This page is exclusively for first-hand experiences opinions of queer individuals whom I interviewed
"we stand together as one common united front, and we talk about the issues which affect us as a group. But it's like, long back when people looked at feminists, and they're only talking about white, feminists, white women, right? And, there were a lot of nuances within that. Nobody paid attention to them. When I read the proposal, something which struck me was gender, class, and all that. So even within the community, there is a huge hierarchy".
"So we have this huge idea about how vibrant and how lovely and how united the LGBTQ+ community is. But within that, I think, in order to maintain that kind of narrative, I think people within the community are discriminating against those within them without realizing that they are doing exactly what other people in the normative society are doing to them. So, it's very true. And recently, when I was working on my Ph.D. proposal, I was reading my primary texts and there was a section about the BDSM community. So it belongs to the fringes when you look at society and it has been misrepresented as outrageous, especially with Fifty Shades of Grey. So after that, people have this huge wrong idea about the community. So in this particular work, there was a criminal who was abusing people, so people like those took refuge in these communities. So when someone like that commits a crime.. it is completely out of context but I just want to make some parallels!! So when that particular person within the community committed a crime, the entire blame of the crime, went to the BDSM community saying that there are a community's virtues that make them like that. So the author says that, in order to preserve their identity, they try to submerge all these outside. So technically, the person who committed the crime is not a genuine part of the community. He was just using the community to enjoy. So when you look at the queer community like that, in this particular fiction, one of the characters is saying that because the community is scared that other people when they see this particular criminal doing his crimes, the normative society is always going to blame the community as a whole. Right? So they try to project their own identity, and they try to hush everything that's happening within this, even though it's not part of their own, like, it's not part of what the genuine people practice. So when you look at the community that way, I feel that in order to protect the overall overarching fight for freedom, you know, for quality, rather, everything that's happening within the community like abuse, violence, even subtle shades of discrimination, it could be your word, the way you look at each other. All these go on, they are ignored, and nobody focuses on that, because they all want to look at the bigger picture. But when we are looking at the bigger picture, we forget that we are losing the individual's experiences and their personal problems. Because being queer is not just a single identity. When you look at intersectionality it's about different phases or different parts of their identity, right? And so with queerness comes caste, gender, nationality, and being an Indian".
"we can't say that if I'm queer, and if you are queer, I have to treat you with.. I've always experienced a lot of discrimination. So people would think that I would not do that to you. But that's not what's happening inside. So it's good that you doing research because very often things like these get lost in the crowd. "
"We have the shared feeling that the conventional heteronormative society has been behalf has become bad for us. But we have a feeling that we won't do that to each other, the kind of sense of community is there. We are together, there is a united front. But I don't think that we realize all of us are humans, and the sort of abuse happens within this very special community. And unless somebody like you brings out these things through research, all of us who experience these things within the community won't have a voice too, because nobody's going to listen to us. People say this is secondary. Getting rights getting equal rights is important in the first place. Yes, it is absolutely important, but at the same time, you always need to have no need to pay attention to the personal level of experiences. "
"have you read this book, by A Revathi? She is from Tamilnadu. It is “The Truth About Me”. In that, she mentions that she goes to Bangalore, Karnataka, she finds a group, and then she is surprised that within that community itself, there is a lot of hierarchy, violence, and everything is happening. So where do you find a safe space? When you look at specialty, where can one... I mean, in different spaces, different people perform in different ways. So specialty is related to performativity. And then when people, for example, in our college, we perform our identities in a certain way that is acceptable to the conditions here. But once we leave this gate, we might be an entirely different person. So where do these safe spaces exist? Do these safe spaces exist anymore? So all of us have fought really hard to just let people"
"So caste and class-based discrimination are very evident. I talk about class first. So we know when we know other members of the community we meet up, we talk about our experiences, and we share that just so that we have a safe space. Very often, these meetings take place in certain areas, which are not accessible to those who are not economically well off. So you take them to say Glen's. But it's not feasible for everybody to go there, everybody's part of the community, you would have found your safe space, and you would have found your people. But if you are not rich enough to enter these spaces where free talk is happening, then that is still discrimination. Right? If there is a group of friends, or rather a group of people who support each other from the community. I've been to a lot of these talks myself. And I've always made it a point to let my friends know that let's go to a place that is it has free entry. So that there are people who are not economically well off, struggling to pay their college fees. The ability to talk about their experiences to people like them is like they are right. So who are we to strip them off that just because we have more money than them? And there is a lot of stigmas associated with certain members of the community. So usually, when we talk about, say music, or bags and stuff like that, we say “That is so gay, This is so gay!!!” and conventionally... It's just a myth, not the truth. But we say that encodes gay people like to be very flamboyant, they use all the stuff. Even though this is just a construction, I know of people who like all these things, and I think it's very childish. Because in school, we've seen people tease each other, just because you don't have a particular kind of bag or a particular kind of pen. I've seen this with my own eyes happening in the community. So especially in Bangalore, I think it's more about having to be to this particular pub, haven't you gone to this particular bar or a restaurant? Because it's more about that here. And are all these safe spaces? Yes. But how accessible is it to the others? So class based differences and discrimination is very evident."
"In terms of caste, it's mainly… So when you meet somebody, you see they are queer and you match in every other way. And then you report or share that belong to this particular caste. Suddenly, there is a huge shift in the mentality that's happening. Like I've seen it in people not evidently because we all like to think that we are evolved people. I think we have a tendency to be condescending to everybody else. Right? And it's something that's very visible amongst everybody. And it's, it's very significant because you think that you know a person, you think that despite their other identity markers, you would still be with the person. This one element, of caste, especially in India, is extremely important because it tames every, every, every identity that you have, even if you are rich, and queer, I think if you belong to the so-called lower caste, there is some sort of force that is pulling you down when you look through the eyes of the society. And it's been so many years and we are not improving in any way. I mean, there are real people, even now who use different vessels for workers and all that it's very evident. I've seen it. I've seen it with my own eyes. I've rebelled against it. Hasn't worked, but! especially when you look at the queer community, they're already marginalized, we're already marginalized. And being intersectional that way, you have multiple marginalizations that are happening. So if I am a woman and I belong to the so-called lower caste, and I am poor, that's triple marginalization, right? And I'm queer, so I have multiple marginalizations, basically. And that is very evident. "
"So not just in some communities, but also even within the queer community, there are many qualms against polyamory. So I have very close friends who are polyamorous and are being judged within the community."
"Based on my personal experiences with my friends and people I know of belonging to the community, political leanings have not been a significant element when you look at their queer identity. If you're queer, you're still part of that political community without being marginalized based on sexuality because for them, they don't care. They just need people, human beings. So I have not experienced our rather. Even I'm looking at my friends' experiences, their sense of sexuality, gender, race identity, do not have a very tangible impact on their political beliefs. I mean, obviously, it's a lot of people I know are communists, but they were looking at the original Marx thing and not what's being practiced in Kerala right now. And in Tamil Nadu, I've seen a lot of idealization that's happening, right. And even then. So my dad's from Tamil Nadu, I'm from a multicultural family. And even then there, actually, I don't know many people who are from my locality there, because it's a rural place. And I don't know if anybody's with it. But when I was studying in Chennai, there were a lot of people who had very strong political leanings, but I haven't noticed anybody speaking about queerness in politics, because I don't think for them personally, they have not been affected by it, or they have not spoken about it. "
"From where I come, being Muslim and being gay is like being the scapegoat, like scapegoat or like being the, what do you call an animal that is going to be sacrificed? Because if somebody comes to know about it, you are dead, not just literally but in all the aspects and that is worse. So my friend has come out to everybody else, but his parents, and his family, and if they come to know about it, the consequences are going to be huge. And a huge factor of that is him being Islam or him being born into a family that practices islam. But religion, for me, in my personal experience, it has had a huge impact on especially because I know this person who's from Islam, and I know people who are from the Hindu tradition as well as people who are born into the family, they don't actually practice their religion, but even being born into that kind of family or religious family, or any family which practices a particular religion has had a huge impact on sexuality. Because it depends. So their religion also depends on whether they can come out or not. So I don't know what the stigma exactly is. But I've seen that, being Islam and gay, not being a lesbian, but being gay, in particular. If you are Muslim, and if you are gay, you're going to experience some immense fear that is closely associated with the religion. I don't want to generalize, at least a few people that I've come across, do not care about people being lesbians, or they're not bothered by it. Because being lesbians seem to be okay for them. But being gay is not because there is this concept of masculinity that is going. It's okay for a woman to be a tomboy, a woman to dress up as a man. But if a man dresses as a woman, the entire world is going to crash. So the sense of masculinity is highly linked with it. So I think the religions are also very patriarchal, in order to emphasize a reiterate that need all their men to be very conventional and appropriate in terms of their societal responsibilities, and performative aspects. So I believe that religion has a huge impact on queerness because of all the things I said right now. Politics, I personally, haven't seen many influences, but religion-wise "
"I think that queerness and ethnicity also there, they overlap. So that's where everything becomes very intersectional. Because one identity of theirs is really having a huge impact on the other identity. And one identity cannot exist away from the other. So it's not like we are not compartmentalizing all these multiple nuances or multiple identities that a person has, right? And they definitely overlap, all our identities will overlap. But in some cases, one will definitely impact the other. "