4%, and among hijras/transwomen it is even higher (17.5–41%). More recent figures from NACO suggest the national prevalence of HIV to be 0.26%; among MSM it is 4.3% (NACO 2015).
It is important to note here that the research trends I describe above, within LGB psychology and public health, while indicative of the de-pathologization of same-sex sexuality, can also be seen as a re-engagement or a re-entry of the homosexual into the clinic; albeit this time not as a deviant in the manner that deviance was understood previously, but as a group that is ‘at risk’ for morbidity as well as mortality. The implications of this have been multiple, and the construction of the sexually non-normative subject within health sciences has been undergoing a lot of changes. For instance, in the initial years of the HIV epidemic, gay men and MSM, were seen as carriers of the epidemic. Their lifestyle (read ‘sexually promiscuous’) was seen as leading to the deadly disease. Similarly, substance abuse, suicide risk and its higher prevalence among the LGBT community, has been attributed to the ‘lifestyles’ of these specific groups. However, these links between a community and its health/illness status have also undergone shifts with discussion on mediating factors, risk factors such as violence, discrimination, lack of social entitlements, and so on. One may then ask the question: Is there any change in the re-engagement of mental health sciences with homosexuality, and, if yes, what? One response to this is the change in the framework that defines this re-engagement/re-entry. The framework being used now is a psycho-social one, wherein psychological disturbance is sought to be viewed from and within a social lens. Thus pathology/disease is not located within the individual but is viewed as occurring at the intersection of the individual psyche, the interpersonal and relational realm, as well as the social context, and hence intervention, too, is seen as necessary at all these levels. If we were to look at the gay affirmative practice guidelines mentioned above, all of these, irrespective of whether they were developed by the American Psychological Association or the British Psychological Society or with Indian mental health professionals/counsellors, emphasize the need to focus on the impact of stigma on the mental health of gay persons, the role of unique stressors in the lives of gay persons, the challenges faced by gay clients as a result of being a minority, and understanding the intersection of LGB identity with other minority identities and marginalized locations. Similarly, if one were to look at the state/policy response to the HIV epidemic in India, it emphasizes as much upon creating an enabling environment for MSM, gay men, hijras and transgender women, through decriminalization of homosexuality and welfare measures for empowerment of the community, as upon clinical management of disease.
In order to dwell on this perspective further, I will first discuss sexual minority stress, as proposed by Meyer (1995).
Sexual Minority Stress: Prejudice and Discrimination as Social Stressors
Meyer (1995) uses the term ‘sexual minority stress’ to refer to the psychological distress that is a result of the stigma, discrimination, violence experienced by sexual minority individuals as a result of their sexuality. Minority stressors are conceptualized by Meyer as internalized homophobia, that refers to the ‘gay person’s directing negative societal attitudes towards the self, leading to a devaluation of the self and resultant internal conflicts and poor self-regard’ (Meyer and Dean 1998, 161), stigma that relates to expectations of rejection and discrimination, and actual experiences of discrimination and violence (Meyer 1995). A few defining features of minority stress are: (a) it is unique and hence ‘additive’ to the general stressors that everyone experiences and, in that sense, requires a response over and above the one required to cope with other life stressors; (b) it is chronic, implying it is related to relatively stable underlying social and cultural structures; and (c) it is socially based and stems from social processes, institutions, and structures that are beyond the individual (Meyer 2007). While focusing on the impact of gay-related prejudice, stigma, and discrimination on the well-being and mental health of sexual minorities, this model of minority stress does not suggest a singular notion of identity based on sexual orientation, but includes multiple axes of identities that may further marginalize or privilege an individual. In this sense, while describing the process of minority stress, Meyer acknowledges the intersectionality of identities. A distal-proximal distinction is useful to understand the processes of sexual minority stress. Lazarus and Folkman (1984) described social structures as ‘distal concepts whose effects on an individual depend on how they are manifested in the immediate context of thought, feeling and action—the proximal social experiences of a person’s life’ (321).
Garnets et al. (1990) suggest that prejudice events and experiences of victimization take away a person’s sense of security and invulnerability. Allport (1954) describes vigilance as one of the traits that targets of prejudice develop. Some studies point to the extra energy that is expended examining reasons for one’s sexuality and figuring out one’s sexual identity while living and growing up in a heterosexist world, maintaining multiple identities, stress involved in the process of coming out (publicly identifying as LGBT), familial issues and a general lack of social support as some of the unique stressors related to a gay or lesbian identity (Miller and Major 2000). Smart and Wegner (2000) describe the cognitive burden involved in hiding and living in secrecy. In the Indian context, some of the gay-related stressors that have been documented include: pressure for heterosexual marriage and forced marriages; pressure to seek help/cure from doctors to change sexual orientation; and violence from natal family (Ranade 2015; Fernandez and Gomathy 2003; Ghosh et al. 2011; Shah 2015).
In the two sections above—‘Looking for the gay subject in childhood/s and growing-up literature’ and ‘Finding the gay subject in psychological and psychiatric literature’—I have provided an overview of representation (or absence of the same) of same-sex sexuality within various disciplines and fields of study that are concerned with childhood, growth, development, well-being, and mental health. In the next two sections, I will discuss material related to development of self and identity, specifically sexual identities and their meanings in the contemporary socio-cultural context of urban India. In a study on growing up gay, this discussion on the nature of self, the emergence of self, and influences on the growing selfhood and identity, is necessary to lay out the multiple perspectives that have informed this work.
1.3 Identity Literature—Understanding the Intrapsychic‚ Symbolic‚ Dialogic and Collective Self
An increasing sense of identity… is experienced preconsciously as a sense of psychosocial well-being. Its most obvious concomitants are a feeling of being at home with one’s body, a sense of ‘knowing where one is going’, and an inner assuredness of anticipated recognition from those who count. (Erikson 1959, 118)
This is the description, in Erikson’s words, of achieving a sense of identity or developing a satisfactory psychosocial ‘self-definition’. Erikson describes this identity formation as one of the major tasks of adolescence and by this identity formation, he does not mean generating a new selfhood all at once during adulthood, but instead synthesizing the various elements accumulated throughout growing-up years into an enduring sense of selfhood that maintains continuity and sameness. Identity formation is not a onetime task; instead, it is a lifelong project with a changing, dynamic self or psychosocial identity (Paranjpe 2000). This notion of identity or the Eriksonian self is made up of the body, the psyche, and the ethos (social, cultural context), and identities are seen as being situated in these three orders in which individuals live at all times. Hence, identity formation is not just about being integrated from within (oneself) but also being integrated into a social order of one’s community. As stated in the quote above, identity formation is as much about a sense of well-being and comfort with one’s body, mind, and one’s future, as it is about recognition from significant others.
In this book, I use several of the ideas proposed by Erikson in the process of growing up and identity formation. For instance, from Chaps. 3–5, I discuss a continuity of experiences—those of childhood, experiences within family, school, college, friends, lovers, meeting others like oneself/LG community. All these experiences of the past and present, combined with hopes for the future, are synthesized into a person’s sense of themselves. Here, I describe one aspect of this self: the gay self that grows up along with other aspects of the self. This growing up is a process and not a one-time event of coming out to oneself or others. This process is about the continuity in the range of experiences, some more banal and everyday, such as hiding one’s sexual/romantic interests from the world, and some extraordinary, such as the first kiss/reciprocation of same-sex attraction, that are part of the journey that a gay or lesbian individual makes in the development of a sexual identity. I also discuss the role of the body-psyche in knowing about oneself, knowing about being different and making sense of this within the socio-cultural context that is heterosexually constructed and is modelled on the gender binary. I critically discuss, particularly in Chap. 4, identity formation as being more than just integration within oneself but instead as a negotiation with one’s surroundings for recognition and validation.
Another Ericksonian idea that is centrally explored in this book is that of ‘psychosocial reciprocity’, which suggests that an identity can be found only in interaction with significant others. I discuss the challenges that a gay/lesbian child faces in the absence of this reciprocity within their own homes, families, in school, among their friends. In Chap. 3, I discuss some developmental challenges that are unique to growing up gay: absence of role models, and positive experiences of mirroring, coupled with images and language which is hostile and abusive can be a major challenge in the development of a gay/lesbian identity. It is important to mention that Erikson underlines the significance of ideology in helping young people chalk out their path from the present to the future and providing a perspective on life, world, and one’s place in it. So in addition to psychosocial reciprocity, ideology is also an important pillar that supports identity development. Paranjpe (2000) explains this as follows, ‘ideologies as shared beliefs and values provide a valuable support for budding identities in a number of different ways. While individuals derive a sense of belongingness, solidarity, and collective security by identifying themselves with the group’s ideology, the groups in turn harness the individual’s capacities in the service of collective goals. Ideologies also offer perspectives on a collective future…’ (145). In Chap. 5, I discuss the role of meeting community i.e. meeting others like oneself, and a sense of belongingness that this experience produces for young LG persons. I also discuss another meaning of meeting community, that of finding a shared political language/ideology for social change and action. This kind of collectivization around a socio-political ideology can be an important source of strength and guidance in navigating a present and future that departs from the known familial/social heterosexual scripts.
I use several concepts from Erickson’s identity development theory, particularly the developmental stage ‘Identity versus identity confusion’, which, as described by the linear identity development model, coincides with the life cycle stage of adolescence. I want to underline two things here—that when one is growing up at odds with social mores, the ‘normative/expected’ developmental experiences of psychosocial reciprocity and mirroring from significant others may occur much later in the life of a gay/lesbian individual. Secondly, as mentioned above, while discussing ‘queer time’, most gay lives may not follow a linear, normative life schedule, and hence may not attain expected developmental goals as per the heterosexually determined time-table for growth and development.
In addition to the psychosocial identity development theory, I also use internalization theories of identity development, the idea of the contextual or relational self, as well as the concept of collective identities in this book.
Internalization theories are based on a central insight of symbolic interactionism: we internalize how others see/perceive us. This is also reflected in Mead’s (1934) work that defines the self as constituting of ‘I’ and ‘Me’. Here ‘I’ is the subject, the dynamic, novel, spontaneous part of the self, and ‘Me’ is the object, the perspective a person takes towards themselves when taking on the role of the other. Rosenberg (1979) builds further on this with the idea of ‘self-concept’. Self-concept is defined as the totality of a person’s thoughts and feelings towards themselves as an object of reflection. This self-concept is further thought to be consisting of self-referring dispositions, physical characteristics, and identity with four major sources of characterization—personal/individual identity, role-based identity, category-based identity, and group membership based identity. Two of the internalization theories that I mention here and discuss later, especially in Chap. 4, are Burke’s (1991) Identity Control Theory and Stryker’s (1980) Identity Theory. Burke views identity as a set of meanings applied to the self in a social role; these meaning-sets act as a standard/reference to understand who one is in a given situation (identity standard) and what are the expectations in order to maintain that identity in the eyes of the self and others (reflected appraisals). Thus, an identity, according to Burke and Reitzes (1991, 840) “is a continuously operating, self-adjusting, feedback loop; individuals continually adjust behaviour to keep their reflected appraisals congruent with their identity standard”.
Research on socially constructed identities has focused on a singular dimension of identity, such as identity based on gender, ethnicity, or sexual orientation. Stryker’s identity theory (1980) conceptualizes a multifaceted self, composed of multiple identities arranged hierarchically in an identity salience structure. Salience is based on two dimensions of one’s commitment to the identity: interactional (extensiveness of interactions in a social network through a particular identity), and affective (extent of emotional investment in relationships premised on the identity). Deaux (1993) conceptualizes identity as both defined internally by self and externally by others. This implies that there is a personal self, consisting of personal attributes and then there are multiple social identities that exist within a social context. Deaux suggests that it is the ongoing negotiations and relationships between one’s personal and social identities that contribute to the experience of multiple identities. Jones and McEwen (2000) in their research with women college students found that, at the centre of multiple identities, is a core sense of self. This core was frequently described by participants as their ‘inner identity’ as contrasted with an ‘outside identity’ or the facts of their identity which could be named by others. Both these models of multiple identities acknowledge that construction of self and identities is an ongoing process and that multiple contextual factors determine the importance attached to each dimension of identity. Jones and McEwen (2000) suggest that salience of identity dimensions is rooted in internal awareness and external scrutiny (for instance, race for black women). They also state that the experience of difference from others shaped identity, and salience was lowest when it came to privileged (which often includes sameness as others) dimensions of identity (for instance, sexual orientation for heterosexual women). Thus, both difference and privilege mediate the relative salience of different dimensions of identity. In Chap. 4, I discuss the complex processes by which individuals decide to disclose or not disclose their sexual identities, and ways in which they live and talk about their gay self. Here, I use several of the ideas described above about identity salience and multiple identities.
Another conceptualization of the self that I use is that of the ‘contextualized self’ with a more permeable boundary that is socially constituted. Here, the self is viewed as dialogical and is enacted in a social space. Thus, the self is viewed as having a social origin or is seen as socially embedded, as well as being primarily ‘relational’ in nature (Gergen 1994). Misra (2010) suggests that the Indian view of self maintains a self—other continuity, has tolerance for dissonance, and emphasizes self-control and mind training. Miller et al. (1990) state, “an Indian child is encouraged to develop an adult self, which is more responsive to family and community demands and responsibilities and more dependent on family status, prosperity and approval. Indians thus develop a more ‘familial self.’” (122). Sociologists—such as Das (1979) in her paper, ‘Reflections on the Social Construction of Adulthood’—suggest that the adult self is constructed through social norms, duties, and responsibilities associated with one’s gender, age, ordinal position in one’s natal family (eldest, youngest among siblings), and is communicated and monitored through immediate family as well as biradari (community). Dube (1988), while discussing construction of gender among Hindu girls in Patrilineal India, also suggests the significance of family structure and the wider kinship context in the process of self/identity development. It is these larger social processes that provide the organizing principles for hierarchies of social groups, individual position in the social group, formation of family and household, norms regarding marriage, inheritance, resource allocation, and so on. Individual identity in such a collectivist culture7 will have to be seen as located within this context and often expressed as an interdependent self. The interdependent self is more tacit, embodied, encouraged by cultural practices and public meanings, and reflects culture bound designs of human life (Markus and Kitayama 1998). Cross cultural research within psychology, such as a study by Dhawan et al. (1995), states that Indian participants, compared to their American counterparts, made a large number of references to social identities. They described themselves more in terms of role, group, caste, class, and gender. Another study by Tripathi (2005) suggests that people in India use categories of family, country, language, and occupation in order of salience. This is to suggest that in the Indian context, individualism is often subordinated to ‘familialism’. Roland (1991) states that Indians include family members within their sense of selfhood, and ‘we-ness’ over ‘I-ness’ constitutes the core of selfhood. Thus, an indigenous perspective on self that includes interdependence and relational dimensions as well as expression of self in terms of social identities of kinship, family and caste, becomes centrally relevant in the discussion of self and identity in the Indian context (Kakar 1978). Some of this discussion forms the backdrop to Chap. 4, where I explore meanings of sexual identity development and the process of coming out.
Yet another dimension of identity—collective identity—has, at its centre, the idea of self-categorization: identifying the self as a member of a particular social grouping. Other aspects include evaluation (positive or negative attitude a person has towards the social grouping), importance, attachment, interdependence, behavioural involvement, and so on (Ashmore et al. 2004). A sense of ‘we-ness’ or connection to other members of the group as well as to the category itself is an essential component of collective identity. An important aspect dealt with in collective identity literature is about the identity serving as the base for group mobilization and joint action. All of these aspects of collective identity will be examined in the analysis chapter on role of LGBTQ community/ies in the lives of queer people.
Perspectives on Sexual Identity and Sexuality
Sexuality, articulated as ‘identity’ and seen as a dimension of personhood, and an attribute of the self, can be traced to the emergence of the ‘homosexual’ and a range of other ‘deviant/pervert’ sexualities produced by the bio-medical discourse of the 19th century in the Euro-American context (Weeks 1981). Interestingly, the term ‘homosexual’ was coined and officially used much before the term ‘heterosexual’ came into existence. This was part of the process of describing that which was abnormal and deviant, in order to describe and establish the ‘normal’ and the normative (Katz 1990). There are varying perspectives on what forms, shapes and causes a person’s sexuality.
Biological determinism that is the idea that all of human behaviour is governed solely by an individual’s genes, or some aspect of physiology, has had a strong influence in our understanding of sex, gender, and sexuality (Spanier 1995). Viewed from this perspective, sex is understood in the framework of a binary of ‘man’ and ‘woman’ with associated chromosomal and sexual characteristics. Embedded in the idea of the gender binary is the notion of heterosexuality—sexual attraction between the opposite sexes. Since sex is seen as inborn, and sexual attraction attributed to biology, both the idea of gender binary and heterosexuality are posited as ‘being natural’, universal, and therefore normal. In the context of homosexuality too, gay rights activists have seen an opportunity in biological determinism. The argument is that if homosexuality is seen as inborn then it could not only be seen as natural/normal—and therefore acceptable—but also any efforts to ‘change/cure’ homosexuality can be questioned by asserting the innate, inborn, ‘as god intended it to be’ (unhampered by humans), nature of homosexuality. In fact, ‘homosexuals’ have often actively engaged in scientific studies and experiments in the hope of locating scientifically authentic biological proof of homosexuality that would increase their social acceptability (Biswas 2007). Biswas, in her essay, ‘The Lesbian Standpoint’ (2007, 265) states, “‘Homosexuals’ have lent their bodies, minds and beings to the scientific gaze in the hope of securing a self-knowledge that would give them the security of an identity, a difference, and a justification for assimilation into the mainstream”. Thus, on the one hand, while gay rights activists would like to use the biological causation argument to argue that homosexuality is inborn, natural, and unwarranting of change, on the other hand, the very same biological cause can be argued to be a biological developmental error, in need of correction. Achuthan et al. (2007) therefore suggests that there exists a vexed relationship between LGBT activists and science/medicine, with the LGBT activist seeing science as an ally at times to legitimize homosexuality, while medical knowledge rooted in biological determinism continues to produce the homosexual as the ‘pathological subject’.
Social constructionism, a perspective that views reality and knowledge as constructed by individuals and groups and not as universal givens, is another influential strand in understanding sexuality. Social constructionists state that there is nothing natural about heterosexuality or homosexuality and that several social processes interact in complex ways to construct normative notions of sexuality. Rubin (1984), in her essay, ‘Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality’ discusses the political nature of sexuality and builds a compelling argument for social construction of normative sexuality. One of the propositions that Rubin (1984) discusses is that of Sexual Essentialism. Sexual essentialism refers to the idea that sex is a natural, biological force that exists prior to social life and that shapes institutions. Sex is thus viewed as unchanging, asocial, and transhistorical. This idea of sexual essentialism has been reproduced in disciplines of psychiatry, medicine, and psychology, which have been some of the dominating disciplines in sex research. These disciplines view sex as a property of individuals that resides within individual hormones and psyches without historical and social determinants. This proposition of a biological/psychic origin of sexuality, that is uninfluenced by the social milieu and remains static across centuries, implies that sexuality is universal and our ideas of ‘acceptable’, ‘normal’ sexuality are frozen in time. However, if we look at the history of sexuality, we witness that, across different historical contexts and at the same time period in different communities, ideas of normative sex differ widely. Walkowitz argues that the “‘interplay of social forces such as ideology, fear, political agitation, legal reform, and medical practice can change the structure of sexual behaviour and alter its consequences” (In Rubin 1984, 149).
Rubin (1984) uses the term ‘charmed circle’ to refer to the socially constructed notion of the most accepted, pure, blessed and healthy form of sexuality between adults i.e. monogamous, heterosexual sex, within wedlock, for procreation based on the Victorian notion of ‘pure, forever, romantic love’. Social institutions such as religion, science, family, law and state, education, and media play a crucial role in upholding the socially constructed ideals of the pure, moral, right kind of sexuality. The charmed circle then becomes the reference point for producing a range of sexualities, choices, and behaviours that fall outside of the charmed circle and that can be judged as inappropriate, bad, sinful, unhealthy, abnormal, unnatural, and damned. Thus, according to the social constructionists, homosexuality is socially created—not biologically—in opposition to the ‘natural’ and ‘virtuous’ ‘within-marriage, heterosexuality’.
Marriage and family thus become important institutions for regulation and control of sexuality. Marriage is viewed within psychology as a ‘relationship’ and, within developmental psychology as a ‘milestone’ that young adults must reach at an age-appropriate time. On the other hand, marriage/family is seen, within sociology as an institution, with legal, quasi-legal underpinnings and religious, moral, and social prescriptions. This institution is seen as playing a significant role in maintaining the hegemony of heterosexuality, as well as the marginality of homosexuality and all other forms of sexual and gender expressions that fall outside the gender binary of man and woman. Marriage as relationship would imply that the rules and norms that govern it come from within the couple/family system (an intrapsychic and interpersonal dimension), whereas marriage as institution implies that the rules and norms of ‘normality’, ‘appropriateness’ come from outside (social and institutional dimension) (Morgan 1985). Morgan (1985) goes further from marriage as institution to describe the ‘medicalization of marriage’. He states that, in modern societies, there is an increased professionalization around marriage. There has been development of specialized theories and knowledge base about marriage and relationships, wherein ‘marital problems’ are treated as a class of problems, which can be delineated from other kinds of problems, wherein cure and solutions are prescribed by trained professionals. There exists a clear shift from marriage guidance, which was often led by priests, ministers, and was focused on repairing the marriage, to marriage counselling carried out by the ‘experts’, doctors, and therapists and with a non-directive focus. The definition of marriage is restricted to adult, heterosexual, legal relationships, and the primary model of family is that of a nuclear one. Both marriage and family are assumed to be universal. Sexuality is seen as an important component within the marital relationship and is restricted to heterosexual, peno-vaginal sex leading to orgasms. Absence or problems with the same is seen as cause of marital and family dysfunction which is often then treated at the clinic/marriage counselling centre. Within this conception and practice of the clinic, the homosexual, bisexual, asexual, poly sexual, are labelled as perverts and prescribed different forms of treatments.
In the Indian context, marriage is seen as compulsory and as an essential gateway to adulthood and respect within the family as well as the extended clan and community. As mentioned earlier, in the Indian context, the self of an individual is constituted, mediated, and lived through a matrix of social duties, responsibilities that are determined by the institution of family and kinship and that operate within the larger matrix of religion, caste, gotra, region, and so on. Sexuality is thus prescribed to have a life within this context; through marriage, procreation, and reproduction of the familial/kinship norms.
It is also necessary to underline the role played by the State in legitimizing the institution of marriage and defining what constitutes family, marriage, parenthood. Legislation is an important tool used to decide the validity of marriage, inheritance of property, and control of sexuality. It has been argued by Morgan (1985) that, depending on the nature of the State, control on sexuality would differ; a conservative, traditional State, for instance, would lay heavy emphasis on keeping the family intact and have high moral taboos around sexuality and therefore stricter legislations that make access to contraception, abortions, and divorce difficult. A conservative, capitalist State would encourage families to consume more, spend less on welfare, and view the family as a more desirable substitute for the state in matters of care for the elderly, children, the disabled, the sick and so on.
It may be argued that, in modern capitalist societies with free markets and state support of liberal policies, sexual expression is actively encouraged and supported by large commercial interests, media and advertising. In fact, stimulation of consumption and commercial leisure activity is an important feature of modern capitalism and the eroticization of the everyday, and sexual symbolism, are a significant part of this consumption drive. One may then ask the question: Do modern capitalist societies promote sexual liberation? Marcuse (1964) refers to this as pseudo-liberation, where a state of hypersexuality is created through artificiality and commercial manipulation of desire, with no challenge to any of the existing structures of repression. Marcuse has used the term ‘repressive desublimation’ here to argue that repression has appeared in another guise, not reduced, or abolished. The idea of ‘Pink Money’, referring to the purchasing power of the gay community, would be a good example of this pseudo-acceptance and integration by the capitalist market economy, viewing LGBT people as a significant consumer group with disposable income, and designing products that target LGBT individuals and couples. It can be argued that the increased tolerance and even visibility to LGBT lives in mainstream media and popular culture that one sees in the developing countries, is part of this market-driven plan to find newer target audiences and this does not mean any ‘real’ shifts away from the heterosexism and patriarchy that underlie institutions of marriage, family, kinship and the state.
1.4 Contemporary LGBTQ Assertions in India
For over a decade now, especially after the judgment of the Delhi High Court in 2009 decriminalizing homosexuality, there has been a lot of visibility within mainstream media and popular culture (at least in urban India) to issues faced by the LGBTQ community. There have been many more books written about queer lives, many more interviews of queer activists published in newspapers and magazines, many more films made about our lived realities, many more online and street-based campaigns and pride marches that talk about LGBTQ rights. In fact, the Supreme Court judgment on Section 377 in December 2013, that re-criminalized homosexuality, received strong resistance not just from the queer community in India and around the world, but also from straight allies and liberal-minded activists and intellectuals across the globe. Similarly, the NALSA judgment of the Supreme Court on rights of transgender persons in 2014, and several state level policy documents and bills on transgender rights, which followed the same, are milestones in the vibrant movement for LGBTQ rights in India.
‘Gay’‚ ‘Lesbian’‚ ‘Queer’—Contextualizing Sexual Identity Labels
LGBTQ movement/s in India use ‘sexual identity’ (as well as gender identity), and denial and violation of human rights due to the same, as the primary anchor of collectivization and action. In other words, sexuality is seen as a recognizable/identifiable attribute of the self, an identity that, due to its ‘difference’ from dominant heterosexuality, can become the source of discrimination and violence. In this book, when I use gay, lesbian or queer, I use these as identity labels to mark experiences of individuals with same-sex sexual desires. However, as pointed out earlier, sexuality may not always form a part of the social identity of a person; social identities in India are often created and lived through a range of other prescriptions related to one’s position in the family and community, one’s age, birth order in the family, caste, class, religion, gender location, and so on. It is therefore necessary to note that for several persons, sexual attraction, desire, preference, fantasy, behaviour, orientation and sexual identity may not always have a congruent, coherent, and linear progression. One may thus have the social identity of the eldest son of the family, good provider for one’s wife and children, care giver to elderly parents, advisor to younger siblings and their spouses and children, and also be a man who has sex with men (MSM), and this aspect of his sexuality may not be seen by him/others as part of his other social identities. The point I wish to emphasize here is that there is a lot of diversity in sexual expressions, identities, and varied dimensions, such as that of language, social class, caste, region that determine sexual subjectivities. So, while I discuss growing-up experiences of those who self-identify as gay or lesbian, there have also been those who do not identify with these labels, and their experiences are not explored in this book.
Another dimension to the discussion about naming/articulating sexual identities is that of invisibility and absence of affirmative language to refer to non-normative sexualities. The language used to talk about normative sexuality often tends to be structured around relationships, roles, and milestones that exist within the heteronormative script. For instance, terms such as husband, wife, spouse, imply a conjugal/sexual relationship; roles of parenting and milestones such as reproductive events are other markers of sexuality for which there exist a range of terms, expressions that are not only socially acceptable and easily available but are affirmative and celebratory. Language that does exist to talk about non-normative sexualities and gender expressions may often be derogatory, implying a deficit/lack of masculinity/femininity. As suggested by Shah (2015), individuals and groups who do not find their identities and expression represented in language, create new words/language, reclaim/re-appropriate terms of abuse as also borrow from other languages to speak about themselves. The acronym LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) would be an example of this borrowing, which has now become part of organizing, activism, and campaigns, as well as part of the media and public vocabulary in India to talk about non-normative genders and sexualities. The Q that often gets added to the acronym LGBT represents ‘Queer’, and has been part of the re-appropriation of the language of oppression and abuse that has been historically used in the Euro-American context to refer to homosexuals in a derogatory way. A parallel in the Indian context is possibly the term hijra, which has been often used as a derogatory term to refer to a person assigned male gender at birth and who is seen as a lesser man/impotent; however the name/label hijra is claimed with pride by many who see themselves as belonging to a third gender, outside of the male-female binary.
It is necessary to note that identity labels and names are constituted by and performed within a cultural as well as legal, political and policy environment. Thus, the borrowed language of LGBTQ that I refer to above is also framed within the context of the legal campaign against Section 377, HIV/AIDS epidemic and the policies, services and international funding associated with the same. The Supreme Court judgment on transgender rights (NALSA 2014) as well as the Expert Committee Report on Transgender Concerns (MSJE 2014) is an example of the way in which international human rights language pertaining to gender expression and identity has been used along with local, socio-cultural/religious expressions such as hijras, shiv-shaktis, jogappas, which may not be ‘individual gender identity labels’.
In this book, I use the terms gay, lesbian, and, at times, queer. I use ‘gay’ to refer to persons assigned male gender at birth (and many of them see themselves as men) who desire and are attracted to men. I also use the term ‘gay’ sometimes as an umbrella term to refer to persons with same-sex desires/identity/orientation. This is because, in the course of my field work and in conversations with queer friends, I have seen many persons assigned female at birth (many of whom see themselves as women) who desire women, use the term ‘gay’ for themselves instead of lesbian. This is partly due to the negative connotations associated with the word ‘lesbian’ that many people grow up with and hence prefer ‘gay’ as a generic term for same-sex sexuality. However, I do retain and use the term ‘lesbian’ to refer to women who love/desire women; many of the participants in my study used this as an identity label for themselves as well. Finally, I use the term ‘queer’ in this book to talk about people who use it as a political stance; an ideology more than as an identity term. Several of the participants used ‘queer’ to refer to a way of being and doing activism; a political perspective that involved challenging structures that perpetuate inequalities and exclusion. These include but are not restricted to hetero-patriarchy and homo-negativity. As Narrain and Bhan (2005) state, queer resistance and struggle is not about an ‘assimilationist’ agenda of tolerance and acceptance. It is, instead, an objection to all hierarchies and power structures that oppress.
While I discuss same-sex sexuality and sexual identities in this book, I wish to underline that gender and sexuality are intimately interconnected. In fact, it is the binary way of thinking about gender in terms of man and woman that is at the foundation of the binary idea of sexuality in terms of homosexual and heterosexual. Several of the life narratives that I discuss in this book include elements of gender non-conformity alongside same-sex sexual identity development. I also wish to point out that just as identity categories and labels exist within a socio-cultural space, there is also a dimension of time, a historical temporality, to these. As Shah (2015) point out, the category label ‘lesbian’ has been used to refer to all persons assigned gender female at birth (PAGFB), who are attracted to women, irrespective of whether these PAGFB see themselves as women or not. There has also been the description of the butch (masculine) lesbian person and, more recently, gender non-binary, gender queer, or trans person. I mention this range of descriptions and, at times, overlapping category/labels, to suggest that identity categories are produced (rather than discovered)8 within the context of the existing discourse. So, when I first started interviewing research participants in the cities of Mumbai and Pune in 2008, many referred to themselves as lesbian and at times gay. The language of queer and trans/gender queer entered our vocabularies a bit later and several of my participants, who previously identified with the identity label lesbian, preferred later on to talk about themselves as queer, gender queer, non-binary, using language and labels that were a better fit to their experience of their gender and sexuality.
LGBTQ Organizing in India—A Brief Historical Account
Writing about the history of LGBTQ movement/s in India reveals certain events and forces that have played a significant role in the collectivization as well as visibility of the queer community in India. Emergence of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and an increasing recognition of diverse sexual practices within and outside heterosexual marriage that included sex between men, is an important milestone that over two decades led to more organizing and visibilizing of LGBT issues in India. In the initial years of the epidemic, the National AIDS Control Organization (NACO) was established under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare in 1986. Influenced by international aid agencies and global dialogue on HIV/AIDS, NACO eventually, in its National Aids Control Program II (1999–2006) began to consider women in sex work, MSM as well as gay men, as ‘bridge populations’ (Ramasubban 2008). Thus, though seen as ‘sexual deviants’ and ‘carriers of fatal infection’ (to the heterosexual population), there was at least articulation in a state document about the existence of gay men and MSM in India. HIV/AIDS activists as well as gay activists played a crucial role over the years in shifting this position of the NACO. NACO now runs separate target intervention programmes for MSM, and transgender (TG) persons including kothis and hijras. Services under this program include not merely health services but also empowerment-based interventions. The National program encourages MSM and TGs to form their own local community-based organizations to carry out HIV/AIDS related work. This has led to the growth of several organizations led by TG or MSM persons, advocating HIV prevention as well as a broader agenda of sexual health and human rights. In fact, from the pathologizing of MSM, gay men, and TG as ‘bridge populations’, the current National HIV/AIDS policy emphasizes collectivization, affirmative action and creating an enabling socio-legal and political environment for MSM, TG groups (NACO 2007).
International and national attention to the HIV epidemic from civil society organizations as well as the state machinery created a platform that lead to widespread collectivization among hijras, kothis and men who have sex with men (MSM) across the country. The policy, program, and research initiatives, as well as the funds that came into the country for fighting the epidemic, have played a vital role in highlighting issues of sexual and gender minorities, sensitizing the health infrastructure and empowerment of the hijra/kothi/transgender and MSM community. In fact, the first recorded protest talking about LGBT rights in India was organized by AIDS Bhedbhav Virodhi Andolan (ABVA), and took place in 1992 against police harassment of gay men (Narrain and Bhan 2005). Later in 1994, Kiran Bedi, the then Inspector General of Prisons (Tihar, Delhi) refused access to condoms to the male inmates of Tihar jail, citing Section 377 and stating that allowing access to condoms would be like promoting homosexuality; and, instead of condoms, the inmates needed counselling to avoid such unnatural sexual acts. It was then that the ABVA moved court through a civil writ petition to strike down Section 377 and ensure access to safe sex to all prisoners. I will discuss the campaign against Section 377 as a milestone in LGBTQ organizing in India later in this section.
Apart from the public health language of the HIV discourse, another quarter from where issues of lesbian women were being articulated was from the autonomous women’s movements in India. While the women’s rights movements in India predominantly organized around the issue of violence in women’s lives and in doing so talked about women in heterosexual marriages, conversations about same-sex relationships, women’s desires did take place in smaller groups. In fact as early as 1987, when newspapers reported that two women constables from Bhopal had married each other and as a result had lost their jobs, several women’s groups had protested and written letters asking for the women to be reinstated. In 1990, during the National Conference of Women’s Movement in Calicut, for the first time women’s sexuality was discussed and there was a separate session to talk about ‘single women’. In 1994, at the Tirupati conference of the autonomous Women’s Movement, a lesbian group proposed that there be a separate session and in 1997, at the Ranchi conference, such a session was organized by Stree Sangam and Saheli (groups working with lesbian women in Bombay and Delhi) (Biswas 2011). Thus, women’s groups, particularly queer feminist groups, had begun talking about violence against lesbian, bisexual women within their natal and marital homes, lesbian suicides, women running away from home with their women partners, and so on. One of the most visible articulations of this was seen during the protest demonstrations in the wake of the violence and controversy surrounding the release of the film Fire (a Hindi language film depicting a same sex relationship between two middle class Hindu women) (CALERI 1999). However, this solidarity within women’s movements has not been without its challenges and hesitation. As Shah (2005) notes, while violence against lesbian and bisexual women was condemned, homonegative attitudes and comments, refusal to allow a group working on lesbian women’s rights to carry their banner at a Women’s March, are examples of the struggles and constant negotiations.
It is interesting to note that, while the history of the HIV-related organizing of gay men, MSM, hijras, kothis and trans women dates back to the late 1980s and early 1990s, and a comparable time line exists for lesbian organizing in India (mostly autonomous, a mix of funded and unfunded/voluntary through the decade of 1990s and early 2000s), the two have been parallel histories with very few meeting points, possibly due to the differences in perspective and politics. However, one of the major common agenda on which almost all groups across the country have come together in India is that of decriminalization of homosexuality by reading down of the Section 377 of the IPC. The impetus for this campaign on decriminalization came from arrests of workers working on HIV/AIDS education and prevention with Bharosa Trust, Lucknow under Section 377 on the charge that they were promoting homosexuality. In parallel, reports of police harassment of hijras, MSM, and gay men, as well as violence against lesbian women documented by the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL-K 2001) were published. Around this time in 2001, Naz Foundation, an NGO working on HIV/AIDS, filed a petition challenging Section 377. A group of individuals, NGOs, and groups working on women’s rights, sexuality rights, and child rights, later came together under the umbrella called Voices Against Section 377 and joined in as petitioners in the Naz petition. The campaign against Section 377, that has now spanned over a decade and a half and has seen the decriminalization of homosexuality in 2009 and the re-criminalization in 2013, has been referred to as a significant platform that brought together groups, collectives, NGOs and individuals representing rights of LGBT, hijras, kothis, from across the country. Some other developments in the context of the campaign against 377 is that it was for the 377 case that for the first time parents of LGBT individuals (mostly middle-class, well-respected, heterosexual citizens and in some instances, senior citizens) came together to file a petition in support of their children’s rights. Similarly, mental health professionals across the country filed responses in the court stating that homosexuality is a normal variant in the spectrum of human sexuality, and condemning the use of medical treatment for cure of homosexuality.
The present vibrant and visible state of the queer movement/s in India needs to be viewed within the above-mentioned historical context as well as the more recent Supreme Court Judgment on transgender rights, followed by the Central and several state governments’ efforts to formulate legislation and policy on transgender rights.
Finally, after having laid out detailed perspectives on non-normative sexualities, identities, and their representations within mental health sciences and childhood studies, I conclude this introductory chapter with a few questions that I take up for consideration in this book. In the current context of research, academic writing and activism in India with respect to non-normative genders and sexualities, is there space to talk about the ‘Gay Child’? Is there a need to do so? What are the particularities of growing up gay in heterosexually constructed contexts of family, educational institutions, neighbourhoods, communities, popular culture, policy and legal frameworks? How, and in what ways, do these specific experiences of growing up gay inform our understanding of child and youth development, family studies, health and risk? Do these experiences that do not follow a heterosexual schedule of growing up teach us something about our methodologies to study human development? Does the study of difference and marginality have to always be a study of distress and isolation? In the following chapters, I attempt to respond to some of these.