Is it a good time to be queer in India?
By Ritika Choudhary
The Times Literature Fest organised a session to answer the question “Is it a good time to be queer in India?” and a talk about how LGBTQIA+ community faces constant struggles when it comes to acceptance of their sexuality and freedom to express their choices.
JournalistRenuka Bisht with panellist Dr. Sharif D. Rangnekar, author of the book Queer Sapien , and Dr. Aqsa Shaikh, India’s first trans woman doctor, discussed and shared their personal struggles and challenges they overcame to gain the kind of visibility they have today.
In the opening statement, Bisht read out a prose from Dr Rangnekar’s book about how he wanted to move to Thailand because he thought Delhi will always disillusion him. He could never imagine a safe society and a partner to live in this city.
Dr Rangnekar talked about how he grew up in a world with very few safe spaces and where you could not be yourself fully and freely as gay/ queer man while censoring yourself or holding yourself back. He also talked about the fear of someone finding out and destroying you because of the social stigma attached which leads to mental illness, such as anxiety or depression.
“Even when Article 377 was let down I wasn’t so excited because I got used to living in a certain manner that the law didn’t really matter anymore because I have learnt to be a criminal and censoring myself every now and then,” said Dr Rangnekar, because he realised that he spent half of his life living with Article 377.
According to him, there isn’t a better time to be queer in India because he couldn’t imagine these kinds of discussions happening five years ago as there isn’t enough material that gets published of thequeer community because there isn’t a big enough market.
Even Dr. Shaikh shared how difficult it was for her to accept her identity in as person who was born in a chawl in Mumbai. Where the only thing used as a lingo for queer was TV and cinema. The caricature that she saw of gay men as funny and comic characters were extremely frightening.
“The one difference between a trans folk and a gay person is that gay people realise who they are mostly in the second decade of their life but a trans person realises that something is different or wrong since the time they start to learn the basic things at the age 3,” said Dr. Shaikh.
“This is when you are learning the vocabulary and realise there is no vocabulary for me, there are no words that define me,” she added.
As an insight from the queer community, Dr. Shaikh also elaborated on how the medical world is one of the most transphobic places one can encounter because there everything is looked from the lens of normal and abnormal, disease, pathology, hormones, chromosomes, every disease doctors try to find out a cure. Like the gene therapy to cure homo sexuality.
Disorder of sexual differentiation is how intersex people were defined. Even gender identity was a disorder and that’s how transness was labelled. Conversion therapy was legal with doctors performing conversion therapies which included giving electric shocks to people so that they can think straight. Even psychiatrists were writing papers about successfully conducting conversion therapies.
So, when asked about is it a good time to be queer in India, Dr. Shaikh said, “India is one of the most liberal countries when it comes to queer folks but not the most friendly. So, to answer the question, yes, it is a good to time to be queer in India but it can become better".
(The writer is a Semester IV student of BA (Journalism and Mass Communication) programme.)
The Times Literature Fest organised a session to answer the question “Is it a good time to be queer in India?” and a talk about how LGBTQIA+ community faces constant struggles when it comes to acceptance of their sexuality and freedom to express their choices.
Journalist
In the opening statement, Bisht read out a prose from Dr Rangnekar’s book about how he wanted to move to Thailand because he thought Delhi will always disillusion him. He could never imagine a safe society and a partner to live in this city.
Dr Rangnekar talked about how he grew up in a world with very few safe spaces and where you could not be yourself fully and freely as gay/ queer man while censoring yourself or holding yourself back. He also talked about the fear of someone finding out and destroying you because of the social stigma attached which leads to mental illness, such as anxiety or depression.
“Even when Article 377 was let down I wasn’t so excited because I got used to living in a certain manner that the law didn’t really matter anymore because I have learnt to be a criminal and censoring myself every now and then,” said Dr Rangnekar, because he realised that he spent half of his life living with Article 377.
According to him, there isn’t a better time to be queer in India because he couldn’t imagine these kinds of discussions happening five years ago as there isn’t enough material that gets published of the
Even Dr. Shaikh shared how difficult it was for her to accept her identity in as person who was born in a chawl in Mumbai. Where the only thing used as a lingo for queer was TV and cinema. The caricature that she saw of gay men as funny and comic characters were extremely frightening.
“The one difference between a trans folk and a gay person is that gay people realise who they are mostly in the second decade of their life but a trans person realises that something is different or wrong since the time they start to learn the basic things at the age 3,” said Dr. Shaikh.
“This is when you are learning the vocabulary and realise there is no vocabulary for me, there are no words that define me,” she added.
As an insight from the queer community, Dr. Shaikh also elaborated on how the medical world is one of the most transphobic places one can encounter because there everything is looked from the lens of normal and abnormal, disease, pathology, hormones, chromosomes, every disease doctors try to find out a cure. Like the gene therapy to cure homo sexuality.
Disorder of sexual differentiation is how intersex people were defined. Even gender identity was a disorder and that’s how transness was labelled. Conversion therapy was legal with doctors performing conversion therapies which included giving electric shocks to people so that they can think straight. Even psychiatrists were writing papers about successfully conducting conversion therapies.
So, when asked about is it a good time to be queer in India, Dr. Shaikh said, “India is one of the most liberal countries when it comes to queer folks but not the most friendly. So, to answer the question, yes, it is a good to time to be queer in India but it can become better".
(The writer is a Semester IV student of BA (Journalism and Mass Communication) programme.)
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