Prelude
Of love and relationships
narrative one :
i was in a relationship with a woman for more than eight years. she was in, what i call, ‘a limbo married situation’ for most of this time. she had not legally divorced her husband but about two years after we started seeing each other, she separated from him. the separation too was partial in the sense that he would control her in many ways primarily through their (at the time of separation) three-year-old son. her son and the custody battles she feared would ensue was her primary reason for not seeking legal divorce. at least, that was the stated reason. i think there is never any one reason that keeps married women in dead marriages from seeking divorce.
after her separation, she moved into a rented apartment and her son would stay with her on weekdays and with his father on weekends. so once she moved out, we had the place to ourselves during the weekends. i would visit every weekend and we would do the weekly chores together – buying veggies, groceries, school supplies, paying electricity and phone bills, watching films, drinks and dinner. so while we did as we liked, there was always a sense of watching over your shoulder… avoiding restaurants, cinema halls, where we were likely to run into the husband. if the phone rang, i could not pick it up as it could be her husband calling. i felt like i was always this person who needed to be hidden from her family and extended family with the apprehension that i, with my gender non-conforming appearance, would confirm something about her and her sexuality. she was convinced that he would probably hire a detective to take our pictures, which he could then use to blackmail her or take sole custody of the child.
i can’t say for sure, whether for her all this was part of the violent consequences of defying the patriarchal institution of marriage and rebelling against the sacred idea of full-time motherhood that is possible only within the institution of marriage or was this also about internalized homonegativity, shame, guilt… maybe it was a mix of all.
narrative two:
i have always wanted to see a bollywood style, three hour long film with lots of song and dance and locations in switzerland with two men, madly in love… people say, i am foolish, innocent, naïve for believing in that kind of a love story. i am just saying we need those kinds of larger than life, happy looking and pretty smelling images of gay love too. i think it’s fine to be different and talk about that difference, assert that difference, and say f*** off to the world that undermines us for our difference, but to be able to do all that, it’s also necessary to feel home somewhere…
for me and p, our relationship has been that home for us for over a decade now. we have seen each other through that tumultuous phase of self-doubt about our sexuality, about dating women, dating men, reckless sleeping around, getting drunk and all that drama… we have also been together in taking decisions over career paths, jobs, illnesses, even a parental death. at the end of the day, when we hear about a young person being thrown out of their homes or someone giving up on the fight that life can be for most gay people, we know that we were saved because of each other.
narrative three:
among queer people when we talk about non-normative relationships, we usually mean ‘open’ relationships… like straight people when they talk about non-normative relationships they usually mean ‘live-in’ relationships… come to think of it, what do these words mean? as if to suggest that people in normative relationships, what they do, their love, relating, their being is ‘closed’ and ours ‘open’ or that they ‘live-out’ instead of ‘in’ or ‘with’… it’s funny, isn’t it? but i think there is a lot of stereotyping in both the gay and straight world about the normative/regular relationship as about the not-so-regular relationship.
talking about the stereotype of ‘open/non-monogamous’ relationships, in the queer world, we see these as cool, radical… relationships that challenge patriarchal and heterosexual norms of ‘happily married forever’ and all the oppression connected to that including staying on in violent marriages, guarding family ‘izzat’ (honour) to qualifying for inheritance of the ‘family’ (read husband’s/father’s) house that you have laboured in as much if not more, all your life. but when i think of my relationships with my lovers and partners, i do not see these as just political decisions taken to set alternative examples, models of other ways of living and loving… for me, initially, it was simply about being deeply attached to my partner of seven years, while having fallen in love, head over heels with another woman, someone who made my life richer, intellectually, emotionally, sexually… then it was about a lot of work, emotional work, i mean. it is about all of us consciously working on and dealing with our fears, insecurities, anxieties, jealousies—all those intense emotions that we experience, just as part of being human, but also because we have been conditioned all our lives to believe that we own, possess our partners and they are like our extensions in this world. so when we hear our partner say that they have fallen for someone, what we hear instead is that they have betrayed us, betrayed our trust, loyalty, years of togetherness… as if they owe their existence to us. it does not have to be like this… a conversation with your partner that starts with, “i think i may have fallen for someone…”, can end or begin in multiple ways.
for me, it was about assuring my partner of seven years that she would always be a significant part of my life and we will continue to do the things that we did together as a couple, as a family and be part of each other’s life projects. it also meant working a new equation with my new lover about how much time we could spend together and when i needed to be away. basically, a lot of work on boundaries and also figuring out alone time with myself, so that i nurtured myself as much as i did both my relationships. it got more complicated as more and more actors like friends and family got involved in our story, each with their own ideas of what is a good relationship… my therapist once said to me that resources of money, time and energy are finite… for me this is the bottom line and of course consent of all involved and other such questions of ethics but certainly not guilt and loyalty in deciding on having one, two, many partners, lovers, crushes, flings…
Consolidation of one’s identity as gay or lesbian is as much an interpersonal and social process as it is an intrapsychic one. In other words, recognizing ‘difference’ in various areas of life while growing up, making sense of this difference, finding the language for articulating this difference in terms of sexuality and gender expression, working through straitjacketed definitions of heterosexuality and homosexuality, are some of the intrapsychic (within the individual’s psyche) battles that queer persons fight to reach a point of self-acceptance and celebration. However, in addition to this internal process, meeting other people like oneself, sharing life stories, forming community bonds, supporting each other’s struggles (personal and political), and finding romantic/sexual partner/s, are important processes that are enabling for a gay or lesbian person. Thus, experiences with interpersonal and social interactions are as much significant in consolidation of a lesbian/gay identity as the psychic journey of navigating difference and understanding one’s sexuality.
The previous chapters have focussed on non-normative gender and sexual expressions and ‘making sense’ of this non-normativity, while living within the normative frame of family, school, and peers. One chapter has explored the dynamic process of communicating this ‘non-normative/difference’ to the world around and making multiple choices of disclosure and non-disclosure while looking for affirmations of one’s identity.
In this chapter, I explore the role of intimate relationships and meeting with the queer community as milestones in the process of identity development and affirmation. From ‘being gay’ to ‘being gay with someone’, that is, developing an intimate relationship with another same-sex adult, can often be an experience that further affirms one’s identity. Similarly, meeting with, and being part of, a queer community enhances commitment to one’s gay identity. In fact, many people initially access the queer community/s in their respective cities or across cities, and virtual or online communities, in the hope of finding a romantic/sexual partner. In that sense, meeting community and forming intimate relationships may be closely linked processes.
5.1 Same-Sex Relationships: Mirroring and Self-affirmation
I was first involved with this woman who was a crack pot… she actually was so terrified by her sexuality. So after I left her, I met this other woman, who was pretty sure of herself. She was out and all… that relationship kind of gave me the strength to be confident about who I was. It gave me the courage.
[Vidya, 35 year old lesbian woman]
… discussing with my partner, I gradually realized that this defense mechanism that I am using, saying that I am a bisexual and will get married one day is not right… because I haven’t tried it and he encouraged me to try it and that’s when I knew that it’s not going to work and that I am hiding behind the label bisexual, when I am actually gay.
[Atul, 33 year old gay man talks about his first long-term relationship at age 26]
Karl was almost nine years elder to me, he spoke about a lot of things, not just about sex but he spoke about gay life, what homosexuality is and how it is not abnormal. He was very positive about himself and that helped me to feel very comfortable. I think that is why, I didn’t have any problems with coming out.
[Amit, 33 year old gay man talks about his first relationship at 22]
In my second year of M.A., I fell in love with this woman. And she was the one who gave me the language… she said that if you and me are in love with each other, we are homosexual. And I was like ouch, No No!… she was like yes we are and I was like, its an ugly fucking name (laughing), but then we started with saying that ok we are probably lesbian…
[Pradnya, 33, says about her first relationship with a woman at 22]
A romantic relationship, especially the first one, as well as the initial few relationships for a gay or lesbian person are not just relationships but can be a mirror for validation of themselves, a gateway to reduced isolation and knowing more, meeting more gay persons, seeing more non-normative and queer ways of being and relating, and, possibly, also the beginnings of a political queer identity. Thus, queer relationships, in addition to being spaces for sexual exploration and emotional intimacy, can often play the role of what Leap (2007) describes as ‘gay socialization’, that which tends to be self-initiated and self-managed in a heterosexually constructed world.
Deaux (1993) suggests that identity is both defined internally by oneself and externally by others. This implies that identity is not just about self-definition (personal dimension of identity) but also about how one’s identity is read or perceived by others. This external perception—the social nature of identity—is important in the construction of identity. Thus, while being in a same-sex relationship can be an empowering experience for the LG individual, the flip side can be increased visibility of the gay or lesbian identity. Kaufman and Johnson (2004) point out that being in a relationship makes the same-sex couple more visible to both family and society, and this visibility often implies heightened homo-negativity and prejudice. Also, being a gay or lesbian couple, rather than a LG individual (often read as a ‘single’ man or woman) adds another layer of negotiation to everyday interactions. Being in a gay relationship can shift the individual’s status from ‘discreditable’ to ‘discredited’1 due to heightened visibility. While this observation is partly true for LG individuals in India, there are other cultural and social realities that mediate this.
5.2 Homosociality as Paradigm
In India, even in cities, we live in a highly gender-segregated society, which lays down strict rules and norms for interactions between men and women both in the public and the private domain. Furthermore, in traditional, patriarchal societies such as ours, there is a clear public–private divide, with women often expected to operate primarily within the domestic and private realm, while the public, economic, and political sphere is seen as a male domain. Thus, men engaging with each other on matters of intellectual and political concerns, and spending a lot of their time in the company of other men, is encouraged. Similarly, women sharing their domestic chores and concerns with each other is a norm. As a result, intimate relationships between members of the same sex are often interpreted in terms of ‘friendship bonds’ and deep emotional connections that are celebrated within the cultural context. Thus, in India, there exists a cultural script for homosociality, which refers to close social bonds between persons of the same sex.
It is a straight world yaar… So technically I and my girlfriend cannot hold hands in a mall or whatever, but we still do. I keep pecking her on the cheek or put my arm around her, basically we are our coochie cooing selves everywhere… and then if someone looks at me, I quickly call out to her, ‘didu’! Its a thing, like didi or didu (meaning sister). So people around are like, ‘oh they are like sisters’… I think you have to find your way out…
[Priya, 30 year old lesbian woman]
Thus, having a same-sex relationship but couching it in homosocial/kinship terms can actually work as a strategy to counter the challenges thrown up by becoming a ‘gay couple’ that Kaufman and Johnson (2004) describe above. Employing the normative gender script of ‘expressive’ young girls, and articulating it through a familial language of ‘sister’, leads to the relationship being read/interpreted as an emotional/intimate, but nonsexual one. However, acceptance to homosociality does not necessarily translate into acceptance of homosexuality. In fact, contrary to that, homosociality may invisibilize the sexual/erotic aspects of a relationship between persons of the same sex.
Literature on homosociality, particularly in the context of male bonding has focussed on ways in which men tend to build social bonds and closed teams with other men to construct power blocks and protect male territory and privilege. Traditional ideas of hegemonic masculinity emphasize a discontinuity between homosociality and homosexuality, resulting in a form of male bonding characterized by homosocial desire and intimacy but, at the same time, of homosexual panic and the need to confirm one’s heterosexuality through displays of homonegativity, prejudice, and misogyny (Hammarén and Johansson 2014). However, there have also been queer readings of homosociality exploring the underlying continuum of desire and relationship (Janes 2012). Hammarén and Johansson (2014) argue that there can be a horizontal homosociality between men, characterized by emotional closeness, intimacy, and non-profitable forms of friendships. The idea of ‘Bromance’—referring to a non-sexual love affair between men—is an example of this kind of an inclusive masculinity that is possible only through undermining of the traditional rigid gender binary system (Svenska Dagbladet, quoted in Hammarén and Johansson 2014). Homosociality among women, on the other hand, has been seen as a continuum between homosocial and homosexual: women caring for each other, promoting each other’s interests, women’s friendships and bonds, and women loving women (Sedgwick 1985).
Apart from the lens of homosociality, culture studies scholars have noted that, to understand same-sex sexual relationships in India, such as among men having sex with men, it is important to note that their sexual subjectivity and practices may have little to do with claiming explicit identities or rights and these may not be neatly aligned to any kind of a uniform, “globally intelligible gay liberatory” narrative (Boyce 2006, 85). Thus, men who have sex with men in India may appropriate the term ‘gay’ in their own way to talk about themselves, but the use of this term may not mean the gay identity as defined in the western gay liberation discourse. Also, many MSM may use other kinship, or community, notions to talk about their self and identity, and may not see some of their sexual practices as linked explicitly with an identity label. Thus, as described in Boyce (2006, 90), “sex between men may not be differentiated from heterosexual practices in expected ways”. As argued earlier, the idea of the self itself can be viewed from a familial and relational lens, and is constituted through a matrix of social/familial duties and responsibilities, that are determined by the institution of marriage/family and kinship.
We used to share everything. We used to tell each other everything. He doesn’t know I am gay or that I have sexual contacts with men or that I am so feminine. Many of his friends told him that this guy behaves like this but he fought with them and told them that its ok, he is still my friend. He would tell me that he will not get married and stay with me only. Then last year he went back to Nashik for a job and we both cried a lot… whenever he comes to Pune, he meets me. We still feel a lot for each other but we don’t say anything. I feel that if I tell him how I feel about him, then whatever is there, will also go away.
[Karan, 24 year old gay man]
I kind of kissed her and got physical with her once when we both were really drunk. I don’t remember it very clearly but ya that kind of started it. She is essentially straight. But she didn’t stop it, it’s not like I forced myself on her or anything. So it kind of continued over the years… Whether she was attracted, not attracted, whether it was experimentation for her, I have no idea. But I was definitely attracted to her.
[Aditi, 31 year old lesbian woman]
There was this really handsome guy in my batch during my internship. We had this intense Dosti (friendship), like male bonding, which in Indian society is very common. We clicked right at the first moment. And then he kept on calling. Calling as in keep calling and all those lovey-dovey things… then we happened to go for an outstation audit together. There I remember we slept like hugging each other for the whole night. We didn’t do anything more… It kept on growing. I knew that he is not gay. Although emotionally, he was reciprocating, very much and that physical thing is happening I mean whatever hugging tightly and all that. But, there was no genital contact as such. Then one day I decided to come out to him and he was not negative at all but he said the same things like try looking at girls and then I decided to stop all this with him. He was still very keen and would call and the hugs and all that, but I lost interest…
[Salil, 28 year old gay man]
These descriptions of intimate relationships with same-sex friends is an example of the homosocial–homosexual continuum described earlier. Same-sex friendships and same-sex intimacies, which border on the homoerotic, have been discussed as being common to Indian culture/s (Vanita and Kidwai 2000). It may not be labelled as odd or abnormal and may be seen as part of male bonding, or as part of the overly emotional nature of women’s friendships. Diamond’s (2002) research with eighty lesbian, bisexual, and unlabelled women, in the age group of 18–25 years revealed that their closest adolescent friendships with girls involved possessiveness of the friend’s time and attention, fascination and preoccupation with friend’s appearance and behaviours, and gestures of intimacy such as massages, back rubs, playing with each other’s hair, holding hands, and so on. These accounts indicate that the same-sex adolescent friendships contained many feelings and behaviours typically associated with romantic relationships. Similarly, literature in India on sexual behaviours between men, often referred to as masti (friends having fun), includes descriptions of mutual masturbation, group masturbation, relieving each other’s body tension, and so on (Khan 2001). This is often viewed as a ‘natural’ part of the development of masculine sexuality, as well as an acceptable form of sexual expression for men (Singh et al. 2012). Yet another way would be to view these relationships as a queering of normative sexual relationships—straight or gay, where being sexual (read genital sexual contact) is essential for a relationship to count as romantic/sexual; similarly, romance and love is seen as necessary for a sexual relationship. However, queer relationships could be about non-sexual romance, non-romantic sex, and multiple other expressions, outside of the matrix of sex and romance.
5.3 Centrality of Marriage
Another socio-cultural aspect, to be considered in the context of relationships, is that of marriage, (read heterosexual) which is seen both as compulsory for all and as a duty (Kakar 1978). The Indian family severely limits experimentation in the choice of partners by adhering to the practice of arranged marriage (Beteille 1993). Marriage (read endogamous marriage) and procreation are necessary to establish one’s social status within one’s family and larger clan/community. Even with respect to inter-caste marriage, often the structural distance between members of the two castes that intermarry is not too much in terms of the local or regional caste ranking (Kolenda 2003). Thus, the compulsory nature of marriage and rules about who can marry whom are quite rigidly defined. Vanita observes, “In India, most people have been, and many continue to be, married off at a very young age. Hence exclusive same-sex relationships are necessarily rare” (Vanita 2002, 3). Because of the great emphasis on marriage as a marker of adulthood, consolidation of sexuality around ideas of individuated sexuality is less entrenched. In fact, marriage is seen as a bond between two families and not individuals. “The legal and social validity enjoyed by marriage makes it the unquestionable foundation of families and kinship formation… The family is looked upon as the foremost bonding, that is, as if inherently, by definition, capable of ensuring one’s physical-material security, interpersonal growth…” (Biswas 2011, 417). As a result of this primacy given to the institution of marriage-family-kinship, relationships that fall outside of marriage and, by extension, outside of the family and community network are unthinkable for many.
The centrality of the institution of marriage and family in social life in India can be understood from one more perspective. With the Indian state steadily withdrawing investments in social security (reflection of a trend world over), and disinvesting in education and health care, the task of care for the vulnerable, ill, disabled, and old has been entirely shifted onto the family unit. One has to then exclusively depend on family support for any needs including support to get through college, having a roof over one’s head, and any crisis such as loss of job, ill health, accidents, disability, and so on. Thus, the state, by outsourcing the care function to the family, makes the family the default care unit, thereby enhancing its power of surveillance and regulation (LABIA 2016).
As a result of this centrality and almost compulsory nature of heterosexual marriage in adult lives, I see two kinds of trends with respect to same-sex relationships that have emerged from my conversations with the study participants.
He came out to his parents about four months ago and their reaction was adverse… in terms of crying, not eating, asking him to change, asking him to cut off relations with me… in fact he promised her (mother) that he will change and get married. Then he comes up to me the next day and says, ‘I won’t be able to keep my promise with you, if I want to keep my promise with them…’
[Vineet, 40 year old gay man]
She had to get married… there was too much pressure. I was still studying and neither of us had a job or money or a place to stay. We lived in the same building and so I could not even bring her home. Our parents, mine and hers, would have killed each other if that had happened. So she got married and she called me on her first or second night and told me, she did not like that man, she did not like his looks, the way he touched her. At that time, she was in Amritsar and I was in Panchgani at boarding school… I knew I couldn’t do anything.
[Leona, 33, talks about her forced separation from her first lover at 18]
Right after college, my then girlfriend wrote a letter to me one day saying that this entire thing between us is a sin and it is abnormal and she has decided to get married and I should do the same. Pressure for marriage was high in my family too… you will not believe it, I said yes to the first man who came to see me at my father’s place for that baghnyacha karyakram (ritual of boy’s family coming to see the girl in an arranged marriage)…
[Sayali, 31, lesbian, currently in a heterosexual marriage with a 3 year old child talks about the time when she was 21]
All of the above responses indicate a complex web of factors including the power (in a specific context) of family members to emotionally blackmail or decide their child’s future but also the structural power of the institution of marriage and family that are naturalized, universalized and seen as the only official/legal framework for love, sex or intimacy. In addition, a range of material realties such as lack of access to resources—the job, money, shelter that Leona talks about in the quote above—as well as other material resources, such as inheritance and property that is tied in with loyalty to one’s biological/blood family, are also important factors that render queer relationships (un)viable. Internalized homonegativity, isolation, and the lack of support hinted at in the quotes of Vineet and Sayali are other intrapsychic and interpersonal factors that affect the (im)possibilities of queer relationships.
I think it’s our relationship and how she perceives it. She is very happy that I have somebody, who is always by my side no matter what happens… he is an inseparable part of my life and its a mature relationship. It’s not like two boys coming together and having sex every night. So it’s more than that and she knows that he is from a good family background. So I guess it is the image of our relationship that has helped her, since now it has become more of a social relationship and the same thing has happened to many of our friends… they kind of look up to us and want to be like us. It was unintentional but it has helped us also. It’s a kind of a moral boost for us and we take it as a compliment.
[Atul, 33 year old gay man]
This response of parental acceptance and validation of their son’s sexuality on seeing him as having ‘settled down’, being in a ‘marriage-like’ relationship, can be understood in multiple ways. One explanation that stands out the most is that of ‘respectability’ being accorded to a relationship that is long-term, monogamous, marriage-like, among equals (social class, caste: among boys from ‘good family’), albeit breaking one rule, that of gender/sexuality, but holding onto other rules of the ‘charmed circle’ (see Rubin 1984 for description of sexuality and the charmed circle). Thus, respectability, which can be described as a central pillar of the normativity discourse, makes this transgression seem somehow acceptable. Also, while same-sex relationships challenge the practice of heterosexuality, a married/marriage-like same-sex relationship that maintains class, community, and caste boundaries may not be seen as much of a threat to the heteronormative institution of marriage and family.
The other way to read this is in terms of the anxieties of heterosexual parents, who have been only exposed to a heteronormative world, about the future of their gay son/daughter. A qualitative study on parental responses to their gay and lesbian children in Mumbai states that parents worried about their children’s future and care during old age, and this is often a barrier to accepting what are seen as their children’s choices around their sexuality. However, if parents, especially mothers, see that there is a ‘marriage-like’, stable, committed, nurturing relationship, although with a person of the same-sex, then the worry and resistance is likely to reduce (Ranade et al. 2016).
5.4 Living Within and Outside the Heterosexual Script
The heterosexual script in the Indian context is tied in with marriage. Marriage in India is endogamous and there is a high social and institutional commitment in ensuring that marriages take place within-caste or castes that are of similar stature in the social hierarchy, as well as within same social class and religion (Kolenda 2003). In addition, marriages are expected to be procreative and monogamous and the pressure is especially high for women. Same-sex relationships, by definition, fall outside of these marital norms and prescriptions and yet, by being lived out in a heterosexual world, may often emulate them, but also challenge and resist them, and create a range of diverse intimate partnerships.
The aspirations and experiences of same-sex relationships that participants in this study shared, can be broadly clubbed under two main themes. There were those who wanted everything that their parents, siblings, or friends had in their relationships and marriages. In this sense, while they transgressed boundaries of normative sexuality, they wanted to access all heterosexual institutions and practices, and did not envision any change in these institutions except that they should be able to access them as freely and openly as their heterosexual counterparts. These responses can be broadly described under the umbrella term ‘marriage equality’; that is, all relationships, irrespective of straight or gay, should have the same status and rights in the eyes of law, state, religion, family, etc.
I always believed that I am never going to have a LTR (long term relationship) and I am not made for that but I don’t know how things changed and they changed for good… but in the meantime I had a lot of doubts. I even went and slept with three different men in that period of six months before committing to him as I was not sure, but there came a point when I wanted us to be exclusive, monogamous…
[Atul, 33 year old gay man]
Because I have a twenty four hour broadband connection, I am just sitting late at night, checking out profiles, sending messages, receiving messages, meeting guys for sex and that just felt very sleazy after a point. I did not like it. I just wanted to settle down with someone who has a similar family background, similar values, with who I can share my life…
[Avinash, 28 year old gay man]
Both these responses imply the need for a monogamous, stable, relationship after having spent some time on sexual exploration. The second participant also describes the need for a similar family background and shared values in their long term partner. This is similar to some of the matching of class, caste, religion, and other background factors, that are taken into consideration while arranging a heterosexual marriage. As mentioned earlier, seeking a relationship like a marriage may be linked with notions of respectability, acceptance, and leading a ‘normal’ life, and this can be seen as seeking normative privilege and yet it can be more. It can be about internalizing social morality, as described in the quote above, using terms such as ‘feeling sleazy’; it can be about changing needs of a changing self, changes in intimacy needs, emotional dependence/independence, changes in experience and knowledge of possibilities, changes in meanings of what it means to be queer, and also changes in one’s political understanding and positions. It can also be about structural realities, wherein, increasingly, the state is disinvesting in social sectors and withdrawing support from any care and welfare and relegating these functions to the ‘family’.2 Who would be this family in the life of a queer person? For many, with rejecting and violent natal families, the need to have a marriage-like/recognized, monogamous, and stable relationship may be expressed strongly; is this, then, as much about angst and the exigencies of living, as about emulating a heterosexual norm?
I remember the first gay man I met online. We chatted for a few weeks and then met at Deccan (a place in Pune city). I remember looking at him and thinking how handsome he is… I thought I found my husband! … you know like it is in hindi movies… that time I did not know anything about casual sex and all that. Initially I found it very difficult to adjust to all this.
[Mihir, 30 year old gay man talks about the time when he was 21]
A lot of people have different definitions of what a partner is. Some people want to live together, some want to meet only on Saturday-Sunday, like a weekend relationship, some want to meet only for pleasure, some people, actually two men I met just wanted care-takers, someone to talk to and take care of them, if they are upset or down… it took me a while to make sense of all this.
[Sunil, 32 year old gay man]
The second theme that emerged in response to relationships is that of a critical stance towards hetero-patriarchy, and is mostly from participants who identified as queer and feminist, or who had affiliations with groups that had a critical political stance towards not just issues related to gender and sexuality, but all issues pertaining to hegemonic power in social life. These responses are not merely rooted in a sexual desire and identity that is non-normative, but refer to the radical potential that queer forms of relating have to challenge norms and structures related to hetero-patriarchal institutions of power. Kingston (2009) describes, in his essay ‘Foucault on Homosexuality and Social Experimentation’, that homosexual relationships cannot derive from the existing norms and hence necessitate experimentation with ways of relating that can be seen as localized resistances to social normalization, and those, in turn, often serve to challenge excessive normalization of relationships on a societal level. Some of the themes that participants described were non-monogamy or open relationships, challenging the idea of everlasting love/one true love. They also talked about queering the idea of family, and talking about families of choice as opposed to families through biological or kinship bonds. In fact, expressions of lesbian and gay adult relationships, often in the form of families composed of non-biologic kin and non-traditional configurations of sexual and emotional intimacy, receive little, if any, social valuation, and are unsupported by law or public policy (Cohler and Galatzer-Levy 1990). These queer networks, consisting of lovers, ex-lovers, non-sexual romantic partners, biological and non-biological parents, have the potential to challenge every norm of the institutions of marriage, family, and state. As Foucault (1996) comments in an interview on ‘Friendship as a Way of Life’, “homosexuality threatens people as a ‘way of life’ rather than as a way of having sex” (310).
I had an affair with a woman when she (partner) was out of town and it was supposed to be a fling but it carried on for some time and I really hurt her (partner’s) feelings and then she also got into a relationship and then we were contemplating a non monogamous relationship because we could see that we are attracted to other people and then we were questioning whether you can be with one person all your life… but we kind of realised that we do care about each other a lot and somehow, we can’t really see each other with other people… so I think we are right now open to having friends, lots of friends but we are essentially monogamous
[Joanna, 40 year old lesbian woman]
One year back we discussed about our relationship and we decided that we should explore other relationships too. Now she has a friend who is bisexual and we are in an open relation. Now I am also seeing someone for last two months.
[Mithun, 35 year old lesbian woman]
I don’t understand this primacy given to a sexual relationship or blood relation in defining family. I have multiple people in my life who are as important as the person I am sexually and romantically involved with. These include my ex-lovers, my friends, comrades within the movement, my sister, who is extremely supportive of all my life choices, and I access each one of them in a significant way for different things in life…
[Pradnya, 33 year old lesbian woman]
… for the past two years this has been going on. I have been seeing K and I have been spending all my weekends with her, whenever the kids have holiday I go for a little time more, during the week sometimes… K has also started coming over now slowly… I mean for her it was a big thing because she was not used to being around so many people but there was a little adjusting time. My mom still doesn’t look at her as a daughter in law kind of thing, she still treats her as my friend, but at least she treats her well. It’s not that she invisibilises what we share. She acknowledges her as a part of my life. And my elder one knows about us and treats her very well. The younger one is also very fond of her and K also makes the effort na…
[Claire, 41 year old lesbian woman]
Since I am a sex worker, I fear that tomorrow if we have a fight, he will say ‘arey tu tar paisa gheun dhanda kartos, tula kai re majhi kimmat’ (you take money to have sex, how will you know my worth). So I am scared. Its best to not get so emotionally involved with anyone. I have seen many people getting wasted because of this love addiction
[Akshay, 26 year old gay man]
Same-sex relationships, thus, need to be understood on the backdrop of patriarchal institutions of marriage and family. Despite this, same-sex relationships play an important role in validation of the queer/lesbian/gay self of an individual and also open up several possibilities and negotiations for the individual to live out their queerness.
5.5 Challenges in Relationships: Some Issues Unique to Marginalized Sexualities
In this section, I discuss same-sex relationships to understand the role of these in the process of the individual’s identity journey, consolidation, and negotiation. Thus, as in previous sections, I don’t discuss here the nature, quality, and other particularities of same-sex relationships; instead, I discuss the context, and the ways in which same-sex relationships may be lived out, and its impact on the gay and lesbian individual as they are growing up and negotiating their lives.
Continuum of Loneliness, Isolation, Break-Ups, Depression, and Self Harm
The trope of isolation while growing up gay—thinking that one is all alone in this world—is a common one, and has been described earlier in this book. In Chap. 3, Mansoor says, “I had decided that I would be single only all my life. I did not know that gay men existed. I felt that there are hetero men and then there are men like me who love the hetero men. But then hetero men get married and so I would never get anybody…” (Chap. 3, 87). Battling with this sense of loneliness and trying to meet others like oneself—for friendship, for sex, for romance, for love, for camaraderie—has been reported to be a common experience. This experience of developing a bond, a relationship, an engagement, irrespective of the label given to the relationship, has been both an empowering experience for many of the participants, but also an experience of heightened vulnerability.
… it’s like you are desperate to stay afloat amidst the ocean. You want to swim against the tide and thrive, but you do need and are looking for even the slightest bit of support and then when you find that one relationship, you hold onto it with dear life! I think it is the desperation because of the isolation that makes you extra vulnerable to exploitation in relationships and makes break-ups really hard.
[Vinay, 36 year old gay man]
I wouldn’t say I totally lost it that time, but I would drink every single day. I won’t say alcoholism but I drank a lot. I was quite depressed after the break-up. I was this close to buying a gun but because of the paper work issue, I didn’t… I had to go onto meds [short form for medicine] for a while.
[Abhijit, 35 year old gay man talks about his early 20s]
After the break-up, I was totally messed up. I dropped out of college and then later joined a call center to somehow keep myself afloat. Also it’s such a small community in this city na… everyone knows everyone and so there was always this fear of running into her at community events when I wasn’t ready to see her, so I kinda isolated myself from everyone… that’s what happens. It’s just very hard.
[Priya, 30 talks about the time when she was 20]
In front of all the guys there he started saying, eh gud! eh mamu! (swear words implying effeminate man). He started shouting. These guys all knew that we were like husband and wife and they used to earlier humiliate me but had stopped after they knew about us. He was kind of powerful in that area. So that day when he called me all those names, I just went home and took all the pills that were there. When my mother came to wake me up for dinner, she saw that I had vomited all over. Then they took me to Sion (hospital) and then Rajawadi (hospital)… it was a police case.
[Ashok, 32 year old gay man talks about the time when he was about 18 years of age]
Research on LGBT mental health worldwide suggests that LGBT youth are more at risk for suicide, depression, and substance abuse. A few studies done in India too suggest a link between stigma, violence, depression, and suicide attempts, among persons with non-normative sexual and gender expressions (see Chap. 1 for this discussion). As discussed in Chap. 1, sexual minority stress model (Meyer 1995, 2007) helps to understand the links between stigma, prejudice, chronic stress, lack of support systems, and poor mental health outcomes. Social suffering as described by Kleinman et al. (1997) can be another framework to understand suicides, distress, and trauma of marginalized groups, that are a result of what socio-political, economic, and institutional power does to people. The social suffering model, which highlights the social violence underlying lesbian couple suicides, transgender youth suicides and self harm among kothis (effeminate men), is a useful one in that it frames the problem not in terms of individual pathology but in terms of systems that discriminate (Ranade 2016).
Negotiating Gay-Related Relationship Stress and Support in a Heterosexual World
Since gay relationships exist outside of the heterosexual script of dating, falling in love, everlasting marriage, procreation, and so on, gay partners often have the task of figuring out whether they would like to copy the heterosexual script exactly, or make changes to it, or write one afresh for themselves. In a relational sense, this is complicated by further questions: Are two or more people in an intimate relationship on the same page with respect to the new script/s? Is this something that people think through together? How does power operate there? Is someone always trying to catch up with the other/s? Does this agreed-upon script hold true for a certain time period? Can one change one’s mind? In a social/structural sense, issues of resources, mobility, familial responsibilities, and many such issues often place limitations on the many ways in which relationships can be imagined and lived. All of this clearly involves work—intrapsychic, interpersonal, as well as social—and often this work can be taxing in the context of the fact that ideas about good/true/real/moral love are not only pervasively present but enjoy a great deal of legitimacy in our society. Hence, the task of scripting and communicating the same to significant others—including lovers/partners but also friends, colleagues, family members—can be very stressful.
The range of stressors and challenges associated with same-sex relationships are many and diverse and would depend on other social locations of the same-sex partners/lovers. For instance, for a couple thrown out of their natal home or having run away from their homes and having meagre resources, finding a safe shelter, and a steady job can become immediate challenges that decide the viability of their relationship. This is not to imply that their only challenges are with respect to ‘roti, kapda, aur makan’ (food, clothing, and shelter), or that, once these are sorted, all else will be well. Similarly, the idea of re-scripting one’s life and relationship, which I mention above, does not apply only to couples who have sorted out the questions of basic survival. Several of these challenges may co-exist and will affect and be affected by personal journeys, resources, and negotiations of partners with regard to their sexuality. I highlight in this section a few examples of ways in which gay relationships have to negotiate with a heterosexually constructed world, particularly while dealing with crises and accessing support.
I kept sensing that they just weren’t willing to recognize that the bond between us was real and very strong. I remember telling this guy… he was like, come, I will drop you home? So I looked at him and said that if your wife was sleeping there, having taken those pills, would you have left the hospital? and he suddenly stopped and said ok I’m not saying anything. You know, so it had not even occurred to these people that it could have been that important to me. So that’s what happened with my straight friends. They didn’t understand what it meant to the two of us, especially since we were going through this thing of opening it up and all… so in a monogamous, mainstream way, they thought that ok, then it is finishing…
[Pradnya, 33, talked about the time when she was 24]
I did not know what had hit me. I had just broken up and was barely managing to keep my job and keep it all together… none of my friends and colleagues knew about us and about our break up, so I was pretty much on my own. And then when dad said, he has cancer and will be starting his chemo soon, I was just… don’t have the words. I would come to Bombay every weekend and go with dad for his treatment… I just lived through that time completely numb.
[Salil, 28 year old gay man]
First of all, we didn’t have a language, we didn’t identify as gay, we didn’t know what to call our relationship and then he went and fell in love with this girl and I was completely shattered, I didn’t know where that left me? where that left us? Was our relationship just a phase for him? I was plagued by these questions…
[Mansoor, 33 year old gay man]
She was meeting all these men in her work place and she had a couple of crushes and then she realised that actually she was more attracted to men but she was not really dealing with it as in she didn’t talk about it but I could see it happening and so I confronted her a couple of times and she said, I was just being possessive and that she was only going out for coffee with them and I was like coffee doesn’t go on till 3am in the morning… So we had lots of fights and then one night she spent the night at that guy’s house and then I decided to break up with her. She still said that they had not done anything but I was like, it is clear that you are very attracted to him, then it is better that you acknowledge it and move on than to carry on in this place… She made me feel really guilty for breaking up with her. It’s only two-three years ago that she called and apologised for all that.
[Joanna, 40 years old talks about her first relationship break-up at 24]
Relationships with people not identifying with a same-sex sexual orientation, with people who got married eventually, either by force or by choice, or with currently married people, posed a range of challenges in the life of the gay/lesbian individual. Some have talked about getting into relationships, as well as marriage, with persons of the opposite sex as a way to cope with partner rejection or the partner deciding to get married. Some have discussed that the partner continuing in their marriage, continuing to be in the closet, meant a barrier in the person’s own journey of being out and open and, as one participant said, ‘due to her homophobia and fears, it was like, I felt that I was being pushed back into the closet’.
Targeted Violence
I was introduced to her mother on one of our trips to Pune. Her mom checked me out from top to bottom and thap!… she must have sensed that I was a dyke and she immediately declared that I was to be seen nowhere near her daughter again…
[Joanna, 40 year old lesbian woman]
At some point he stole photographs of us and started blackmailing us about it and I refused to pay him. So he and two of his friends went to the police station and told them that these two are a couple. Luckily the officer there was my dad’s patient, so he contacted the psychiatrist in our hospital and he got in touch with my father. This was when I was in Goa with her. My father called me up and said that we are getting calls that we will tell about your daughter and lodge a complaint against her or else give us 10 lakhs… when we got back the police conducted a raid in her [girl friend’s] house and did not find anything of course, but they were tapping our phones and all. This was about 2002-03 and that whole 377 thing was still hanging over our heads…
[Payal, 28 year old lesbian woman about her girl friend’s neighbour]
In another incident, Sunil reported that he was attacked at his own residence by two strangers, who blindfolded him, tied him up, and tortured him for details of his then boyfriend, whom he had met through an online chat room. Sunil refused to divulge the details and was raped and tortured. He had no idea about who the strangers were. Sunil was terrified about going to the police as this was the year 2005, and the positive developments that later happened regarding Section 377 were not yet heard of. Sunil’s boyfriend claimed that he did not know who these men could have been and slowly distanced himself from Sunil. Being unable to seek justice, or share his trauma with his family or friends, Sunil merely had the support of a gay rights group in his city through whom he met a counsellor. This incident, while not a common occurrence, is also not extremely rare. There have been reports of sexual assault and rape, including custodial rape, of persons marginalized on the grounds of gender and sexuality (PUCL-K 2001). This incident not only highlights the vulnerabilities of LGBT persons to targeted violence, it also underscores the absence of institutional mechanisms for appeal to justice. Moreover, stigma and fear of further discrimination leads to silencing of such gruesome violence and absence of support to the suffering individual.
There have also been other types of violence: one of the gay men reported that his sexual partner, who does not identify with any sexual identity label, insisted that they could go home and meet the wife of this gay man and that he would sexually satisfy both of them. Another woman reported that the husband of her lover found out about the two of them and suggested a threesome between them. These were experienced by the gay individuals, in both these instances, as acts of violence due to their sexuality, and they believed that had they been heterosexual, they were unlikely to face such indignity and violence.
I would love to be out and tell everyone. She would love to tell her straight friends that see we are seeing each other, come over to our place for dinner. Or that we are celebrating our anniversary, come over. And if her office friends would have said we would like you to come for a party… as in just recently she was supposed to go for this outing, but she just couldn’t say that my girlfriend is at home waiting for me so she said I am not feeling well. So we would just love to come out and tell people…
[Priya, 30 year old lesbian woman]
In concluding this chapter, I would like to reiterate that being in an intimate same-sex relationship—short-term, long-term, casual, or any of the descriptors that have been used to describe relationships—leads to a further deepening of the gay or lesbian identity of the individual. Being in a relationship exposes the individual to many more experiences and questions relating to their queer/gay identity. Being in a relationship can be both affirming and challenging as it can promote well-being as well as cause distress.