WHaQ! meeting, May 22nd 2011

No cookies required today: got there early, got some work done, panicked when no one was there on the dot at 4, unpanicked when Gurl in the World showed up with beloved a few minutes later. Smallish meeting, 8 people.

• S. is contemplating sex education, sex education re: method, contraception, orientation, predators, awareness. Specifically: school children. S. is contemplating, hazily, being an educator in this line - and if you're interested in helping out, leave a message here or on the group email.
• One of us is leaving in a few weeks. This sucks.
• This. Children have been separated from their mother, kept captive in a foreign country. Their mum has legal custody, their dad kidnapped them anyway. If you are American, sign this, petition, please? If you are not American, pass it on to someone who is?
• M. brought a dozen books to the office. LADY BOOKS. Or mostly lady books. We left them in an untidy pile on V.'s desk so he could arrange them to perfection on the shelves.
• More of us, those o us who're comfortable meeting random strangers/men, should come to the Good As You meetings on Thursdays. The meetings are fun sometimes. Also, we should ask if the boys want to play cricket.
• I was taking notes while simultaneously writing, so I have "lesbian demographics" just randomly jotted down in the minutes. I think we were comparing lesbian numbers in China versus India. Statistically speaking, in a decade or so India should have more people, and perhaps therefore more lesbians, than China. (India is composed of people who know how to have sex, and people who think they'll get pregnant if they're kissed, by the way. Our population craziness is not caused by a uniform rite of orgy all across the country.)
• Several of us have been shopping lately. Shoes and saris. Saris are pretty, and awesome, and often expensive.
• Queer Ink. "We, at Queer-Ink seek to disempower those who look at others with derision or suspicion or ignorance. We do it not by shutting ourselves out but by embracing the world and all its treasures. We do it through the retailing of books, or the publishing of new works, or even setting up our special Qi Community. " Go there if you want to read. Go there if you want to write. Just, go.
• Indu Anthony's Beauty in the Blur project. (And this.)

At some point, we broke up, with most of us heading to Koshy's. Brandy! Coffee! Tea! Lassi! Food! Loads of people we knew were there, which is why we get to feel snobby about Koshy's. Or something.

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.

sign, blog, repost, tweet.....pass the word on

Please sign this. I'll ask someone more eloquent than me to blog on the reasons why and say only that.....

If they were your daughters, you'd do anything to get them back and those who helped you would secure your most loyal devotion.

They are MY daughters.

WHaQ! meeting, May 8th 2011

I got there early, and opened the garage door all by myself while wearing a sari - look, I keep saying it, and it i still true: I deserve COOKIES. People trickled in on time, starting with N., who is new and came by on the off-chance that we would have a meeting today. Nice timing, us! We also had a few old familiars, people who've been missing, away, busy for a while, and it was nice to finally put a face to the often-dropped names.

1. I had just come from a wedding, so marriage was on my mind.

• Brazil recently granted same-sex unions the same broad rights as non-same-sex marriages, the ruling was passed on the 5th of May, in Rio Grande do Sul. Brazil has recognised same-sex unions for a while now, and is largely, at least on paper, an LGBT-friendly nation. (Brazil also has a very high count of violence against LGBT people, so take this how you will.)
• Minnesota, somewhere in the U.S. of A., is currently debating same-sex marriage laws, yay or nay, and I link you to this. It is awesome and speaks for itself. AWESOME. This is for those of us who are fighting against religious prohibitions (encoded in nominally secular law, which sucks big time) against our collective right to be married and recognised as married and granted the same privileges the state grants same-sex unions.

1. MOVIES. Our Beloved Leader has loads of lezzie movies, and we are agreed that we should watch 'em. (She is also going to share a few with Vinay, who runs movies every Saturday at Swabhava at 6 p.m., because he mostly has and shows BOY movies, not that there is anything wrong with BOY movies, only sometimes I want a woman or two in there. Just for variety.) So we're having a showing this Sunday, 15th of May, at the Swabhava office. 4 p.m.
2. Books. OBL has books, which we shall maneuverer, hopefully, into the Swabhava office. OBL and Vinay must do the negotiating for this, so it is really out of our hands.
3. Sunday was Mother's Day. HUGS to all the Mothers out there.
4. There was some discussion about South Korea (we had a visitor from South Korea who knew her stuff) - the scene (underground but existent), the bars, the culture. The Bangalore scene was judged slightly more open, while the Delhi scene was active but invisible, since Delhi is a horribly unsafe place for women to anything at al, much be less openly queer.
5. OBL leads us to this article in DNA: "My favourite part of being lesbian is the exhilerating sex". No need to explain this one, right?
6. The Chennai Pride march is going to happen sometime in June, most likely in the last weekend (the 26th). Maybe we WHaQ! members could go? As a group? It will be fun, even though it is Chennai. (Sorry, Chennai-ites.) More discussion on going later, possibly on the group mail.
7. Chitra (who gave me permission to name her on the blog, thanks, Chitra! :) ) is a bike racer with several wins under her belt (quotable quote: "Dude, I kicked your ass!"). She drove from Chennai to Bangalore - no, seriously. Dykes on Bikes chic. She intends to attempt the world record for travel within 24 hours on a bike - from Chennai to Tiruvanthapuram and back. That's over 1,700 km. Sometime by the end of this month. Good luck! :D

This didn't happen at the meeting, but I am including it in here:

Uganda is passing a ban on homosexuality - The "Kill the Gays" bill. It will make killing LGBT in Uganda a crime punishable by death. I'm not sure how helpful petitions are, but have a look at the All Out petition and sign it. Uganda is a pretty horrible place as it is to be LGBT as it is; no one needs this kind of shit.

And since this post was ultra delayed, as well as the posts I've promised you already, here is the Sorry Puppy again. I'm trying, and I'm sorry, it's just that my life and my health have been evil and down the last few weeks. I'm sort of back. More to come soon. :D

:( I've been a bad blogger.

Life has been whirling me around a bit.

BUT! I do have posts in mind. The long-promised BQFF blog, should anyone still want to read about that, will be up on Monday, while tomorrow I have semi-rational musings on matrimony for your perusal.

Don't be mad: look at the puppy! How can you be mad when he looks so sad! etc.

Malaysian state sends boys to "sissy boot camps".

No, really.

The Terangannu Education Department sent 66 carefully vetted boys to a government "reeducation camp". This is creepy even when you don't know what the camp is for. The boys were selected from schools all over Terangannu (by the school officials) for their "effeminate" qualities. They were sent to the four-day camp for training. On how to be more masculine. How to behave "in a proper manner".

Razali Daud, the department director, said that this was the first training camp of its kind - meaning, there will be more, please barf on your own shoes - and that as educators it's department's responsibility to ensure that the boys be retrained before they reach the point of "no return" and are irrevocably set on a course of "misunderstanding" (normal) people.

The retraining is aims specifically at minimising the number of people who will be homosexual or transgendered.

No, really. Read the article at the New Straits Times (Malaysia's oldest newspaper still in print, and their largest English-language daily):

We are not intervening with the process of nature as we are merely trying to guide these students to a proper path in life.

Must be a nice boot camp, to provide "mere guidance" alongside the "process of nature".

This action has received furious opposition within the country. The central Women, Family and Community Development Ministry has declared that the camps contravene the nation's 2001 Child Act, since they are harmful and against the best interest of the children.

The experience of being singled out on the basis of perceived characteristics is an extremely traumatising experience...

The Joint Action Group for gender equality is a coalition of various Malaysian groups, and they have also given clear statements condemning this selection and "retraining". This discrimination contravenes UNICEF's Convention on the Rights of the Child, which Malaysia ratified in 1995.

The act of identifying and singling out boys who behave effeminately is highly discriminatory, bordering on predatory...

So.

• These boys are being forced to toe a line of "masculine" behaviour
• They are now taught that the way they are is "wrong"
• The boys who were not selected are taught that their peers and friends are "wrong"
• Girls are shown, implicitly, that there are certain behaviours that are "theirs" alone.
• Girls could be next. In fact, they almost definitely will be.
• Boys and girls are told explicitly that transgenderism, transvestism, homosexuality and other forms of sexual and gender queerness are frowned upon by the government, and the government will take action to make sure that these facets of personality are indoctrinated out of them.
• Gender boot camp.
• The Malaysian education departments are so far ignoring all protests - even when some of those protests are from other arms of the government.

All Out - an organisation commited to global LGBT-assorted identity equality - it organising a petition. Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak will be at the next ASEAN Summit on the 6th of May. Sign this petition, which can then be presented to Razak as proof that these actions are not acceptable, at home or internationally.

There's less than a week to collect the required number of signatures, and I'm not sure if a PM who has ignored internal conflict over the treatment of national citizens will give a damn about international concerns unless those concerns are backed by hard, economic penalties.

Homosexuality is illegal in Malaysia. It's currently allowed in India (cross your fingers and pray for the Supreme Court battle to end sensibly!) but I still shudder. It doesn't seem like so alien a horror.

_______ and Violence. Far too much violence.

I've been trying to respond to Afreen's post for a while now, and my thoughts get tangled up in that morass of fear-of-guilt, agreement, indignation and what-have-you. Then my life took a vacation without me, and I lay about at home not watching the news or being online or being in touch.

I came back today gung-ho to respond to Afreen, and saw, amongst other things, a Gaysi article that made my blood freeze. I want to go back to not paying attention to the news.

I followed links around until I found a more complete story: In a McDonald's restaurant in Baltimore, USA, Chrissy Lee Polis went to use the restroom. She was stopped by two other women. These two women attacked her, dragged her around on the floor, beat her, kicked her. Why? Polis is transgendered.

(There's a video here. It's terrible; I can't watch it all the way through. Be careful if you click to watch it.) An emplo

That's it. A woman got up to use the restrooms. Two other women beat the shit out of her because - er. Because they don't like to share? They're afraid they'll catch cooties? The McDonald's ladies' toilets should not come in contact with peepees that no long apply?

The attackers are 14 and 18 (Teonna Monae Brown) years old. They're being charged, possibly with a hate crime.

The employees at McDonald's stood around and watched. (And laughed.) Vernon Hackett - an employee again - caught the attack on hir mobile camera and put it on youtube. Someone was being dragged around on the floor, beaten and kicked, and he taped it and put it on the internet. (He was fired. McDonald's as an enterprise does not want to be evil.)

The video received widespread attention because of the racial dynamics of the attack...

In America, this attack gets extra attention because the attackers are black, and the victim is white. No, seriously. A woman is beaten and dragged around on the floor of a public eatery, the video is put up on the internet, and it attracts comment because it might have been racially motivated. While racial attacks are an atrocity, something is still very wrong with this picture.

They said, "That's a dude, that's a dude, and she's in the female bathroom... They spit in my face."

Of all the people in the place, only two people went to help Polis. The manager, and Vicky Thoms. Vicky Thoms is 55 years old. I don't like it when people talk about the manners and morals of the older generation. I am subscribed to the old-people-are-more-narrow-minded school of thought. The vicious beastlings punched Thoms in the face. I'm subscribed to the wrong goddamned school.

As someone who grew up female and is acknowledged as female, I was and am conditioned to be female too - I negotiate my Inner Self with my Outer Self and my Social Self and all in all I think I have a fair grip on the bits of me I call "female" or "woman" or "feminine" or "I can has babies (but don' wanna)". But as a person, as a socially acknowledged female human, as a feminist, I have dealt consciously and unconsciously all my life with being relegated to my body. And just my body. Weaker, shorter, softer, bloodier, and therefore finer, more delicate, more nervy, more emotional. Right? Right. And I have read, heard, watched people - women, men, people I couldn't pigeon-hole - say, We are more than our bodies. Or We are our bodies, and we shall claim them. I've seen feminists increase the chasm between the sexes, humanists say, I just want us all to get along, asexual people say, I'm not frigid, all my bits work, I just never want to have sex. It's icky.

But we get to say it. Within the bounds of informed consent, people/our prdecessors/we have worked for decades to ensure it!

In a "queer" world - in a place where we consciously, inevitably, break with heteronormativity, surely it should be easier for us to say, We're Not "Normal", And That Is SO ALL RIGHT. We're together in this. In a world where I get to say, my vagina is not the Men's room (sorry, men, I love you but the metaphor seems funny right now), it's the Ladies', where I can say, I'll love, fuck, make love to, anyone I choose, and you can complain all you like, but if your complaint is their genitalia I'ma gonna tell you to fuck the fuck off -

One assumes that some sorts of tolerance become easier with time.

I keep coming back to those girls. They're girls. Not even women. I don't think they need to be gentle loving souls or whatever feminine crap American girls in Baltimore get fed. I don't know the details of the concerns they face and negotiate every day as a racial minority in a large country. I'm certain that as girls, as women, they are trained - perhaps sensibly, perhaps not - to be wary of male abuse, attack, oppression, chauvinism. But surely, surely, as women, as women pleased to be women, as women who must be careful as well as strong, female as well as women, protective as well as defensive - sure, when someone comes along who says, In my heart, I want to be like you. I have this aspect of you. I am one of you. When that person comes along, whether we're gay, straight, queer, mundane, asexual, misanthropist, ornery, giving - when that person comes along, shouldn't the most natural response be a smile, a hug and a "you took your time getting here, but we've saved some cookies! Dig in before Roh finishes them all, she's a greedy pig."

We're so busy, sometimes, naming things, knowing things, learning things. We're taught where things go, what the physical world is made of. We learn to categorise, to include, to exclude. That's how two young girls, not even women yet, were able to say, "That is a MAN. He does NOT BELONG in the LADIES' toilet."

What would have helped stop this? If Chrissy Polis were black? Would she have been "allowed" the restroom in peace if her skin tone said, "I like sunlight!"? Would she have been categorically safe?

We're a very clever set of apes. So we'll get to the point where we remember what all the learning is for. Hopefully. What being human ought to be for.

HATING TRANS WOMEN AND OTHER STORIES

Radical feminist separatists are becoming literary scum sores.

There is nothing “subversive” in its agenda any more, it’s all political maneuvering of the same misogynist/queer phobic language they claim to defy. There is nothing that anyone can do to even lessen the resentment that resonates in the trans community against some of the recent issues where the self indulgent “radical-feminist-separatists” (who militantly demand a total female only virtual/articulating space) have not only denounced trans women from the movement but have disparaged and cruelly misrepresented the sentiment of an entire community. Their blogs, which I will explore further in this post, lavishly indulge words like trannies, chicks with dicks and the most abhorrent- shemale, continuously to demean trans women and to reiterate the fact that they can never be “womyn” i.e. a woman-born-woman, another linguistic weapon to put transsexuals in a pit. They treat us (Trans identities) likes shit and tell us, that there is no place for you in your aspired sex.

Your sex- is the body you are born in and deal with it, NOTHING will change it. They are propounding theories of Trans women being female impersonators, caricatures of femininity and useless intrusions in the female space. How could our “feminist” sisters use a parlance which is clearly pornographically constructed and has been deployed to butcher transsexual women throughout the history? What I fail to comprehend is this bizarre resentment of the radicals against trans identities. There is nothing “feminist” about attacking and disdaining another woman just because her biological makeup tends to differ from a genetic woman and to specifically bully her biological “appendage” that she wishes to morph. I maybe a born male, my body may be working towards becoming female but my soul has always been one. Of a woman and I am extremely proud of it.
But in any case who has given these certain self-styled radicals the autonomy to define who a “woman” is?

I was extremely insulted, even though these mamas would then coo “Please, it is not a personal attack on anyone. It’s just an observation”. Yeah, right. Up yours.

But more than insult it’s the disappointment and the anger that such actions ensue. So, once again, Trans Women are being written out of the LGB(t) Community. So, once again, Trans Women are being written out of the Feminist Community. There is a reason Julia Serano termed her foundational trans-feminist text Whipping Girl. Because Trans Women are one of the favorite groups of people to mock, bully, demean, hate on and deride.
For instance, The Magazine Project for Lesbians defines itself as “an inclusive space for female-born lesbians only as we found it increasingly difficult to manage open discussions between female-born lesbians and Trans groups without inherent power dynamics and contention between the two. Although it would have been a progressive endeavor to unite the two groups, it is beyond our capacity at this point. We also welcome female-born bisexuals”. There has been a recent change in the submission policy of this Magazine project which will only consider submissions by women-born-women because they feel that the transsexual woman can only aspire to be a woman but never really be one. She can try as hard as she wants- she can keep working throughout her life to earn the money she wants for her surgery, she can look as womanly she wants but in the end she is just an imitation of a genetic woman. But still the “about us” of TMP sheepishly whispers, “we are feminist not radical feminists”. According to TMP and other such ventures, an individual is defined as female based on their chromosomal makeup?! It makes me laugh.

A laugh that suddenly turns yours ribs inside and makes you want to burn everything around. On the TMP website it clearly states “Who is an LGBT female? An LGBT female is a woman born with two X chromosomes in the cell nuclei who is adjectively lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgendered (including FTMs). Gender determined by chromosomes? REALLY? This is some straight-up biological essentialism. Biological determinism is exactly what creates oppression against women under the patriarchy. To make the assumption that “females” have an XX pattern is an incredibly reductionist and vehemently anti-intersex position to take on.

And wait, the vilification becomes darker now.

Another voice from the radical-feminist-separatist community opinionates that Trans women must not even be allowed in the female toilets. She feels that the female toilet is meant for females not for female identified individuals but trans men are sanctioned in this space. But, you stupid sexist radical- why will a Trans man wish to use a female toilet? HE does not identify himself with females and HE will use the gents’ toilets. Stop dictating your own terms and feeding the misogynist monster that actually oppresses us. And if there is any construction of any female only space then it will include Male to Female transsexuals who then maybe lesbians, straight or bisexuals and not Female to Male. Duh. Male space/forums are different.

STOP telling trans women that rape crisis centers are only meant for genetic women and not for anyone who does not have a visible, functioning vagina. Again an extremely insidious, essentialist understanding of gender and please for heaven’s sake (vagina’s sake?) a woman has been raped!
Do you wish a woman to reach rape crisis centre and orate her biological/sexual history or help her deal with violence inflicted on her? Will you throw a woman, ANY woman out when she has been RAPED?

The ideological environment nurtured through such “values” is neither pro-choice nor anti-oppressive. It is anti-choice and pro-oppression. If they really believed in diversity amongst women, then trans women would be one of the forms of diversity that they believed in and affirmed. Plus, a transsexual only identifies/becomes the sex he or she aspires and that does not define that individual’s sexuality. I am a transsexual woman and it’s not important for me to just like men. I could be bisexual. And recently, I discovered that I just maybe.

But that again rages the voyeurism. How does a trans-dyke do IT? So, once for all, it must be made clear. A pre-op trans-dyke will not take a woman to bed and then show her bulging erection and aspire it to be sucked. Or (wait I am reeling all the pornographic images which are a huge fetish for radical feminists and patriarchy to bully trans women) buck the woman down and fuck her. Ew. That REALLY never happens and if you want, you can fulfill you fantasies at Ladyboy.com and not in real life. Sorry. For any transsexual woman, our male organ never figures in the sexual act whether it’s with a man or a woman. If the other woman wishes me to penetrate her, I would never do it. Not even use a dildo. The act of penetration is gross and in some weird way, offensive (although if she wishes to use a dildo on me, I don’t think I would mind that). Sex is mysterious that way.

The feminist statement of TMP and the Dyke-osaur (the 1970’s Raymondism) blatantly contradicts its own diversity statement. Not all women, including lesbian, bi and trans women, are feminists. And some of them have very good reasons, rooted in anti-oppression social justice activism, for not identifying with that term.

I have so many friends in the lesbian-feminist community and I identify with their agenda. I feel comfortable in the feminist circle and so many of them are allies to trans individuals. When they ask what should be done, I will say such hatred and bigotry has to stop. Respect the real spirit of woman and not just the sight of a wet vagina.

Enough is enough.

Good As You meeting on 14th April 2011

(Sometime I need to blog about BQFF, which happened way back in February. I will! I promise. Sunday?)

A quick run through of the meeting, which to me seemed sort of slow and tedious (sorry, other people who were there, I love you, but I was not feeling it that Thursday):

• Three new people showed up! Three!
• Two of them were women! Excuse me while I drool both as a dirty-minded woman and as someone who likes representation.
• There were some old faces too, not naming any names. Hi!
• Gaysi is looking for contributors! If you feel like you should be writing for that cool and lovely website, sharing your story or contributing in any other way, go here.
• Jindal Law School was conducting an "empirical survey" of the LGBT community in Delhi, to collect data and file a petition in front of the Supreme Court "this Friday", which at the time of the article's posting would be the 15th of April, yesterday. Basically, the petition was to say that the High Court judgement in the Naz case has positively affected the lives of LGBT(IQ) people, and shouldn't we keep the things that make our lives better? I found this bewildering. Did they contact Gaysi too late? Were they canvassing the entire time and added Gaysi in as an afterthought? I'd forgotten that the target demographic was Delhi-based, and so was even more bewildered. Anyway, that way yesterday. I hope it worked for them.
• R told me about this article: "As Good As It Can Get" by Vinay Chandran, it appeared in The Hindu on the 13th. It's about Bangalore as an LGBTIQ-friendly city, and not-so-friendly.

A. walked in about halfway through, bringing in some energy and Things To Do - he had the men filling out one of those old fashioned Adjustment inventories on behalf of some student in Calcutta, who is basically out to prove that people are people despite their sexuality. (But s/he only wanted men, which I find annoying and baffling and reprehensible, even.) Filling out the forms took a while, and figuring out what "Diphtheria" is took almost as long. (For future reference, it's some thing that includes diarrhoea, and that's all we knew about it.) [For accurate future reference, it's a respiratory illness.]

At some point, we all went to Koshy's. Yum!

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.