Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Calling out for queer-trans blog/collection!

Hello Queeristas!

Hope it’s not going that well and you are also somewhere, like me, perpetually enraged and annoyed and bored with the kind of literature/websites/ (fuck-sites)/depiction of queer trans folks that is thrown around.

Over past few months, I have been reading a lot of international queer-trans, gender bending blogs and I somehow always feel a need for something like that in an Indian context. This of course comes along with a string of some enjoyable and often notorious Youtube videos of queer events from across the globe. The most interesting event I came across was “Girl Talk’ an event where cis-women (please Google this, its hard to start the argument here) and trans women come together on a common stage to discuss their fears, anxieties, seduction fantasies and the rant of queer politics. It is usually organized by the beautiful Julia Serano (don’t know her? She wrote an important book that introduced trans-feminism in a way. It’s called the Whipping Girl) and in case you remember my old (ooooolllddd..) post regarding radical feminist and trans-women divide (http://whaq.blogspot.com/2011/04/hating-trans-women-and-other-stories.html), such events really cool down the steam fuming from everywhere. Okay, I am distracted again on what I really wanted to say. So here it is.

I am hungry to come up with a beautiful, vocal collection of Indian queer-trans experiences. I don’t want to see American blogs declare that Indian trans genders are only hijras (Really NOT. Where do the struggle/happiness/concerns of an urban trans individual like me figure? Is it again a trap of categories?) And that there are no records of trans-genderqueer experience in India. This has to be confronted, with a Tamil butch’s knuckle fist and a smack of an androgynous –fatale, who cruises around Brigade Road. A trans man who sneaks around Delhi, gender defying femmes in bikinis in Gokarna, you have their pictures? Transitioning females, corporate post-ops. Your pictures. Our sex escapades. The constant fears and the voices that always OUT us.

I am calling out ALL of you to pour it out. This is not strictly limited to trans or gender queer identities only, if we do have gay and lesbian voices/experiences that are equally eschewed or you have being intimate with a trans individual, I want it too! or should I say, we all want it too.

I would love to start it out by putting up a blog and of course, I would need your suggestions on that. Eventually if we do have a good fat pump of queer voices…we can pursue this for a published anthology. These all discussions would become more fluid as we go ahead. Just like bodies feel suddenly softer in sex. So nibbling lips and dildos and estrogen shots have an urgent calling.

Get them out in your words. Mail me at afreenchaudhary1@gmail.com with whatever you have in mind regarding this.

Till then.
Happy days ahead.
Shamelessly yours.

Afreen.

Sunday, July 17, 2011

WHaQ! meeting: 17th July 2011


I begin this post with my usual demand for cookies: opening the garage door in high heels was a labour I'd normally delegate to Hercules. And then people came - we had a small meeting yesterday, no more than five women. But it was fun, and we went to Koshys after.

Quick bullet point list of what we talked about:
  • Us, and what we've been up to the past few weeks. A. is leaving Bangalore in a fortnight, which sucks. We need to party extra hard on the next few Thursdays, pack in as much fun as possible for her to remember!
  • We had a visitor from Mumbai: hi, visitor! It took her forever to find us, so at the next meeting and on the WHaQ! mailing list we're going to have to talk about making it easier for people to find us if they want to meet us.
  • July 2nd! Two years since the high court judgement. We weren't at the balloon-flying, or the movies, or the Sanghamitra July 2011 launch. BUT. Here is a link where you can download the Sanghamitra July 2011 edition. It's 50 pages, about 2.6 MB. It is pretty great, so read it!
  • Chai with Lakshmi: Urban Conversations - She seems neat.
  • Parties! We have not done any parties lately, what with one thing or the other, and the Pink Nation/Party Square events are mostly filled with guys. (Also, our visitor from Mumbai was very confused by how everything seemed to wind down by midnight.)
  • Queer Pride Keralam, Kolkata Rainbow Pride Festival and Chennai Rainbow Pride - pride events for the summer. Bangalore Pride is likely to be sometime in October/November, when it won't rain on us. (Delhi Pride too, but they can take care of themselves.)
That was pretty much it. See you guys Thursday!

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Gurl in the World has already blogged this, but please, take a look, pass it on: Children have been separated from their mother, kept captive in a foreign country. Their mum has legal custody, their dad kidnapped them anyway. Sign this petition, please? Help reunite a mother with her children.

Thursday, July 14, 2011

"Writing our own history - Finally!"

So this wound its way onto the WHaQ mailing list, and it seems like a good idea to pass it around as much as possible.
Hello Queer People!
A recent chat, actually let’s say a recent comment thread on Facebook
led Udayan Dhar and I to a realisation that we’re sure most of you
would agree with — something that should have happened by now, but
hasn’t! So we took it upon ourselves to get this idea into action and
here’s why you’ve received this mail.
It’s been a good, super-happy and challenging 2 years since the law
‘came out of the closet’. Yes, we’re legally gay and how! But what
seems to have been missed in all this celebration or the lack of it,
are the wonderful stories of people who were involved in or affected
by the movement — personal narrations of varied individuals who were
most actively involved or affected by the high court ruling that week.
From the high spirited celebrations of the multi-city pride, news
stories of which, still elicit a tear in anyone involved in the
struggle in the smallest of ways, to the country erupting in joy over
the final high court order — we hope to capture and re-live those
moments, those nail-biting hours and those euphoria filled festivals
from the mouths of the very people who made it happen.
We’re looking for 15-20 stories and 15-20 nominations of people who
you think should make it to the book... and then we shall contact
these people and get them to share their story.
As they say, “Only when it is written, will it be known to have
happened”, and hence, this is our very own, small yet much-required
step towards writing our own History.
Please send us nominations and broad areas in which you think your
nominees can represent that wonderful week.
For example: Someone who worked on the legal front could be nominated
to write his/her experience with a legal perspective — personal, yet
legal all the same.
Get in touch with either of us, before the 23rd of July.
Udayan Dhar — udayan@pink-pages.co.in
L Romal M Singh — elromal@gmail.com
Looking forward to hearing from you.
P.S. Please mail us all your nominees. Comments on the social network
service will not be accepted — only to avoid confusion.
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Gurl in the World has already blogged this, but please, take a look, pass it on: Children have been separated from their mother, kept captive in a foreign country. Their mum has legal custody, their dad kidnapped them anyway. Sign this petition, please? Help reunite a mother with her children.