It was only just over two decades ago in 1990 that the World Health Organization removed homosexuality from its list of mental diseases. Nevertheless, over 70 countries are participating in the United Nations which still classify homosexuality as a criminal offence. Even in developed countries which have anti-discrimination law to protect individuals from the LGBT community, the hate crime that the community has to face has been one of the highest. Further, the LGBT community is subjected to non-violent discrimination, indifferent behaviour which is often not recorded. In India, discrimination, hate crime, violence and stigmatising attitudes on the LGBT community is often justified on the bases of social, religious and traditional beliefs and value system. Before we deep dive into this topic, we would briefly like to introduce our readers about the research methodology and approach while writing this book. We have explained the research methodology in detail in the preface of this book, so we will keep it short over here.
Research Methodology
This book is the result of over five years of research, observation and interaction with the LGBTQ community from various parts of India. Since we wanted to explore the issues of queer and non-normative sexual orientation and gender identities specifically at the workplace, and to record the experiences and voices of the individuals from the community at their workplace, our approach for the research has been qualitative. We started this research with semi-structured in-depth interviews in the metropolitan city of Mumbai and Hyderabad. Over the years, we have been able to be present and observe various spaces in the society that have been considered as safe spaces by some individuals from the LGBTQ community. We have also mentioned reflections on our journey while undertaking this research. At some places, the readers will see the use of the pronoun âI,â while at other spaces we have used the pronoun âWe.â The places where the pronoun âIâ has been used is an insider perspective on the LGBTQ community given by one of our co-authors. We have tried to keep the language as simple as possible, but we have not defined the meaning of terms such as gay, lesbian, queer, cis-gender and so on. During the research, we have often noticed that a few words were misunderstood, the meaning of some words was not clear to many individuals and some words were often used interchangeably due to lack of awareness by many people in the society and, at times, even by individuals who are from the community. So we have given a glossary towards the end of the book with the definition of some of these words. We advise the readers to go through these words even when they think they are aware of them. One way of making this exercise interesting is that the readers can first see the word, try to define it on their own and then see if there is any difference in their definition and the definition given in the glossary. However, we do not claim that these definitions are most apt and various factors affect the way they may be used.
Another thing that the readers will notice while reading this book is that at most of the places we have used acronym LGBT, while at other places we have used the acronym LGBTQ, LGBTQIA or LGB or queer to describe the community. There is a difference between all of them and their usage. Most of us would be aware that the acronym LGBT stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender. When we use the acronym LGBTQ, LGBTQIA or the word queer we are referring to the larger community which includes various identities such as intersex, asexual, pansexual and attempts to include minority and non-normative gender and sexual orientation identities. Similarly, when we use the acronym LGB or LBT, then we are only referring to Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual individuals and Lesbian-Bisexual-Transgender individuals respectively. The reasons for excluding âTâ at some places is because there have been some changes in the legal recognition of the transgender community in India and the transgender community may have legal rights with respects to their non-normative identity which individuals from the gay, bisexual and queer community may not have. This is mainly because the NALSA verdict (National Legal Services Authority v. Union of India verdict) which legally recognised transgenders as the âthird genderâ was passed before the decriminalisation of Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC ). We have briefly attempted to cover the NALSA verdict and Section 377 of the IPC in various chapters of this book.
The period of data collection for this book has majorly been during 2013 to 2018, a time when homosexuality was considered a criminal activity in India. We believe that this makes the research interesting and one of its kind, as it records voices of individuals from the queer community at a time where the act of even consensual same-sex activity was criminalised by the Supreme Court which ruled out the High Court verdict of decriminalisation of homosexuality in the year 2009. Since the Supreme Court had re-criminalised homosexuality in 2013, many individuals from the community who had come out or were planning to come out had to go back in the closet. In this chapter and subsequently in the book, we have also attempted to answer if a change in the law facilitates any positive change in the lives of the LGBTQ individuals.
Introduction and Historical Context
There has been an account of the existence of the queer community throughout Indian history. Today, these historical accounts are often brought in as an argument by LGBT right activists, and allies in the debate against the stereotypical believe that LGBT identities are a gift of western culture. On the contrary, in India, there have been various accounts that help us to conclude that people from the LGBT community have existed even before the British invasion. Further, people from the community have been recognised and accepted as a part of the society in the pre-British colonisation era. It was the western societies that have been responsible for suppressing sexuality. Foucault (1976) writes about the way sexuality was suppressed by the western societies from the seventeenth to mid-twentieth centuries as a result of the rise of capitalism and bourgeois society in the first volume of History of Sexuality . It was a result of this suppression that Section 377 of the penal code which criminalised homosexuality was introduced in the British coloniesâa regressive law that existed in India till late 2018 and criminalised even consensual same sex between adults. Today, most of these western societies have been trying to rectify their mistakes and problems caused due to suppression of human sexuality. This is not only leading to higher acceptance of the LGBT community and sexual minorities but also helping the societies to be more aware and open about gender and sexuality. These societies are now moving beyond the traditional gender model, and people are relatively more open towards having conversations around a subject which was/is considered taboo for a very long time. It is not that all individuals in these societies agree with these attempts of rectification, but these societies have been able to create space for difficult conversations successfully and have recognised LGBT rights as human rights. These conversations, attempts around rectification of past mistakes undertaken predominantly by the western society, and lack of awareness and/or partial rejection of the historical development of human sexuality lead individuals/groups in India to think that recognising LGBTQ rights is a western conspiracy that intends to bestialise and infect their own culture.
One of our observations was that most individuals who identified as heterosexuals in India and, at times, even self-identifying individuals from the LGBT community did not know much about the LGBT community and their perceptions of the community were based on common stereotypes. We realised that the primary reasons for these biases, questions and curiosity that a large part of Indian society has towards the community are a result of the traditional understanding of gender model and lack of awareness on the issues of sexualityâwhich does include not only non-normative sexuality and gender identities but also normative ones. This is not surprising in a country where it is still debated if sex education should be part of school education curricu...
