addressing the homophobia?

First Meeting

So I am a film student ( or one can say that I am specializing in Digital Video Production) at the Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology.

Sometime towards the end of February we started this course 'mobile letters'.

It was also a way of getting the students to explore the city of Bangalore.

Initially the students were taken for various field trips and talks.

So the story starts on one such day.

When all the students were taken to Sangama, an NGO that works to provide support services for sexual minorities. It's a Bangalore based NGO which was established in 1999.

I remember, we had to all give small introductions :

"I am Sowmya Swaminathan ,

I am from Delhi.."

and so on and so forth.

Then we were given the definitions of various kinds of sexual minorities (transgenders, transexuals, homosexuals, kothis etcetera).

We were then split into groups. The group I was in was taken to a district Drop- in- Centre (DIC) somewhere in Malleshwaram.

Now there are various DIC's all over Bangalore, and their main function is to provide sexual minorities a safe space to interact, to hook up, or just as a space for recreation. I would like you to know that this in not a place where individuals can have sex. This is a place to hang out and where they can freely express themselves.

We sat facing each other on two opposite walls of the room. They were shocked to see us (heterosexuals) in their space, and we did not know what we were up for.

They started introducing themselves:

"I am so and so

I am a homosexual

I am married with two children

I am from this and this place"

"I am an auto driver

I am bisexual"

"I am a bus conductor,

and I am homosexual,

this is my sexual partner so and so"

30-40 introductions later it's my turn, so I say

"I am Sowmya Swaminathan,

I am from Delhi,

I am a heterosexual and I have no sexual partner"

and I can tell you that for a moment I considered throwing in the term 'bisexual' for myself. It felt odd to be a heterosexual in this space. I was suddenly the minority and it put my heterosexuality in perspective.

It was the first time in my life I was including my sexuality in my introduction. I had never really given it too much thought or even considered to be a part of my identity.

I also remember much later having a session on self portraits in class, when we were asked to write what we identify our "self" with.

My classmates included their native places, India, their age, their sex etc. but there was no question of even including our sexualities, because it was something which was already established, and now when I think back on it, it is also because probably somewhere we (by 'we' again I mean the heterosexuals) also somewhere don't feel the need of taking ownership of our sexualities.

I will get back to the point I have made above a little later.

The day progressed. Keep in mind that there were mostly men in this space, homosexual and bisexual. There were a few transgenders, transexuals and a woman or two (sex-workers or administration).

Some of the men claimed that they felt like a woman inside, and I sat there thinking what is it really to feel like a woman. How can one live their lives living in this kind of an abstraction.

How does one feel like a man or a woman apart from one's body?

or are the notions of biological gender so strong in all of us that I just can't see beyond the truth of the body?

or what happens when you are naked and alone, when there is no one else around you to re-affirm to yourself that you are actually a woman?

Another important thing to keep in mind, and as in the case of the usual media portrayal of gay men in India, all these men are not necessarily feminine. Most of them in-fact are as masculine as any heterosexual man around. Most of them also have extremely rigid notions regarding the patriarchal system of society and women.

Now when I walk down the road, five out of ten men try making a pass. This is the case with most women.

And here I was, in a room full of almost a hundred men, and none of them even looked at me. :)

Now most women would say that they would feel safe in such a place, but somewhere, this is exactly what bothered me.

There were other things, like the way sex was addressed, almost as if for raw consumption, that too between men, as they sat on each other's laps, held each other's hands or just how they looked at each other.

This is not how I knew men. After a point the place smelt of sex to me, i could not stand being there, between these men. So I walked out onto the road for a while, and somehow it felt strangely controlled outside. People seemed more guarded, and this is what was normal to me. I instantly felt relieved.

Before this I had perceived myself to be above the biases of heterosexuality and homosexuality, and now things suddenly seemed different.

I felt in a way greatly insecure, about my future with my heterosexuality. I did not want to see men like that with each other.

So maybe I was not as cool with homosexuality as I had thought, and to me that seemed like a problem. In a way it felt like I was also becoming a participant in a certain kind of segregation and that is something that I could make peace with.

So I decided to address this homophobia I had suddenly developed. The aim is not necessarily overcoming it, it is more of an attempt at gaining a better understanding at it.

Getting Started

I am not particularly fond of blogging.

I know starting anything with a complaint may not be the best idea, but there you go. :)

I wanted to start my blog once I had gone through a certain process, instead of providing everyone here with a day to day account. So maybe it will be like a story in parts.

sowmya s: cartoon