Global Day of Rage Bangalore: 15th December 3:30 pm

• event link: https://www.facebook.com/events/264283063718742/ event time: 3:30 pm to 5:30 pm event venue: Town Hall On December 11th, 2013, The Supreme Court of India reinstated the Criminality of Homosexuality in India. This Judgment has inspired anger across different sections of society around the world. While the legal battle continues, it is important that we make our voices heard. Loud and Clear. This Judgment is not about any one community in any one country but about the hegemonic structures that oppress many across the world. It is a blow to the various other sexual minority communities across the world who might have taken strength from the Indian story to challenge laws/social norms/prejudices that criminalise homosexuality in their own countries. It is time we begin to heal this lasting scar of colonialism. It is time we are given the space and freedom to pursue the work of fundamental social change which is made impossible with a law such as Sec. 377 of the Indian Penal Code choking us. Gather your friends, lovers and anyone else who is enraged by this injustice. Make your voices heard. FOR LINK TO OTHER CITIES Global Day of Rage Worldwide www.facebook.com/events/1374294672825321

SILENCE IS VIOLENCE - against apathy

Link to event page on FB In lieu of the recent cases and cases we have been hearing forever and after, of incidents of violence against women, a few of us have decided to come together to raise our voices. Express dissent. For how can you not see the evil, hear it, speak of it when it exists all around you? How can there so much apathy when Pinki Pramanik was humiliated? How can you raise again and again questions of character of the victim when a minor gets assaulted on the streets of Guwahati by 20 men, all who's faces we have seen on Facebook but the police have been unable to reprimand? We have decided to show our dissent on a working day, working for office goers, homemakers, freelancers, all of us in various roles. We will drop everything we are doing at 10 am and head for the venue to reach it by 11 am in the middle of the week on 26th July, a Thursday. We think enough is enough and this one day we refuse to contribute - to productivity in our offices, to the food larder at homes, to our clients or our children. So, we will leave our 'work' and go to the venue to spend time with each other, sharing, sloganing, singing, telling stories, teaching each other what we know, learning from each other what we don't. And then from all of us in Bangalore we will write a note to the police in Assam to take action on the attackers of the victim of the Guwahati incident. We will sign our demand - not an appeal or a petition and send it. How long can they remain silent if women from every city, town and village do the same? How long? And if nothing happens still, we will do this again. And again. Let us gather as women, as men who understand, as citizens, as humans, to show that even SILENCE IS VIOLENCE. Raise our voices. Be heard! Organisations Joining hands for Silence is Violence: Citizens Against Violence Ridhdhi Vimochana rAFIKI (Waiting for more) PLEASE BRING YOUR OWN PLACARDS: How to make a placard: Get some old cardboard box and flatten it to cut out the size of placard you want. Stick chart paper on it. Write/ paint the slogan/ pics you want on it in any language. make it large so people at least 15 feet away can read it. Make two holes on the top two corners with eyelets. Tie a string and hang it around your neck. Date: 26th July 20122 Time: 11 am venue: Town hall, Bangalore Organised by  By Neelima Prasanna Aryan, Srimatha Ramanand and Arundhati Ghosh. I think this is a great idea, and a good first step to take - I hope to see some of you there.

Sangini (India) Trust calls for volunteer counsellors.

Pasting this from the original Facebook post:

"Have you heard of women who love women, biological women who feel that they are actually men, sometimes more sometimes less, lesbian, bisexual, transgender individuals?

Did you know they exist in every culture, occupation, religion, state, socio-economic class, country, marital status, and race?
In fact, wherever you go, you actually meet women who are attracted to women and/or feel they are trapped in the wrong body.

But why can’t you see them? The reason is that we are often silent about ourselves and our feelings and that makes us invisible. So, we become in a way unseen/unheard of. You will think now, fine, I don’t need to tell everyone about my feelings. Perfectly alright!
But there are times when each one of us needs someone to talk: heart-pain, parents want you to get married, you struggle with your family to be allowed to have short hair, you feel lonely, just need to talk to someone in confidence, or simply want to be linked to a larger community.

For times like these, when you have really no one to talk to there have been counselors around. Sangini Counselors have been talking to women attracted to women and transgender individuals since 1997 over phone, face-to-face, email, etc.

Currently Sangini (India) Trust is looking for volunteers who want to become counselors. Sangini was established in 1997 and was the first organization in India to offer Helpline and Community services to women attracted to women, queer, transgender, lesbian, bisexual individuals.

We are looking for YOU:
Are you a woman who feels attracted to women? Have you been born into a female body but feel that’s completely mis-matched with your actual self, you are actually a man?
Want to make a difference?
Do you enjoy listening to people?
Can spare a few days for training. Thereafter 5 to 6 out of the 168 hours every week?
Have been wondering how to get more people to become part of the community?

What you get in return:
•Intensive training on ‘Counseling skills, ethics, and principles’;
•Exposure to other organizations working on LGBT issues;
•Chance to interact and learn from various senior counselors, trainers and activists;
•A chance to help people who really need your help.

Grab this opportunity to support women attracted to women, lesbian/bisexual/transgender individuals and couples move out of shame and towards pride.

Interested? Write to us at sangini97@hotmail.com and tell us a little about yourself and how we can contact you.
Or
Call at 9810671603 (Monday to Friday, 11am to 5pm)
Deadline for signing up as a volunteer: November 3, 2011
Counseling training: November 12 and 13 (weekend)
Location: New Delhi"

About Sangini: click here and here.

SlutWalk (?) Bangalore planning meeting

No one actually recommends walking in those heels; they do look pretty, though.

So, the Slutwalk. This is where it started: in summation: a Toronto policeman told a safety class that "women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized."

In the world where we live, we take precautions. We do this for reasons of common sense, or fear, or because our personal styles insect with a life of taking precautions. Sometimes, we don't take precautions. We wear what we want, even if someone is going to say, That's provocative - sometimes because we want to be provocative. We drink, we walk the streets after dark, we have jobs and transport and we take advantage of our ability to move about freely. Sometimes, bad things happen - actually, no, let's rephrase that: Sometimes, people do bad things, and they sometimes do those bad things to us. The basic point of the Slutwalk is this: That the police, the public, the media, the society around us, should not use our attire as reasons to hold us responsible for someone else's actions against us, and further they should use use these as reasons to excuse or validate the actions of our assaulters.

To sum up: don't blame the victim. don't excuse the perpetrator. He is not "like that only". Don't police the victims. Police the assaulter.

It is a sad fact that in a world that is mostly, informally or formally, structured around patriarchal gender lines, a woman can be called a slut for any number of reasons - not all of them having anything to do with her sexual activity. She is rarely called a slut admiringly. She is not given the same admiration, she has not the same coolth - again, I am talking about the application of the label, not her actual behaviours - as a man who, for instance, is a stud, or even a womaniser. We can reclaim the label - we can say, I am happy to dress this way, I am happy to have sex, I am happy to have sex with several people over the course of time - or at once. We can reclaim the label, be proud to be sluts. We can eschew the label - we can say, I am not promiscuous, my clothing, my drinking, my travelling alone, does not mean that I have sex at all or out of careful relationship bounds. But none of this is the central point of a Slutwalk. The central point is this: In a case of assault, the action was not invited. No one asks to be raped.You do not get to excuse the rapist by implying that the woman asked for it, or is at fault for it. The rapist, the assaulter, is the only person responsible for his (and in this sort of case, it is usually a man, and there is room for argument later about statistics and the like) crime, the harm he did.

To repeat: Don't blame the victim. Don't call them sluts and think that the rape, the assault, was bound to happen. Don't blame the victim, don't excuse and validate the assaulter.

In Toronto, women took to the streets, dressed varyingly, "normally", "provocatively", to make the statement that no one asks to be raped, no matter her attire; "Yes" is not merely the absence of "No", that clothing is a superficial message at best, and not about (or just about) a woman's willingness to have sex with anyone in general, or the men who approach her in particular.  They also organised open debates, workshops on gender sensitisation and the like, but the Walk was the Event, the centerpiece of the campaign. Their website is taking forever to load on my browser, but here is the link.  SlutWalk Toronto: BECAUSE WE'VE HAD ENOUGH.

Following the Toronto Slutwalk in April, there have been rallies around the world, with the campaigns spreading to Asia, and now India. Delhi had a walk at the end of July - have a look at the site for the Besharmi Morcha.

Quick and dirty arguments for a "Slut"Walk and against.

But! Now there are people who are hoping to organise a SlutWalk, and satellite activities, in Bangalore. This is the official Facebook Portal for the Bangalore SlutWalk.

The first meeting was yesterday, at ALF. There seemed to be three main initiators: Dhillan Mowli, our own Sowmya, and someone whose name (I am not sure, I am a horrible person!) is probably Shonali.

[Let's ignore all the arguments for and against the campaign having a man in the collective helm for now. Let's also ignore arguments of male privilege, how we don't need a man to validate our voices and choices. It's an argument for later, and a moot discussion until more has been accomplished. Or not.]

[So long as it's not ignored forever.]

Not much has been decided. DM had a truly excessive list of things we could do associated with the walk - plays, street plays, films, photography exhibitions, music events, school and campus outreach programmes, open panel discussions.

It was a fairly long discussion, and I am not going to go through it all. Here are some of the main points, and main decisions we did manage to reach:

• we're going to avoid a narrative of victimisation. The Walk, and associated events, are to be about our voices and choices, about the appropriate taking and apportioning of responsibility. 
• we need to figure out precisely what we are targeting: violence in public spheres, private spheres? Violence against women, children? 
• the concepts of consent - the giving, the denying, the requesting of it. A large part of or concern as feminists, individualists and as human beings is to ensure that people can clearly say, No. Or Yes. Or "Would you?" As women we have the right, and as citizens and social beings we have the duty, to exercise these privileges. We don't, very often. We're raised, conditioned to be nice, to be polite, to not make scenes. But sometimes, it's necessary. Make a scene, darlings, raise your voices. Ask for what you want! Accept what you want that is offered! Give what you want to give! And say No - and let's work on making sure that that No is heard.
• The school/campus outreach programmes. They need a lot of work, to be structured, to have people who know what the hell they're doing - and if they're not just limited to December, we need more manpower and more training and people with skills. This is not stuff to be trifled with just because we have good intentions.
• The word "Slut" - is this what we want? Is it context appropriate? Moral policing in India works along different narratives and terminology, with the same final effect. We need to name our SlutWalk something that connects with us in our contexts, without losing sight of our basic goal. This means we want to try to keep it a bilingual campaign, too.
• Communication, networking with the police and the media. Reminding ourselves and the public that we have instance-specific reasons in Bangalore and Karnataka (remember Mangalore and what started there. Remember the recent Darshan horrors.) to conduct a campaign that speaks out against victim blaming, moral policing and assaulter-excusing.
• We want this campaign to be inclusive. We do not want a one day spectacle that can be dismissed as "upper-middle-class women dressing up because they want to be able to dress up" - though we want that too. We want all women to be safe on the streets, without fear that they will blamed for being assaulted - this means we need to network harder with people outside of the internet platforms that have informed us of the SlutWalks so far.

Of immediate concern:

• DECEMBER 4th. We walk.
• So much of what we need to do begins with figuring out what we want to do, what our specific aims and goals are. We want to be done with that in two weeks or less.
• We meet again on MONDAY, OCTOBER 10TH, 5 pm at ALF.

That's it for now. There's a lot of work to be done, and a lot of principle to be negotiated. Contact Sowmya or the the Facebook SlutWalk Bangalore Portal for more information or to volunteer!

WHaQ! meeting: 31th July 2011

Small meeting yesterday, 4 women showed up. Funness, and Matteo's after. 


Short summary of what we discussed:

• A few OBLs ago, we used to screen movies rather more regularly than we do now - something to actively think about doing again? This is a good opportunity to remind those of us who missed it about Deliver Me - D's first movie. We watched it as a group back in June. More of the same? Not every week, since sometimes we do have other agendas - agendae? - but it would be nice.
• At least one of the people at the meeting is an avid photographer, so there was some technical and thematic discussion along those lines. We didn't discuss this at the meeting, but Gaysi is running a Queer Photo Contest: Queer Tasveer, looking for the best pictures of gaysi love. Click the link to check it out!
• We talked about lesbian stereotypes - in India, the lesbian stereotype is in fact that she is invisible. Women are traditionally supposed not to have sex drives, and when they are traditionally represented as sexy they are either vamps or they're mother goddesses. If a woman's sexuality is placed at the feet of her man, how on earth is a woman supposed to have a sex drive, a libido, if there is no man there but simply another woman? The simple answer to "Who is the Indian dyke?" is "Whatever we want it to be!" because that stereotypical invisibility works to our advantage here. 
• Following on from the last point, we talked about being in the closet in straight spaces, and staying in the closet in queer spaces because sometimes other queer women, men, could not be trusted to respect that you might not be out in your professional and other social spheres. If we have the freedom to be whatever we want to be, we have the freedom to be utterly human, and therefore the freedom to be Not Nice as well. 
• Menopause: The Musical. Just take a look, yo.
• Is Simi Garewal homophobic? In other new, Karan Johar is a bitch, and we like it.
• Lesbian weddings! Savita and Beena, whose families declared yesterday that they were willing to reconcile with their lesbian daughters. “Savita's parents as well as mine have accepted our relationship and forgiven us. It was Savita's parents who had agreed initially. Now, my parents too have fallen in line after several media reports. However, my uncle Satbir Singh still has a problem with our marriage and has threatened to shoot both of us," Well, okay. I'm not sure they should leave their fifteen day protection. But okay. We spent some time yesterday wondering about the legality of the marriage, but really so long as it is not challenged in the courts - especially now that the marriage is acknowledged in a Gurgaon Sessions Court - it may not make much practical difference. We'll find out, I guess.
• We talked about a few other lesbian weddings, specifically Baljit Kaur and Rajwant Kaur. The marriage was melodramatic and troubled - Rajwant left Baljit and Baljit slit her wrists in court. No. Really. The reporting style has changed a great deal in the four years between Baljit and Rajwant's marriage and Savita and Beena's. 
• Mangalsutras. The round ones, with little dots in the middle. They're breasts. No, don't argue, they are well-shaped boobies with perky nipples. The husband ties it around the wife's neck. He is giving her her sexuality. Okay? Which is tied into her feeding motherhood. 
• I found a new minion to write on this blog! We are pleased.

Then we left, acknowledging that the garage door was indeed an obstacle the defeat of which should be rewarded with cookies. We went to Matteo's, where there was nice coffee, and a yummy gossip session.

"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.

Three rings (stop me if you've heard this one)

I've been thinking about marriage a lot lately - not for myself, but as a concept, an institution. For the purposes of this post, I'm not talking about two people (or more!) deciding to spend their lives together, I'm talking about two people (or more? usually just two at a time, though) deciding to spend their lives together and telling the government about it. For the purposes of this post, we're talking about a union of which some government, somewhere, has a record.

Since I'm not a romantic, or at least I'm not unspoiled idealist - the first bitch who comes along and reminds me that I'm a cynic I'mma cut - I have trouble as it is understanding a long-term commitment. The faith, the optimism, the promise - it's all a bit intense for me. I like the idea, don't get me wrong. If you are in a long-term relationship of the romantic kind that you intend to be in till death do you 'part, then yay for you. (I suppose.) I can say, well, I hope this works out.

I understand the above as a universal process - anyone who is capable of forming deep emotional bonds is hypothetically capable of finding someone or some people s/he wants and decides to bring into their circle of "me".

I get confused at the point where the commitment gets formalised in some way. (For the purposes of this, and every post, I am a Stupid Hermit Who Does Not Get People. Don't ask me why I'm asking the dumb questions. I'm dumb.) When two people who want to spend their lives together go to a priest, arranger, ordainer of some sort in order to make vows/promises/be wedded together - with witnesses, sometimes many, many, many witnesses, I am bewildered by the necessary, inevitable spectacle. The process is simultaneous show, celebration, and validation-from-spiritual/other authority; there's a part of me that says, your lives together don't in and of themselves need that.

Yes yes, it's a social institution, and traditionally, alliance-wise or romance-wise, there're social pressures, and sometimes pleasures, to the pubic spectacle. The ceremonies act as a public, communal, community milestone. I don't get it, emotionally, but I can talk my way through it.

I'm not confused by this social ritual because it's not necessarily open to all people capable of informed consent - even if it's often open to people who do not give consent at all. I'm not wandering around going, why do heterosexuals do this when so many places have LGBTIQ people who can't? I'm a little bewildered why anyone would do it, period. This is because I lack empathy and religion, and decidedly do not want to go the horrors of a Hindu Brahmin wedding for myself.

For the people who want to live together forever and not have a social, religious, wedding but still want to live together forever as a unit, there's "marriage" as defined, allowed and rewarded by the state they live in. In India, while most states did not until recently require that marriages be registered, the various marriage laws did. [In case you didn't know, we have the Hindu Marriage Act (under which the Sikh, Buddhist and Jain marriages have been categorised, for reasons of bureaucratic laziness), Indian Christian Marriage Act, Parsi Marriage and Divorce Act, the Special Marriages Act (for inter-religious/caste unions), Muslim Personal Law. The Hindu Marriage Act does not require that the wedding be registered. Hooray for democracy.]

I am not going to argue that LGBTIQ people should be allowed to marry and have that marriage recognised by their governments. Okay? I do not need to, it is perfectly obvious and right. If anyone is allowed to marry - and make no mistake, government recognition is permission, validation and reward, just as societal celebration is - then anyone should be allowed to marry.

Nepal is currently redrafting their constitution - actually, it's nearly done by now, and by July, if the people vote in the majority for it, all people of adult age regardless of sex, gender, sexuality, religion, nationality, what have you, will be able to marry. Brazil passed its same-sex law just a few weeks ago. Various American states are arguing yay and nay, and I link you to this lovely moment from the Minnesotan debates on the subject - just that moment, since the final results were not happy.

So. In our perfect world where anyone capable of informed consent is allowed to marry - and I mean, specifically, in the sense where said union is registered with the government, is probably licensed, recorded somewhere, is legal... why do we want to marry?

Well...

1. It would be nice if everyone who is in a committed relationship is allowed to bloody visit their loved ones in the hospital. Or in prison. Or when they move to family-specific zones, which does happen in some nations still, I think.
2. Tax breaks! Insurance breaks! Inheritance breaks!
3. Regulated break-up! Division of your stuff by someone else so all you need to do is fight about it!
4. Nationalities and visas!
5. Specifically for those of us who have to fight for it - respect, recognition. (Which is why we're only sullenly accepting "civil unions" as a sort of "marriage" for the purposes of this post.) This means the government doesn't say, Ew, icky, and put us in jail, or separate us against our will.
6. Comment at will, I am out of ideas.

I am going to beat the dead donkey now: 2, 3 and indirectly, 4, are about property. 1 and 4 are about acceptance, and permission, and mobility. 5 is acceptance, recognition, permission. As a practical woman, I get that these are very good reasons to have your government accept that you are married, and recognise, permit you that right, with the obligations involved.

I just... really do not see how it is the government's business. I find it incredibly creepy that people submit something so important to a only hopefully benevolent, definitely, actually impersonal authority. This is not a "someone" who loves you. Or has a plan for you and humanity as a whole. This is... THE MAN. Shouldn't this be private - or at lest just between you and your god/s?

We grant our governments too much responsibility.

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Gurl in the World has already blogged this, but this is a reminder: sign here, if you're from the States. Help a family get back together.

WHaQ! meeting, April 10th 2011

As the poor sod who has the keys to the Swabhava office, I got to MS Plaza at around 3:40 to open the place. M.S. Plaza has one of those rolling-up garage doors, and its lock is a little bitch. I jiggled the key around until something stuck - it took me five whole minutes, it was a pain, I deserve a cookie. Three of us walked in around 4 - nice timing, ladies! -and more showed up by 4:30.

Altogether told, 13 people attended today's meeting, included two guests, Visitors! From foreign shores! Making movies!

• Two of us came armed with potential new members' email addresses - it's always great to be the person who is able to say, Yes, you should join WHaQ! and do the introducing both ways.
• I begged for people to write for/contribute to/heap praise on this blog. The last because I am a sensitive flower. Also, tomorrow or the day after I will blog about BQFF 2011, and what that was like.
• We've set the date, time, place and cover charge for the Lavender Nights Farmhouse style! party. (That's not its actual name, but this is more fun.) It's an all-night party, and those sturdy souls who feel up to it can play cricket the next day. We discussed music, food and blankets, and one of us is bringing a tent which apparently zips up.
• There's a Queerlicious party happening on the 24th!
• Details for both these parties to be linked from this blog as well as the usual sources.
• Labels and stereotypes - the Indian lesbian, the American, Emirates, Thai lesbians. I'm still thinking about the "Moderate Lesbian" (last mentioned here) and intend to blog about her sometime this week. Possibly alongside her Moderate Bi/Pan-sexual and transgender sisters. The tomboy, the girly girl - how we get treated, what people assume of us (bitches and pushovers, respectively?). The lines between "butch" and "I don't care about appearances and so shall wander around not prettifying myself".
• Movies. Lots of movies. Lesbian movies! Our founders have them, and are willing to share - next week they'll bring some, and we'll bring laptops, and give ourselves over to a little mindless entertainment. (On which note, those of us who watched The Kids Are Alright think it's got far too much straight sex, and very little, and very bad, dyke action. Way to not represent!)
• S is trying to raise funds to help set up a small business for a transgender man who has had a lot of bad luck recently. Raising funds is a slow, tiresome business, but she has made some headway - Our Lovely Ruler has updates, which she will send out on the mailing list.
• Some of us dissed Vinay's book shelves, since they do not hold enough women-targeted books. We can fix that, hopefully? Kind donations? Someone gave/sold OLR some women-targeted books back during BQFF, so there's potential there, at least. OLR and Vinay have plans!
• There was some discussion on the Christian church, and religion in general. Particularly we were discussing C.J. Mahaney who weirds us out when we wear our Women Hats, and Fred Phelps, whom I am not linking to, who weirds us out when we wear our Queer Hats. (Also, they both weird us out when we war out Thinking Hats, but that is all the time, so not very informative.)
• Our visitors-from-far-shores told us about the movie they intend to make, about certain sections of Indian society (not going to give away too much here since I'm not sure they'd want us to), and some of us had suggestions for people they should contact.

Then we all needed coffee. LOTS of coffee. So we locked up - that stupid garage door lock, I want to kick it, it obviously hates the world! - and went to Koshy's. Mmmmm.

I am a noisy impatient spider

I'm one of those difficult people who can sort of behave themselves in society but are secretly and not-so-secretly introverted, morose and cynical. If I go out three days in a row, I take a day off from talking to people to recover. A friend of mine arranged to meet up with me tomorrow, and all I could think of to do was "hang out", go to Blossoms, or shop for necessities. Plus alcohol. I have NO idea what other people do for fun. (Well, I do, but a lot of it seems to involve extreme sport.)

I'm one of those people who need to be reminded that being alone can turn into being lonely, and that being alone has other, material disadvantages. You can't simultaneously live within society, dissociate from it AND mingle within it all at once. Or at least, I try but often overbalance - it's a crazy juggling act.

So coming out was a weird process. I was so wary of meeting new people - even people that I wanted to associate with - that I actively avoided WHAQ! women for a while, stalking them only on the mailing list. I forget now how I got suckered in to my first WHaQ! meeting, but it is very sad to know that I have someone else to blame for my new friendships, my new schedules, my new peers, my new enjoyments. Damn you, Some Who Made Me Socialise, how dare you make me do something that turned out to be good for me!

Anyway. I rebel against my newfound social life by being very doubtful about people in general and community-forming in particular. You must admit, on the surface it is a dubious process. Back when I was a teenager and didn't know what lesbians were, I'd've been bemused - utterly bemused - if my (default straight) friends got together and said, We're starting a support group for being (default) people who are attracted to other people!

So I tend to say, Am I "queer"? Should I tell people I'm "bisexual"? Am I proud? Aside from the fact that I like some of these people, why I am actively hanging out with them and calling them mine?

Some of these questions - not all - are so stupid I want t

o hide rather than ask them out loud. I don't think, however, that I dealt with the question of belonging, of community, until recently.

Not actually all that recent, to be honest. This is STALE, DULL, DEAD news by now, but back in February, a nominally decent news channel called TV9 did something pretty yukky. You probably know it already, but I'm rehashing it for you:

TV9 in Hyderabad put together a "sting" to tell the world that there are gay men in Hyderabad. They party. They date. They have sex. They have dating sites! (It's like they're normal people!)

The news item was called "Gay Culture Rampant in Hyderabad" [link to English translation], and was extremely homophobic, and worse yet, targeted specific men, displaying their names and pictures after entrapping them over recorded phone conversations. ("What do you like in bed?" Bitches, that sort of stuff is private!)

There were protests in Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad - other cities too, even if I didn't keep track of them. (Pink Nation and Party Square also threw a "No Panic" party, in defiance and affirmation.) AllOut sent TV9 CEO Ravi Prakash a petition telling him, in polite terms, to get his shit together and behave himself.

So, a month or so after the original item went viral, the News Broadcasting Standards Authority also told TV9 to get its shit together. Gaysi ran a fairly comprehensive article, so I'm not rehashing that.

Needless to say, we are all pretty pleased.

The thing is, until two or so days after my mom and I saw the apology (which Ma though

t was very gracelessly done, and it so was; the reader sounded shrill and sulky and flat) I didn't truly make the connections. I knew them intellectually, but in the middle of breakfast I straightened up from my I-hate-mornings slouch and thought: My friends in Bangalore go to parties. My male friends go to parties. My female friends go to parties. My friends use dating portals. Male friends, female. It's a regular part of our collective social life.

This wasn't "those poor sods in Hyderabad" with whom we have ties. This could

have been us. This WAS us.

(I tend not to go to parties, because I freak out at the thought of dancing with strangers/in the dark unless I am drunk. But that is a different story.)

No, I really am that stupid. I'd been wandering around for over a month wondering why the hell I cared beyond the requisite "those poor sods in Hyderabad", why I was expending so much energy caring what the hell happened to TV9. Why I found it so emotionally - as opposed to philosophically or academically or socially - important that TV9 get their shit together and fucking say they're sorry.

I'm not sure what would have happened if so many of us - LGBTIQ, what-have-you, straight allies (and otherwise decent people) had not said, online, in petitions, in slogans, in person, in protests - that this was not going to do. That this was atrocious. That we wouldn't stand for it. When so many of us have access to the media - as consumers, as sources, as producers - "our" issues have more weight than they would have if we all hide under the beds and shamefacedly went to parties where no one knew the others' names, if we were all strangers to each other.

It's strange to realise that no matter how anti-social I get, no matter how angry with people for just being people, no matter how leery I am of getting close, of caring - no matter how hard I try, as a functioning human being I have made these connections. T

hey go deeper than my beliefs and principles; they strengthen those beliefs and principles, they work against them.

It's very strange to realise that I am not an island. I'm not even part of an archipelago. I'm in the middle of my very own web, filaments of togetherness, principle, empathy, identification and liking stretching across the the otherwise yawning nastinesses of dislike, alienation and discomfort that makes up my inner self.

Dear you: Hello, I hope your day goes well.

Sharing Dealings

Very recently a lot of my friends got to know about my (bi)sexuality. It's one thing that I'm quite open about it, I've never really made an effort to hide it, but I came out formally to my friends only a few months ago. I did believe that they would be more supportive of me, considering they've known me for about 4 years now, and they never came across as non-accepting in any form of conversation or interaction.

I came to know that they had made many sarcastic comments, and asked other friends of mine (girls) of I had been flirting with them, with a smug smile on their faces. This was absolutely unexpected, coming from the liberal background that we all did come from. It struck me at that point of time, that the loss I felt was in fact, absolutely nothing when it came to acceptance of homosexuality. There are so many more people on this planet who have to deal with so much more, ranging from expulsion from the workplace and disownment by the family to shock therapy and isolation. How would one deal with this? How do we explain us to the straight and so called liberal community?

So let's say that right now, the "normal" thing to be is heterosexual. Now imagine a society, a culture, where the "normal" thing to be is homosexual. How would we treat them? Would we be equally compassionate? I'm tempted to ask these "friends" of mine, why they never had issues with me when supposedly did not know. The second I said "I'm bisexual" in a game of truth and dare, the tables really spun around. If those are the ground on which people decide who is a friend and who isn't, I'd like to ask them if they actually know what a friend is. So is it worth explaining us to them, or should we just ignore them? Would that make us less approachable to them? Would that increase the distance between them and us?

And ironically, the song in the background goes;


"Release yourself - it's a big sky.
Reveal yourself, it's a big sky.
We love, we leave. We take, we give.
Release yourself - it's a big sky."