In June of 2023, the LGBTQIA+ community in India is waiting with bated breath for a tectonic shift in the recognition of its rights. Meanwhile, many of us still grapple with the stark gap between societal and legal acceptance that might deter us from even considering same-sex marriage despite having the potential opportunity to do so.
We live in two Indias: One of carefully curated queer spaces in metropolitan venues that promise representation with a big side of glittering drag, and the other of socially mandated violence and vastly inadequate infrastructure to support those at risk.
While awareness' has been the primary agenda for many activist movements and organisations for years, it is increasingly clear that the mere awareness of the existence of queer identity is not enough. Moving beyond the landmark Supreme Court judgment that decriminalised sexual activity between people of the same gender also means that we have to move beyond reductive stereotypes of hypersexuality. Seeing LGBTQIA+ people live full lives in public with the same aspirations and issues as their straight counterparts is significant in more ways than one.
MANY STRIPES
For a group blanketed under a huge rainbow flag, there exist as many internal power dynamics as the number of labels available to identify with. Sumit Pawar, founder of The QKnit Collective, an advocacy collaborative that started out by posting YouTube videos about the desi queer experience, says, "There are still very limited spaces for us because no space is truly safe. There's a lot of toxicity in online spaces, and it's not only on social media, but also on dating apps." The toxicity he speaks of is the reinforcement of cis-heteronormative biases within LGBTQIA+ spaces. There is transphobia and casteism aplenty, and women are often held to different standards than men.
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