20 SPECIAL REPORT * SUNDAY TIMES OF INDIA, MUMBAI
OCTOBER 25, 2009
Sanjay Hadkar
Alternative sexuality is a way of life for thousands
UNBOUND?
of Indians. Some have ‘come out’; others continue
to lead double lives. How much does the society
at large know about them? How much does it
want to know? Sunday Times looks beyond the
stereotype at the ‘other’ side
Bharat still
Insiya Amir | TNN serve to divide more than unite. Do they make GAYS | MEN ONLY BISEXUALS | CONFUSED & MARGINALISED
for India Unbound or do they put people into wa- It took Harish Iyer almost a decade to become Arif Jafar of Naz Foundation India, an NGO that
L
GBT — that’s the omnibus term tertight compartments, never to return to main- confident about his sexuality Now, his sexuali-
. works with communities marginalized for their
society uses for people with alter- stream society? What does the LGBT commu- ty is an inseparable part of him, not “a choice sexual preferences, says bisexuals are not wide-
native sexuality But lesbians, gays,
.
bisexuals and transgenders or
LGBT is not a homogenous group.
There are sections with distinct
nity have to say?
LESBIANS | ALL ABOUT WOMEN
Bakul Sharma does not feel the need to hide her
I’ve made.”
Iyer doesn’t mind the ‘gay’ label or the ac-
companying stereotypical images. “I know most
people automatically assume things …like I am
ly accepted by the LGBTs. “Some believe that bi-
sexuals have a better life and do not face as much
discrimination as them,” says Jafar.
He says he is not talking about behaviorally
keeps its
identities and some fluid ones. As
the debate moves forward on cre-
ating more awareness of alternative sexuality
the question arises whether labels like LGBT
,
sexual identity “I am who I am. This is just some-
.
thing mom will have to deal with,” the 33-year-
old cameraperson shrugs.
She says she realized her sexual preference
sensitive, understanding, a woman’s best friend
etc., because I’m gay not because I’m a good hu-
,
man being. But who does not love being called
nice things?” says this new media enthusiast.
bisexual people. “I am gay and I can have sex
with a woman. That doesn’t make me bisexual,”
says Jafar, “I am talking about people who have
equal desire for men and women.”
closet closed
T
at 10. “While my friends were chasing boys, Most gay men, Iyer believes, like to be typecast Many bisexuals face this confusion. Shabana he winds of change have been swirling around
I was chasing girls.” for the same reason but this has a dangerous flip Sheikh, 25, is “attracted to men but can only emo- the community that India identifies with alter-
She “came out” to her parents a few side. “Being called ‘nice’ means we are abnor- tionally connect with women”. This BPO em- native sexuality after the Delhi High Court de-
,
years ago, though “they have not fully ployee cannot figure out if she should stop pur- criminalized homosexuality nearly four months ago.
processed it yet”. suing women, and “just get married”. After all, But the gusts of wind mostly blow in the bigger cities.
But Sharma knows most women Some ‘Other’ Categories many of the women she’s been with have done The LGBT community in smaller towns is still forced
Ranjit Deshmukh
like her don’t share her resolve. She the same thing. “I love men, there is no doubt. to live in the closet. With a few exceptions.
learnt that the hard way when her part- Lesbian until graduation, gay until graduation But they are such a blasted lot that I would rather They are reviled in states such as Uttar Pradesh.
ner of 11 years gave in to pressure and or bisexual until graduation | Slang, used to love women,” she tries to explain her dilemma. Here, gays and lesbians face such intense social con-
left her for a man. describe those who have relationships in college Jafar says bisexual women and lesbians are tempt and ridicule that the local terms describing them
“I hope we stop using terms like Bicurious | They are not gay or lesbian but have more marginalized than gay men because Indi- are unprintable. It doesn’t help that even the educated
gay, lesbian etc. I really hate same sex relationships out of curiosity an ‘culture’ does not allow woman the right to appear homophobic. Nirupama Dixit, head of the psy-
them,” she says. assert her individuality “They are not supposed
. chology department at Kanpur’s SN Sen College, says,
But these labels are not nec- Fluid sexuality | Those bored with current labels to have any control over their sexuality he says.
,” “Homosexuality is a sexual perversion... a disease. Peo-
essarily detrimental, says Shal- ple turn gay and lesbian because they lack self confi-
malee Palekar, lecturer at the Pansexual or omnisexual | They don’t care TRANSGENDER & TRANSSEXUALS | GENDER ISSUE? dence.” Agrees OP Chowdhary head of the psychology
,
University of Western Aus- about gender identity Experts believe Indian society is not so homo- department at Varanasi’s Agrasen Girls PG College, “It
tralia, who researches repre- phobic as genderphobic. In other words, it is should not be encouraged because it’s an alien attack to
sentations of gender and sex- mal because a normal person has a good side and more likely to be hostile to an effeminate man distort Indian culture.”
uality “Labels already exist,
. a bad side,” he explains. He says it is a positive than a ‘masculine’ gay man. But the one positive development is that society can
and it is generally the ma- change that people are now willing to discuss ho- Kalki Subramanian, a transsexual, says, “Be- no longer ignore gay people, thanks to activism, most-
jority in any given context mosexuality But he warns that it could invite
. ing a woman is so hard that there is a debate ly connected with HIV/AIDS intervention programmes.
that gives itself the right to more anger. “Now, they know it is legal, so they among the transgender community whether we Even so, social acceptance is a dream too far. Anand
name ‘others’. So while those will replace denial with ire,” he says. want to be recognized a third gender or as Chandrani, president of Sarathi trust, Nagpur, which
names can be disempower- Increased awareness has another downside, women.” Born as a son to parents who had two
ing, they can become em- namely people are increasingly suspicious about daughters, it was not easy for Kalki to fund her
powering also when appro- the sexuality of a husband or prospective groom. sex change operation. But she insists it’s easier
priated for self-use by the mi- Sanjeev Deswal, head of private detective agency to be a transgender than gay in India. “People
nority,” she says. Palekar Aider, says he receives at least 20 requests a day. view homosexuality as a moral issue whereas
adds that the most important “Parents now want to know if their child is gay . transsexuality is a gender issue,” she says. But
factor to keep in mind is that But that can be a good thing. I know of many cas- the sympathy does not help. “We are forced to
‘queer’ communities are as di- es where parents backed off from pressuring beg and resort to sex work. We are comfortable
verse as any other. their children into marriage,” says Deswal. with ourselves, but people are not,” says Kalki.
Queer dilemma: Being gay or MSM V Sunil
Lesbians remain unacknowledged in small-town India
works with people living with HIV/AIDS, says, “We have
our parties and functions but we still cannot organize
them as gay parties... When it comes to satisfying our
Men who have sex with men are the organizations. In 86 countries, homo-
sexual acts are illegal, and in seven,
needs, most of us still land up in toilets and bushes.”
Puducherry which is known to be receptive to many
,
punishable by death. Iran has executed cultures, does not have a popular hangout for gay men.
new, old pariahs of AIDS control 800 such ‘criminals’ since 2005, the lat- “They meet secretly in bars and restaurants in posh ho-
est this September. tels,” says K Ganesh, project coordinator of ‘Sahodaran’,
Bachi Karkaria fessors Francoise Barre-Sinoussi and But it is in Pakistan, says Kevin an NGO that works for male sexual health. Even so, gay
Luc Montagnier, recipients of the 2008 Frost that “MSM is the most taboo sub- men do face fewer problems than lesbians. G Manikan-
N
o, MSM is not a variation of Nobel Prize for Medicine for their 1983 ject. Yet the frequency is astonishing. dan, director of the Centre for Human Resources and
your cell-phone’s messaging discovery of the AIDS virus, HIV am-
. I am intrigued by a society that is Rural Development in Kanyakumari, says that lesbians
service, and GLBT is not a fAR funded the research that led to largely aware, yet lives comfortably here are not able to articulate their sexual orientation,
BLT sandwich with extra four classes of HIV medications, plus with denial.” In Lahore, soon after we let alone leading normal lives.
greens. drugs that blocked mother-to-child met, I checked out his point about “the Meanwhile, many gay men are “coming out” in
The section 377 buzz has spawned transmission. And amfAR pioneered institution of launda”. Indeed it was Tirunelveli, especially after the Delhi high court ruling,
a counterfeit liberalism, and complex the concept of community-based clin- there, but largely confined to Kohat in says P Manoharan, director of the People’s Association
terms now trip off tongues as easily ical trials for HIV/AIDS. Its president NWFP. Pretty young boys or launda for Community Health and Education Trust. “They see
as ‘stigma’. MSM are men who have is the designer Kenneth Cole. sing and dance for — and sexually it as a victory he says.
,”
sex with men, and everyone outside The affable Frost confessed that his service — their rich landlord masters. The court ruling has also encouraged the LGBTs in
the sanctified heterosexual category “present job requires more diploma- It’s wrong to think that men who have sex with men are gay Frost describes it as “a form of rural Bengal to form informal groups. “It is no longer
is GLBT — Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, cy than is provided in my DNA”. He machismo. If you are in the mascu- restricted to the urban upper class. Smaller towns like
Transgender. These labels were coined used to be an activist with Act Up or “AIDS gave gays an identity like noth- states. But in MSM, it is out of con- line role, you can do pretty much any- Asansol and Arambagh now have these groups,” said
by public health officials. Yet, when the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, ing before; it ‘unionized’ them, lead- trol; in 2006, just 6.8% were infected. thing. The feminized role is the one Anindya Hazra of the Pratyay Gender Trust. Berham-
National Aids Control Organization which was formed to spearhead “di- ing to organized demands and serv- Today it is inching past 8%.
, stigmatized. Anthropologists and so- pore, Hooghly Jalpaiguri, Darjeeling, Baruipur, Joyna-
,
head Sujatha Rao asked activist Ashok rect action to end the AIDS crisis.” ices.” But the American community Absolute numbers make this more ciologists study these phenomena, but gar and Sirampur also have such groups. “The change
Row Kavi to help state AIDS control Frost says, “When I moved from survived the early decimation, he frightening. The National AIDS Con- how do you develop a programmatic is perceptible…(but) they still have to be discreet, for
centres to set up operational guide- Texas to NY in my early 20s, I was mo- points out. trol Program 2007-2011 was the first response in the context of AIDS?” the opposition is far more violent in the districts,” said
lines for MSM, she told him, “Start by tivated by fear. We were looking too In India, Section 377 may have be- time MSM was seriously addressed. They may now be on the radar but Pawan Dhal, gay rights activist.
telling them what it means.” much at the mirror, sticking out our come a rallying point, but the epidemic It found that it comprised 26 million MSM are still an iffy target. Frost ex- Unlike West Bengal, there are no gay or lesbian groups
To use ‘MSM’ and ‘gay’ inter- tongues and contorting our bodies for has not been able to forge all homo- men, 2.35 million at conventional sex- plains that “sex workers, drug-users in Bihar. "Not that there is no gay sex in Bihar. But sex,
changeably is like saying that every- any spot or wart. Now I’m 47 and neg- sexuals into a political entity Culture
. ual sites. Stunned by the resources and migrant workers are identifiable homo or hetero, remains a very private affair here,” says
one who votes for the left is a card-car- ative and what motivates me is injus- and criminalization have prevented that would be needed, the latter num- groups. With MSM, we are not talking social worker Nasima from Muzaffarpur. In certain dis-
rying communist. Being gay is a total tice towards a community which is ig-
, this. But they are also invisible to a ber ‘evaporated’, as well as interven- about a homogeneous unit, but about tricts such as Bhojpur, Rohtas, Buxar and Bhabhua,
identity with its own politics, culture,
, nored or neglected by those with the health establishment grappling with tions targeted at the most vulnerable behaviour. And it shifts from homo- ‘launda naach’ (dance performances by boys dressed
literature, even territories. But MSM power to make a difference. It has been an overwhelmingly heterosexual epi- 10% who had multiple-partner sex. To sexual to hetero. Moreover, MSM don’t like women) is quite popular. But LGBT relationships
is simply about wham-bam-thank-you- failed by the World Bank, WHO, Glob- demic. Despite the efforts of the un- date, 1,60,000 MSM are covered by Naco move in the same social networks as are largely remain under wraps.
Sam behaviour. It refers to activity not
, al Fund. Everybody now talks about putdownable Ashok Row Kavi. programmes, but now their partners gay men, making them more un- In such conservative societies, threatened murder,
identity It is equally false to think that
. MSM but no one’s doing anything, oth- Left to fester and driven under- are entering the danger zone. reachable.” beatings and social ostracism are part of the LGBT way
MSM are on the road to becoming gay . er than UNAIDS.” ground, MSM has ballooned into Globally it is even more dismal. At
, He adds, “Parliaments are over- of life. But M Jayakumar, director of Snegitham, an
They may never have, or even want, We speak about Paul Monette, the HIV/AIDS bogey No1. In female sex the 2008 International AIDS Confer- whelmingly male. Politicians don’t get NGO working for sexual minority rights in Tiruchi, is
their epiphany . chronicler of gay anguish, who wrote workers, prevalence has impressive- ence in Mexico City amfAR released
, worked up when discussing the vul- hopeful. “We are sensitizing health care staff, police,
Besides, it is fluid behaviour. It “AIDS created the gay community just ly plateaued to 5-6% from 20%. Intra- the first comprehensive report ex- nerability of women, but they get bal- members of the legal fraternity and also politicians.
could be the product of context: Jail, in time to destroy it.” Frost says Mon- venous drug use has stabilized in the posing this failure. The document an- listic (or extremely uncomfortable) Once this is done, sexual minorities will have greater
the army societies where women are
, ette was both right and wrong because north-east, though oozing into other alyzed 128 country reports on about MSM. In the case of women, acceptance,” he says.
segregated. Once out of it, the MSM HIV/AIDS submitted to the UN, and they recognize that there are social in- Written by Saira Kurup with reports from Radha
could become an MSW In China, eight
. found that almost half provided no equalities, disempowerment, etc, but Venkatesan in Coimbatore, V Mayilvaganan in Tiruchi,
in 10 MSM are married. Everybody now talks about MSM but no one’s data on MSM. As many as 71% had no they don’t see anything ‘wrong’ about Padmini Sivarajah in Madurai and Bosco Dominique
These finer points were spelt out information on the percentage of this because it is ‘part of the natural in Puducherry; Snehlata Shrivatsav in Nagpur; Mri-
for Sunday Times by Kevin Frost, CEO
doing anything, other than UNAIDS MSM reached by prevention pro- order’. But MSM is seen as against the gank Tiwari, Binay Singh and Faiz Rahman Sid-
of amfAR, the global AIDS research Kevin Frost | CEO, AMFAR grams. India was a notable exception, natural order, which intensifies the diqui in Allahabad, Varanasi and Kanpur, Dipak
organization. Its grantees include Pro- thanks largely to community-based stigma and vulnerability .” Mishra in Patna, Prithvijit Mitra in Kolkata