Prelude
narrative one:
being able to recognize yourself… like seeing someone or something and saying, yes that’s who i am or that is what i am like. i think most of us struggle with this until we meet others like ourselves, find queer friends, lovers and what we call the queer community!
this may not be a big deal for some of the young kids today, at least for those in cities like Bombay where every other post on your newsfeed in social media is about queer rights, every other film festival or party you go to has some gay content in it, celebrities are standing up for your rights and it’s almost become cool to be gay or at least gay friendly (laughs)… it was very different when i was young. back in early ’90s, we would have to struggle to meet our own kind. i recently read in some archival type material, that there were these guys who wanted to start meetings for gay men way back in the ’80s and early ’90s in delhi and decided to meet at a public park. as a way of identifying themselves only for their potential participants without being too conspicuous to general public, they said that they would carry a red rose as a marker of this invisible minority… can you imagine the invisibility in those days!
for me, this recognition began with the britannica encyclopaedia, where i first looked up words like men’s sexual desires, homosexual… then came a newspaper article about a gay rights activist, but the most defining moment for me, where i saw for myself, who i could be, what my life could look like, came much later at a new year’s party.
i had recently mustered the courage to call a helpline number that i had found in a magazine for gay men. i sat on this number for two months before finally calling… i had all kinds of apprehensions about the phone being tapped and then my call being used to blackmail me, of meeting strange people… all sorts of stuff that i later recognized to be my own internalized homophobia. the other reason for the apprehension was (this i realized later is common for many gay people) that for most of us middle-class boys, our world is really shaped by our families, neighbourhoods, work or educational places. so when we meet any new people, it is always with reference to these relationships… like cousin’s friend or father’s colleague or neighbour’s distant relative or then there are friends and colleagues from college or work… when this has been your socialization history, how do you suddenly call a phone line and say that you want to meet men who like other men. it just seemed like now you had to do something that was not only outside your regular experience but something deeply secretive, like meeting someone from another world. it never occurred to me back then that in the gay community, i could still possibly meet that cousin’s friend or that father’s colleague… despite of all these apprehensions, i did make that phone call and i am so glad that i did, it just changed my life. no, i did not meet my dad’s colleague, thankfully (laughs) but it just opened up a world to me.
it did take some time to meet people i could be friends with but then came this party invite. someone at the drop-in-centre of the NGO that was managing the phone line told me about this private party and said i could go with him. just before reaching, i was told that it was at this couple’s house who had recently bought a place of their own. the excitement of going to a gay household!… i can’t put it in words. in fact, the whole evening felt a bit like a dream sequence. not because it was anything extraordinary, it was the ordinariness of the lives of this couple and all their friends who had gathered to celebrate their togetherness, their new house and the new year… the affection, friendship in the air and the attention paid to me, the new comer, it all felt like a big warm hug. i was introduced to well, at least thirty gay men, men from different professions, different educational backgrounds, communities, religions, age groups, single men, couples, some married men too… some who had known each other or their hosts for a few hours or weeks and some who had been in the same city, been part of each other’s lives for years… each one of them and their stories inspiring in me the numerous possibilities for my own life…
In this chapter, I explore two facets of discovering the queer community. These include learning about queer lives and, through this, learning about the possibilities and viabilities of one’s own life as a queer person; this facet is related to the idea of ‘Gay Socialization’ discussed in the previous chapter. Another aspect of discovering the queer community that is discussed here is related to consolidation of a collective identity or, as described by Simon and Klandermans (2001), “knowing one’s place in the social world” (320). It is in discussion of the development and consolidation of collective identity as a queer person that I discuss the affective elements of collective identity, attachment and a sense of belongingness, experienced by the lesbian/gay individual with other gay/lesbian/queer individuals; as well as a political consciousness relating to one’s position, power/powerlessness, priviledge in a highly stratified society, and collective action resulting from this consciousness.
6.1 Discovering Community: Gay Socialization
The motivation to meet others like oneself and feel part of a community of people is as much about asserting a collective sense of identity as it is about an opportunity to make queer friends and meet potential romantic/sexual partners. Leap (2007) uses the term ‘gay socialization’ as distinct from other socialization that takes place during the life course, that largely involves transmission and reproduction of heteronormative conventions and practices through institutions such as the family, peer group, educational system, and so on. Leap states that, on the other hand, gay socialization is self-initiated and self-managed and, while supportive allies or affirmative information that helps in the process may be present, their presence cannot be presumed or relied upon. In this sense, Leap focuses on the active agency of the gay individual in retrieving gay messages in newspapers, magazines, films, or books while growing up. It is through this process of discovering community that young gay people move from a life of secrecy and suffering, to survival, recovery, and politics (Plummer 1995). Leap summarizes this self-managed gay socialization as, “… narrators may find homosexuality to be disruptive, painful, and isolating, yet they search out ways to define a gay identity to their own satisfaction…” (103).
In the following sections, I first discuss the social context of invisibility, specific to the time and the cities in which the participants were growing up, and the ways in which they navigated their own gay socialization. I then discuss the journeys of retrieving gay messages within a heterosexually constructed world and the process of discovering gay communities.
Context of Invisibility and Silence of Same-Sex Sexuality
Historical accounts of LGBTQ collectivizing in India, specifically Mumbai, tell us that there were a handful of initiatives by gay and lesbian activists to talk about LGBTQ issues in Bombay city in the decade of the 1990s. These included publication of Bombay Dost, the first gay magazine that was brought out in 1990 in Bombay, when there existed close to nothing in the form of gay literature in India. Later, in 1998, Scripts, a magazine that focused on issues of lesbian and bisexual women was started by Stree Sangam in Bombay. A few organizations such as Humsafar Trust and Gay Bombay that work with gay men, and Stree Sangam (later named LABIA) that works with lesbian, bisexual women and trans persons were started in Bombay in the mid-1990s, and continue to function even now. Some other initiatives in the cities of Bombay and Pune in late 1990s and early 2000s include ‘Aanchal’, a helpline and support group for lesbian and bisexual women that started in 1999 in Bombay. ‘Humjinsi’, a phone line, support group, and crisis centre for lesbian and bisexual women, was started in the mid-2000s under a broader human rights organization, India Centre for Human Rights and Law. In Pune, initiatives on LGBTQ issues started only in 1999/early 2000s. Olava (Organized Lesbian Alliance for Visibility and Action), working on lesbian and bisexual women’s concerns, was started in early 2000 under the aegis of MASUM (Mahila Sarvangeen Utkarsha Mandal), an NGO working on women’s health issues. Samapathik Trust, Pune, a men’s sexual health organization was started in 2002 to work with gay, bisexual men, MSM, transgender persons, and hijras. Some of these organizations/initiatives, especially those working on issues of LB women, shut down within a few years of starting.
As discussed in the introductory chapter of this book, there have been several forces, events, and processes that have played a significant role in the collectivization as well as visibility of the queer community in India in the last three or more decades. The HIV/AIDS epidemic, and the public health response to the same, made conversations about sexuality, safety, and risk much more possible. It also meant an increasing recognition that there exists a wide variety of sexual practices within and outside heterosexual marriages. In fact, HIV-related research, program interventions, large-scale funding from international sources, and increasing involvement of the state and civil society nationally, and their recognition of MSM, Transgender persons, and Sex workers as ‘high risk/vulnerable’ groups also provided a platform for these groups to collectivize (Ramasubban 2008). Several NGOs, community-based organizations, and groups working on HIV, and also on rights of sexual and gender minorities, were formed with the help of the state and international agencies throughout the country in the 1990s and 2000s. Similarly, the campaign against Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, which criminalizes ‘sexual acts against the order of nature’ and which is often used to harass and blackmail members of the LGBTQ community, has been an important process in the history of LGBTQ movement/s in the country. Nationally, groups working with non-normative genders and sexualities as well as straight allies, such as parents of LGBTQ, mental health professionals, media personalities, writers, and activists from other progressive movements, have joined hands in this campaign, lending the issues of LGBTQ visibility and solidarity. Finally, as discussed in Chapter One of this book, the autonomous women’s movement/s of the country have been extending solidarity to queer rights, and have been discussing issues of women’s sexual choices that are not restricted to marital heterosexuality, of violence against lesbian women, of lesbian suicides, of the rights of trans persons, and so on. Some of the other milestones include a Supreme Court Judgment in April 2014 that granted legal recognition to all transgender persons and allowed for self-identification of gender under the categories male, female, or transgender. It also recognized the historical injustices towards transgender persons and held that they be recognized as socially and educationally backward classes, and be provided with affirmative schemes in education, housing, employment, and health care (NALSA 2014). This judgment has been followed by several policy discussions and action at the level of various state governments in the country. Thus, the current vibrant and visible nature of the queer movement/s in India needs to be viewed within this historical context.
Participants in the study that I refer to in this book, were mostly growing up during the late 1980s and 1990s (the average age of study participants is 33 years, and data was collected in two phases, 2007–08 and again between late 2011 and early 2013), when this kind of visibility to same-sex sexuality was unheard of. Organizations and collectives on LGBTQ issues were only beginning to form in most parts of the country in mid- to late 1990s. Thus, participants in this study were mostly growing up in social contexts where queer sexuality was largely invisible in the public domain. Since it was the early beginnings of LGBTQ organizing in the country, with only some spaces in the form of group meetings, social events like party spaces, some film screenings, and a few newsletters existed, but were often closeted, and hence access to these spaces was restricted. The advent of technology such as the internet and mobile phones, its growing popularity, and cheaper/easy access through the decade of 2000–10 has immensely changed the nature of networking among the LGBTQ community; this, in addition to a shift from silence to assertion and pride around queer sexuality, has made accessing the LGBTQ community/ies much easier today.
In the following section, participants describe their pathways to discovering and meeting with the LGBTQ community/ies and the impact it has had on their lives as queer people. Participants describe their extent of identification with, and participation in, community activities and events, and ways in which these engagements with the queer communities shape their own self, identity, and life choices.
Reading About Ourselves: Newspapers, Magazines, Agony Aunt Columns
I used to read this magazine called Just Like That and there was this help section in it, where a girl had asked a question, ‘I am in love with my best friend, who is a girl’. So I was like, ya man, this is my story. They had given a number in that and said that you can contact a gay helpline, which is located at Santa Cruz in Bombay. I quickly took that number and thought about calling for like five months. When I finally called them, they told me about Aanchal and Humjinsi helplines that worked with lesbian women.
[Priya, 30, says this at 19 when she first contacted a gay helpline]
Another participant talked about reading a book in Marathi, about the lives of lesbian women, when she was 29 years old and had been married for a few years with a three-year-old child. Reading this book helped her to make sense of the multiple sexual attractions towards women that she had felt all through her growing-up years. She now had a word, a term, for her relationship with her best friend in college, and her current attraction for her sister-in-law. After reading this book, she contacted a gay rights organization in Pune and also tried to get in touch with women whose stories the book had depicted.
Then I read an article which came on the AIDS day. It was an article about Gay Bombay and then there was information of Humsafar Trust, but no contact details. There was only an e-mail id of the author of the article. After this I remember, I opened an e-mail account and wrote to the author. He put me in touch with someone, who told me about G Pune, Gay Pune and I enrolled my name there… I think this was in FY (first year of graduation) when I was just becoming net friendly.
[Mihir, 30, says about the time he was 19 years old]
My brother, who really likes books, had once taken me to a bookshop and so we were reading and there I saw Bombay Dost. It was written, ‘gay magazine’ on the cover and since I had been reading the dictionary again and again (to understand the meaning of the term homosexual), I had read the word gay. So I remembered where this shop was in Khar and after two days I collected some money, went back, picked up the book and as if someone was watching me, I reached Khar station, went to the loo and read the whole thing.
[Parul, 34 year old lesbian woman talks about the time when she was 18 years old]
I read the whole thing (issue of Bombay Dost) but I could see that there was nothing for women, everything was for men. I also remember around that time, Mid Day brought out some anniversary issue and Ashok Row Kavi was there on the front page and his interview said something about he staying with his boyfriend and his mother being ok with it… much later I heard about Gay Bombay and while their parties are open for lesbian women as well, some of us started talking about creating separate social and party spaces for just us women…
[Parul, 34 year old lesbian woman talks of early 2000s in Bombay]
As discussed earlier in Chapter Three with regard to the unique developmental challenges faced by young LG persons, affirmative literature and materials plays a central role in helping young LG persons work through feelings of isolation, alienation, emptiness, loneliness, and thinking of oneself as abnormal. However, this information about gay life and experience is not readily available and the individual has to actively look for this in managing what I refer to above as self-initiated ‘gay socialization’ (Leap 2007). This reiterates the role of the active individual seeking to consolidate and manage their queer identity. In fact, the words of Parul, quoted above, indicate that this goes beyond finding affirmative spaces and people, to creating such spaces along with others in the community.
Internet and Chat Rooms
… the internet is a blessing for all gay people in India… Honestly … Because our society is so closeted.
[Mehak, 28 year old lesbian woman]
I would normally chat on some site and then came to know that there are some rooms which are gay rooms and so I thought lets go and figure out and then I came to know that there are people like me, even in Bombay, not somewhere in the world, but right here!
[Sahil, 25 year old gay man]
As part of my course work in web designing, I learnt to use the internet and learnt to chat on the net as well. I once chanced upon a gay chat room and found out that there are many people, who meet here and chat, I was not aware of this at all. I can say it was shocking for me that this happens… this was the first time that I realized, that you can meet people online just for sex. Later on I got to know that it is called a one night stand… then I got to know about dating and that there are these categories like ‘top’, ‘bottom’, and ‘versatile’ (refers to preference in sexual acts) that people talk about on the net and based on this make choices of sexual partners…
[Sunil, 32 year old gay man talks about the time when he was 20 years old]
Online, I was pretty brave. I gave out my identity which is not advisable but most of the times, my trust was reciprocated and I met decent guys… I strictly avoided the ‘a/s/l – age/sex/location’ kind of guys or the ‘coffee, tea or me’ kind of guys, those corny lines… or ‘your place or mine’. I made some very good friends too.
[Ajay, 32 year old gay man]
So I started looking on all these websites. I started registering everywhere… And in Indiatimes, I met someone. She was a married woman and so close to my age. So I was like, ‘Wow!’… We started chatting and we met up a couple of times. She started introducing me to a lot of things and gave me a lot of information. We started talking about friends we met online, about whether they were genuine… Then she told me about this support group called Aanchal. She was the first one who actually brought me out slowly and she introduced me to another e-list called SIP, Symphony In Pink, which had about 50 members at the time. I was just overjoyed to know that there are so many lesbian women in Mumbai.
[Claire, 41 talks about her initial coming out around 2005]
You know, you would read about people… how homosexuals live in other countries and at that point, I was very internet savvy and I would read about Canada and Scandinavia, South Africa and the kind of access that homosexuals had there to rights. For me the US was the ‘ideal’ place. I thought I would go there, find a million dollar job, get a perfect boy friend, get married and live happily ever after (laughs)…
[Abhijit, 28 year old gay man talks of the time he was 18]
Meeting Another Gay Person
Jim told me that in India too we have NGOs (working on GLB issues) and he knew about Mumbai, about Gay Bombay. So I called up the people at Gay Bombay and went to meet them. Coincidentally the day when I went there, there was a meeting taking place. It was Sunday and I took part in that meet and that was my first coming out to a lot of people together. I told them about my story, got to know people present there and also about NGOs in Pune that work on gay issues.
[Mansoor, 33 year old gay man talks about the time when he was 26]
Once we were all sitting in a park and were addressing each other as aga-tuga (feminine pronouns) and gossiping and laughing and our gestures were effeminate only. That time this person, much older to us came there and asked, ‘tu sadi ghaltos ka?’ (Do you wear a saree?). I was surprised. He was dressed in pant-shirt, but he then told us that there are many of them who cross dress, feel like women and like to have sex with men. He then introduced us to a lot of kothis and told us about parties in Pune where cross dressing happens…
[Dilip, 24 years old talks about the time he was 20]
… best part of this community is that when a new person gets in touch, there is a gathering to meet this new person. So people gather and go out pubbing or just drinks and dinner or somebody’s house or whatever. So the same thing happened to me and that’s how I met all these people.
[Leona, 33 about meeting other lesbian women at age 25]
And then she threw a party and she said I am going to call all the lesbians I know in Bombay. So that is where I met so many people. I had been in this intense and closeted relationship and now I was coming out to this group of people, actually a full thriving community. That was an amazing feeling!
[Joanna, 40 about her first time meeting community at age 30]
Doctors and Counsellors Referring to LGBT Organizations and Support Groups
I thought I should try calling, maybe something will come out of it as the medicines that my doctor had given were not helping, but it was 10 and the timings on the card were till 8. I still decided to try and to my luck someone was there and he spoke to me and I immediately felt relaxed. He called me to office in the morning… I came here and I saw these photos of men together and I was like ‘my god this is like a treasure I have found’. It was such a relief.
[Kumar, 30 year old gay man]
Ways of getting to know about, and pathways to meeting the community/ies has been different and unique to each person’s story of growing up. Similarly, what this meant to each person is also different. It has meant education and learning more about ways of being queer, reducing isolation, and unlearning the heterosexual script as the only or compulsory script for adult life. For some, it also meant affirmation of their gay identity and, with that, a consolidation of the ‘gay liberation project’, stated by one of the participants in terms of ‘a million dollar job, a boyfriend, marriage, and happily ever after’. However, meeting community/ies had unique meanings for each of the participants and so, for some, it also meant politicisation of the self and formation of a political identity,1 challenging the norm of relationships, sexuality, and family; this I will describe in the last section of this chapter.
6.2 Collective Identity and Selfhood: Meeting Community and Meaning-Making for Personal Identity
Collective identity simply refers to an identity that is shared with a group of others, who have some characteristics in common. Some elements of collective identity, as discussed by Ashmore et al. (2004) are self-categorization, or identifying oneself as a member of a particular grouping (Deaux 1996). This self-categorization may not always be a simple, clear, ‘yes or no’ process but collective identities can sometimes be ambiguous because of the individual’s subjective uncertainty on issues of identity (Mohr and Fassinger 2000). This uncertainty may be linked with a subjective experience of lack of goodness of fit with the category, uncertainty stemming from stigma, and social devaluation associated with certain identities. This is relevant particularly (discussed previously in Chaps. 4 and 5) for those who do not identify with a gay/lesbian identity, or for those gay and lesbian persons who are in heterosexual marriages, or for other reasons do not see themselves as fitting well with what they see as a representation of the LGBTQ community.
Other dimensions of collective identity include evaluation of the identity as positive or negative, importance and salience of the identity for the individual, social embeddedness, and behavioural involvement, or the degree to which the collective identity is implicated in one’s everyday social contacts and relationships, and degree of engagement in actions that directly implicate the collective identity. There is also the dimension of attachment and affective commitment, which includes an emotional involvement with the group as well as a sense of interdependence, which is fostered by an awareness of a common or shared fate. Finally, the content and meaning of a collective identity includes ideology and group consciousness that refers to members’ beliefs about the experiences, history, and social position of their group in society (Gurin and Townsend 1986). It also includes the individual-level collective identity element that denotes the individual’s internally represented story about the collective/social group that they belong to. It is all these multiple meanings of collective identities that I work with in this chapter.
Here, it is necessary to point to the distinctions between personal and relational identity and collective identity as discussed in the identity literature (Ashmore et al. 2004). Personal identity refers to characteristics of the self that one believes to be unique to oneself. Relational self refers to the self as shaped and influenced by people with whom one is, or has been, emotionally invested and influenced by such as spouse, family, close friends, and so on (Andersen and Chen 2002). Closely linked to collective identity is the concept of social identity defined as ‘that part of an individual’s self-concept, which derives from knowledge of his membership of a social group…’ (Tajfel 1978, 63). However, there has been a shift in literature to the language of collective identity (instead of social identity) to mark the difference from personal and relational identities that are also inherently social in nature (Ashmore et al. 2004). While all these aspects of identity such as personal, relational, collective, social identity, are not separate or distinct from one another and more like a continuum that are integrated within the individual, each one has a distinct meaning, and I refer to an interplay of all these in this chapter.
Theorists working on concepts related to selfhood, such as self-concept, esteem, and identity, describe the self as being born out of reflexive action or a result of a person’s interactions with others. In this context, Mead describes two components of the self—the ‘I’, who is the knower and actor and forms the dynamic, spontaneous, part of self, and the ‘Me’, or object, which refers to one’s ability to imagine oneself from the standpoint of another person, and includes all the learned perspectives a person takes towards oneself (Mead 1934). It is this second aspect of the self, which is ‘self’ as ‘reflected by others’, that is significant to this discussion on personal identity being influenced by community. Literature on internalized homophobia describes the mechanisms by which gay persons tend to internalize negative social attitudes towards homosexuality (Herek et al. 2009). Growing up in a homonegative/hostile society and being exposed to stereotypes, prejudices, and silences about same-sex sexuality from all significant institutions—family, religion, law, education, science—can significantly shape the ‘Me’ part of the queer self, leading to internalizing of homophobia and homo-negativity.
In this context, meeting with the queer community and seeing positive affirmations of oneself as mirrored/reflected by others can mean what self-psychology refers to as ‘corrective emotional experiences’ that were lacking in one’s families and missing from one’s childhoods (Beard and Glickauf-Hughes 1994). Meeting a large number of people who are similar to oneself in their sexual and or gender expression can be an experience of ‘coming home’ for many. This is not to suggest that the LGBTQ community is one homogenous group. There is a lot of diversity within the LGBTQ community and hence, while one would identify with similarities, there also exist differences, especially based on other identities of religion, region, caste, class, gender, ability, and so on. Yet, engaging in collective thought and action, about the rights of the LGBTQ community, can both be an act of empowerment and assertion, as well as an attempt at changing society’s attitude towards LGBTQ and, thereby, reducing stigma and gaining a better fit within society. The following section explores the various meanings and functions that engaging with the queer community serves in the lives of queer persons.
Sense of Belonging and Identification
‘until you learn the word gay and meet someone who calls themselves that, you are pretty much on your own, figuring out what is going on with you…’
[Mehak, 28 year old lesbian woman]
A sense of alienation from the heterosexual world—and its web of relationships within family, educational institutions, peer networks, work spaces—is almost a universal experience for all queer persons. Meeting and engaging with community can become an experience of identification and reducing isolation. Meeting community can mean many things: seeing someone like oneself in person, who does not easily fit into the gender binary of man and woman; hearing someone use the term ‘gay’, ‘lesbian’, or ‘queer’ to refer to themselves; meeting two women who are in love, and openly talking about it; seeing someone in drag; seeing photographs of men loving men; exchanging notes about cruising areas, and places to meet people for sex, love, or romance; knowing about queer-themed films, books, organizations working on LGBTQ rights, and so on.
I was like, I think I am a lesbian and I think I would like to talk to you about it…. I thought she was a doctor… I really thought that and somehow we always feel that doctors are the only ones we can talk to about these things na and so I told her, ‘I think I am a lesbian…’ She said, ‘you know what? You are talking to a lesbian right now’. I was like on the ninth sky or whatever you can say. I was so happy!
[Priya, 30 year old lesbian woman]
Then I came here. I met so many people and I felt that I am not alone and I began feeling comfortable here. I came here and I saw these photos of men together and I was like, ‘My God this is like a treasure I have found’.
[Kumar, 30 year old gay man]
Over the years I have felt increasingly alienated from the mainstream world around me. The collective then becomes a place where what I say/feel/express is immediately understood. People just get it. They think the same way. I don’t have to explain anything. Whether its feeling disillusioned about the right wing politics that the country is headed towards or feeling let down by family members because they invisibilise my queerness… I can rant about it here and it is understood. Even if something is not accepted, the arguments come from a place of being on the same page and that is very important to me.
[Pradnya, 33, member of a voluntary queer collective]
The collective is a place where one can share happy things… for example, my work on gender… be it a published report/paper/book is either looked down upon as ‘not real work’… some stuff we crazy activist type people do… or its seen as too ‘hi-fi’ by family and friends alike. It is a similar story with any other sort of political organizing - be it around caste oppression or the Free Binayak Sen Campaign or this campaign we ran Humari Zindagi, Humari Choice (a campaign about right to love)…
[Mithun, 35 years, member of a voluntary queer collective]
I can talk to them as in whatever feelings I have in my mind I can tell them. At home I cannot tell anyone. Even if I talk to any guy a little, my family members think that I am thinking differently (sexually) about him… After coming here, I have improved a little. Now I don’t cry as much and my eating and sleep has improved. These people are different from me and their lives are very different from me, but I still feel understood here and don’t have to feel ashamed of who I am.
[Sandip, 24 year old gay man]
When I went there I saw all drinking and smoking and it was all about fashion. I went in a punjabi dress and I had my mangalsutra (necklace worn by most married Hindu women) on and I really felt very odd that time that I am the only one here who is like this. I felt that you have to look this way, only then will someone take interest in you. I really didn’t like that place and left immediately.
[Sayali, 31 year old lesbian woman]
This participant said that she had grown up in a lower middle class, Brahmin, Hindu, household, in a conservative locality in Pune. After her college girlfriend broke up with her, told her that what they were doing was sinful and that she wanted to marry a man, this participant, too decided to get married. She had never heard of the term ‘gay’ or ‘lesbian’ until one day, several years after marriage, she read about lesbian women and same-sex love in a book in Marathi. It is through this book and its author that she contacted a queer women’s group in Bombay. From her quote above, it is clear that differences in marital status, class, region, language, age, exposure to cultures, and ways of living other than the one that one is born in, are some of the things that set this participant apart from the community of women that she interacted with, in this instance. Thus, an individual’s identity includes a range of multiple identities and, while there may be a sense of identification with other queer persons on some aspects, there can be a marked sense of difference based on other identity positions that the individual may occupy. This will be discussed further in this chapter while looking at collectivization in the queer community to bring about social change.
Safe Spaces and Support
The reason why we go to gay parties is because that’s the one place where we could be our own self. We can drink and dance and be like Meena Kumari or Akshay Kumar and do whatever you want to do. If you hold hands and walk around or engage in ‘PDA’ (public display of affection) with your boyfriend, no one is going to mind…
[Atul, 33 year old gay man]
A queer space for me is a place to have shameless fun and laugh. For those of us assigned female at birth, there are so many restrictions… but in a queer space I can really let myself have fun. Drink, smoke, talk about sex, have sex, write erotica… basically all the morality that weighs down on me, I have been able to challenge personally by being within queer collective spaces. And then I can generalise to more settings. And that has been freeing. Unlearning shame is what I call it… safe, queer spaces have helped me do that!
[Pradnya, 33 year old lesbian woman]
… basically its free in the sense that what we can’t do in our house we can do here in a room. If someone likes to wear a sari, he can’t wear one and dance at home… here you can.
[Amol, 34 year old gay man]
Participants who were from a lower socio-economic background, and often shared small houses with other members of their family, did not have enough privacy to live out their sexual and gender aspirations. Thus a ‘Friday Workshop’ space, drop-in-centre within the NGO, other community events, become the only occasions where these participants could be queer openly. Participants who were living on their own, with their partners or with parents, but with enough privacy, also talked about the need for affirmative social/public spaces, which are free from violence. They discussed the need for spaces where they can be with their partner/lover without being stared at, commented on, bullied, blackmailed, or beaten up. Thus, the social/party spaces created by LGBTQ groups, such as Gay Bombay in Mumbai, were seen as significant by most participants.
I came out when I was studying in the US. There I could go to a lesbian coffee shop, lesbian book store, lesbian restaurants, lesbian clubs and lesbian health centers and then I went to a lesbian strip joint too… So I was really stressed when I was going to come back. I did not know anyone and anything queer in India. But then I met someone online and wrote to her and we met up when I got back and that was great. She and her partner had arranged a small party for newer dykes, who were really not part of the community. They got us introduced to other women…
[Mithun, 35 year old lesbian woman]
Safe spaces do not always imply segregated physical spaces, where all queer persons, even those, who are not out can feel safe. Safe space can also be about accessing and claiming public spaces (which are often cis-male centric and heterosexist), and doing so with the strength and the power of the collective. It may also imply interpersonal, relational spaces that are safe and non-judgemental for all, irrespective of a person’s gender expression, sexual preference, HIV status, ability, age, caste, class, and so on.
In a heterosexual world, family, both natal and marital, are seen as the primary source of support during all major life events. Life events in adult life itself are so centrally defined by one’s sexuality and marital status: marriage, pregnancy, children, children’s health, education, career achievements and so on. Life events in adult queer life are rarely discussed, for instance coming out to oneself, decisions about coming out to others in natal family, work places, friends, looking for partner/s in a heterosexual world, dealing with romantic relationships that fall outside heterosexual marital scripts, stresses and strains of ‘invisible’ and socially unsanctioned relationships, dealing with multiple losses of relationships, friendships after coming out, dealing with ill health, and hostile health care systems. The mainstream world often remains ignorant of these life events in queer lives and hence support during these times of difficulty from community members, queer friends, and families of choice (consisting of queer persons and allies), become significant.
… basically my gay friends spoke to my sister on the phone and told her. Even my straight friends rather my female friends who are straight, even they offered to speak to her. One of my friends Asha, her brother is gay, so she spoke to my sister and told her that its ok and she told her that even she was in denial for a long time and now she is fine… So all these people and my gay friends have played a very important role in my life
[Ajit, 24 year old gay man]
We always go to Nerul as one of my friends has a bungalow there and we always go there. As in generally dance the whole night, booze the whole night, so it is fun. Or then every weekend if this doesn’t happen, we have these get-togethers, we meet for lunch. We have these two friends who are a couple and they live together so they invite us for lunch, they cook for us and so it is fun.
[Sahil, 25 year old gay man]
Thus, while one of the features of growing up gay is that of loneliness and isolation, it can also be an opportunity for affiliation, collective identification, social support, and coping (Miller and Major 2000). In fact, along with the idea of minority stress, that I have discussed elsewhere in this book, it’s also important to point towards minority coping. Minority coping is conceptualized as a group level resource and refers to the group’s ability to mount self-enhancing structures to counteract societal stigma (Meyer 2007).
Community as a Collective for Social Change and Political Action
While describing their experiences of being part of the queer community, participants in this study referred to the various implications of collective identities described above. For some participants, being a part of LGBTQ communities was about feeling a sense of belonging, of being in a safe space and accessing support. Many talked about the queer community as the network of gay friends that they had. Some viewed LGBTQ communities as a forum (irrespective of individual friendships) for coming together and articulating rights of queer persons as a group and working towards joint action for change. This change meant multiple things for different people, and the process of this change was articulated differently by different people. There were study participants who talked about being part of collective action, which in itself was empowering for them and brought about change in their own self-perception, self-confidence, and in their relationships. There were others who talked about change in terms of securing state attention through programs on HIV, health care, vocational training, and employment. There were those who wanted change in discriminatory laws and talked about instituting anti-discrimination mechanisms. For others, collective action included developing a critical analysis of an unequal heterosexist, patriarchal, capitalist society, and a demand for a just, equal society, not just for queer persons, but for women, oppressed castes, the poor, the disabled, and other marginalized sections. This position is based not merely on an understanding of oppression and privilege vis-a-vis sexuality and gender, but with respect to other oppressed identities too. Some of the responses below are indicative of the multiple meanings of change that participants talked about.
It is often exhausting to be queer in this heteronormative world. The unfairness really gets to you sometimes. That is when I feel I can draw strength from collective thought and action. Learn ways to cope, feel heard, feel comforted and even role model sometimes…
[Vineet, 40 year old gay man]
What it means to me is using a non-hierarchical, consensus based approach to produce collaborative and collective work. Also, using feminist methodologies in work and allying with other groups fighting oppression/(s) and marginalisations… that is important to me.
[Mithun, 35 year old lesbian woman]
I am part of this collective not just to make friends or socialize… I come here because there is a queer perspective not just on your personal life and relationships but on the world around you. It is important to destabilise patriarchal institutions of marriage, family, religion… We are here to talk about that in our campaigns, research, our support work… I think if one is not doing this, then one is wasting the gift of being queer…
[Priti, 31 year old lesbian woman]
There are oppressions germane to the LGBT community such as transphobia, butchphobia, biphobia, which need to be questioned. For example, a popular party organizer, after a few parties, decided to modify their rules for entry and listed that drag wasn’t allowed (especially skirts above a certain length). MTF (male to female) transpersons were turned away. When pressed for an explanation the official line was that the club was owned by a family and transwomen dress skimpily. Unofficially, we know that gay men are bothered a lot by transwomen…
[Mithun, 35 year old lesbian woman]
These words by Mithun reiterates that, while collective identities foster a sense of ‘we-ness’ and a sense of shared destiny, collective identity of individuals as identifying with the LGBTQ community itself is mediated through a range of other relational and social identities. Hence, the need to understand identities—personal, relational, or collective—through a lens of intersectionality is a necessity. Mithun’s words also draw attention to the issue of power and politics. It is necessary to understand that just because of one’s marginal position in one location or because one may have thought about structures of oppression, does not automatically ensure empathy when one is occupying a location of power. In other words, political consciousness or collective consciousness is not just linked with occupying a marginal position with respect to some aspect of one’s identity, but through a process of consciousness-raising about ways in which power, control, and oppression work through a complex web of social and relational locations.
While collective identity has an individual and group dimension to it, the collectivization itself occurs in a context. There are contexts that are more enabling or more oppressive for collective marginalized identities to be consolidated and asserted strongly. As stated earlier, the HIV/AIDS epidemic, the campaign against Section 377, and the Delhi High Court verdict of 2009 are some examples of contextual factors that have enabled the collectivizing of queer identities. One other such factor that, on the face of it, seemed an oppressive factor, was the (re) criminalization of homosexuality through the Indian Supreme Court judgement on 11th December 2013. This event led to both a sense of threat and fear, but also a further consolidation of the collective identity of being queer in India. The visibility to LGBTQ issues around this event and the support from across the globe from queer and straight allies was unprecedented. The Supreme Court verdict became a reference point for a renewed assertion of sexuality rights and freedom of expression among the queer communities in Mumbai and Pune. Several of us within the community, including some of the study participants, talked about being angry and outraged at this outright denial of justice. Some of the responses included collective action such as street protests, online campaigns under the banner, ‘Global Day of Rage’ with the slogan ‘No Going Back on 377’. Many more conversations about sexuality, and the right to love, started taking place even outside of the queer collective spaces; within college campuses, work spaces and in mass media. Many more people decided to come out as queer and as queer allies in their personal spaces and even on national media as a response of both anger and assertion. Britt and Heise (2000) suggest that anger, outrage, which may be considered as negative emotions, are high in energy and potency, and can motivate individual participation in collective action. Participation in gay rights movement/s could include efforts to transform shame and fear to anger and pride in an effort to construct an energized collective identity. Collective action among the LGBTQ communities across the country after the Supreme Court judgement seems to be an example of this.
This chapter highlights the very important role of queer community/s in the lives of the participants of this study. The multiple meanings of ‘community’ for the participants ranging from self-transformation and affirmation to inspiration for social transformation have been explored in this chapter. There have been also experiences of ‘difference’ from the queer community/s that some participants shared and this difference has at times co-existed with a sense of belonging and collective intimacy.