This note was posted by the reader Neel in response to the report of a homophobic incident the night after Bengaluru Pride. While these points do not reflect the opinions of Orinam.net, the editors think the issues brought up are significant enough to invite feedback from our readership.
This unfortunate incident just reveals the latent homophobia in society, something which we can choose to ignore at our own peril. Anyone with an ear to the ground will be aware of how exactly gay people are perceived by the rest of our society.
In life, perceptions can count more than facts. You may see yourself as a liberated spirit; society may see you as a lustful pedophile busily engaged in converting young boys to “your filthy gay lifestyle”. This is especially reinforced by the gay community’s unfortunate and reckless use of words like “pride”, “choice” and “lifestyle” when talking about themselves. We convey the impression that not only have we deliberately chosen this “filthy western lifestyle”, but we are even proud of it.
The general Indian public is very confused about what the gay community is, something that is further exacerbated by the range of people that come under the term “gay”.
DelhiQueerPride. Image Source: ToI
Lack of any formal educational inputs regarding sex and sexuality leaves them ignorant and prejudiced. At the same time, various religions are aggressively pursuing their personal agendas by denouncing the gay community and promoting and provoking violence against them. And, our usage of words like “choice”, “pride” and “lifestyle” reinforces the public’s wrong perceptions about us and induces them to accept the lies told to them by their religious leaders. That’s the power of words.
If you look at a problem of motion of a physical body in physics, you would plot all the various forces and counter forces and arrive at the net resulting force. That’s how we manage to send satellites and space explorers into space; by understanding and working with every force that will act on the object that we are sending out, all along its path. When we choose to ignore any of those forces, out of ignorance, out of arrogance, or simply because we cannot “accept” the existence of those forces, our satellites and space explorers will end up in quite different places from where they were intended to be.
The same applies to the forces in society. You may choose to ignore certain realities simply because you want to don’t accept their existence. But that does not make them disappear. They will act on you whether you like it or not.
Here’s a thought for you: It is logically a fallacy to talk about being proud of something that is not your personal achievement. For example, wouldn’t it sound ridiculous if you said, “I am proud to have 5 fingers on each hand”? Obviously so, since you did not create those fingers with your own effort, right?
The word “proud” AUTOMATICALLY implies that what you are talking about is your personal achievement. You will sound like a retard if you said you are proud that the sun sets in the west and not in the north. Yet, we people say we are “proud to be gay”. So, what does that AUTOMATICALLY imply? It implies that being gay is something we have attained or chosen ourselves. So, you cannot say in one breath that you were born gay and did not choose it, and in the next breath say that you are proud to be gay (and thereby directly imply that it was your personal choice).
At this point, kindly don’t give me your tired old explanations about Stonewall and all that. You can argue on the semantics of the usage with me till the cows come home. What you need to think about is: does all this explanation sell with the rest of society? Was it something you could have used with those guys at the Empire?
I said right at the outset that perceptions can count for more than facts. The truth is that we have chosen this word “pride” without even thinking about its implications; about the power of words. It is time to let go of this word.
Another question for you: when you say you are “proud to be gay”, are you also implying that you would have been “ashamed” if you had not been gay? Can you see how meaningless this usage of the word “proud” is? Stop aping the west mindlessly. Let THEM follow us for a change.
Then, while the gay community wants to tell the world that it is as “normal” as anyone else, for some reason it is too “shy” to actually demonstrate this in practice. Thus, the only time the general public sees the gay community as such is when gay people are marching through the streets in their annual parades, dressed up in freakish attire or in almost nothing, disrupting the traffic, banging drums to add to the already hellish noise pollution on the streets, carrying strange and provocative banners saying things like “Main gaandu hoon”, “Proud to be gay”, and so on. Other than this, the only real contact between the straight and the gay communities is when hijdas clad in sarees go about their business harassing and intimidating the public. As for “normal” gay men, they go about their day-to-day business while keeping their nature hidden, and the public does not even know that they are gay. So, when the public looks at these men, they just see “normal people”, not “gay people”.
That means, the public rarely gets to see men who openly call themselves gay and yet look and act “normal”. Why then are we surprised that the public sees us as decadent pedophiles who have deliberately chosen “filthy western lifestyles”? Isn’t that the perception that we are ourselves creating about ourselves?
Here’s a question for you: HOW OFTEN DOES THE GAY COMMUNITY MARCH THROUGH THE STREETS IN AN ORDERLY MANNER, WEARING “RESPECTABLE CLOTHES” AND CARRYING RESPECTABLE-SOUNDING MESSAGES?
NEVER; right?
Why not?
Why does EVERY SINGLE GAY PARADE have to be a display of freakish attires, crude messages and boisterous behavior hardly likely to command respect? Why are we only TELLING people that we are “as normal as anyone else”? Why not SHOW it to them? Is that too much to ask?
What we need to work on is changing the perception of the general public regarding the gay community.
Here’s what I’d like to see in a gay parade: I’d like to see gay people DRESSED NEATLY in NORMAL clothing–which could include anything from business suits to your own traditional attires–walking quietly together through the streets in an orderly and dignified manner, without being accompanied by raucous banging of drums (something that is normally associated with some communities carrying dead bodies to the cremation ground), without disrupting the traffic; handing out leaflets and messages to the general public with a smile, and treating every such interaction with the general public as an opportunity to change their attitude towards the gay community by acting “as straight as they are”. I think I would be happy to be part of such a parade.
In my opinion, the current parades only serve to reinforce the low opinion that the general public has about the gay community. I want no part of that, and have never marched in one of these whether in India or outside.
What would you say about a person who keeps feeding sugar to a diabetic and then wonders why the patient does not recover and whether he needs to be fed even more sugar?
By 
What a breath of fresh air.
Every point made is irrefutable.
I totally agree; time for us to grow up and see that mindlessly aping the West. Gay Pride Parades got to be freakish display of everything but ‘normal’ because it was drag queens that knocked the stuffing out of the New York Police Department (NYPD) in the event we call Stonewall.
We should either go knock the stuffing out of Police harassment or grow up and display our ‘normality’. How much of the freak show attire is actually worn by gay people to work? If you have a halfway decent job and wouldn’t wear it to work, DON’T wear if for a gay parade, dear!
This is my tuppence worth.
Ranjan (Sri Lanka, Britain and US)
This is a very well thought out article. Kudos to both the writer and Orinam for sharing this. That said, let me start by stating my assumption, I believe ‘gay’ is being used in a common sense for all Q communities here in this article. I am not sure how pompous the Pride festivities are in India. But given we Indians create quite a hoopla about any celebration- may it be winning an election, or wining a cricket championship or the pride parade, I don’t see why we should limit ourselves to being “normal” as the writer suggest. We have every right to celebrate our existence with fanfare. So a little bit of music and dancing within the established street mores should be okay. I am against destruction of property or public nuisance of any way. But I think every community and every individual has the right to showcase their opinions in a democracy. So I don’t completely agree with the writer’s assessment of looking “normal” even though I support Neel’s idea of looking inwards to figure out a way to promote a positive image about ourselves and the community.
One thing I don’t agree with the writer is the use of “Pride”. I don’t agree that this would mean “we are making a choice”. For a lot of Q folks, coming out and living an open life is like a second coming. So there is some source of “pride” in having turned shunned the internalized phobias(trans-, homo-, xeno- whatever it may be) that we carried since childhood, surviving the bullying some of us face, fighting the oppression and discrimination at work, family etc…. While “lifestyle” is a dubious word and could be used against us, I think “pride” is an appropriate word. How often do we say, “I am proud of my parents or children” or “I am proud of my country”. I have never heard a case where this could be an option for an individual to choose – may be the country in special circumstances but never the parents. The usage of “pride” here is a general reflection of the individual’s view to how things have turned out for ourselves. I don’t agree that it adds any meaning “automatically”.
This is a great post and it is very important everyone discusses this in the open. Let’s agree to disagree, but with dignity and mutual respect for each other.
I have to say though some of the views in this post are transphobic and some expresses the author’s need to conform to the society, it does raise some valid questions!
As of now, Pride parades are the only queer event in India that gets attention from the media. So I agree with the author that they are one of the very few ways for the queer community to interact with the mainstream society. And what the public sees in such parades, must be too much for them to handle, especially since Indian society is very conservative, we are not used to PDAs, outrageous (that doesn’t mean they are unacceptable) outfits etc..
In the west, if a straight person sees outrageous costumes on a pride parade, they also get to see same-sex couples, families, friends, coworkers in their daily lives that balances their views on the community. In India, not many are out, so all the mainstream society sees is the people in Pride parades having fun and being silly.
That doesn’t mean we have to stop celebrating who we are, but I think we all need to be more out and proud in our daily lives too and create OTHER opportunities to interact with the general public, so they get a diverse view of who we are and what we stand for. As of now, there is a danger of us being perceived in the way the author mentioned.
Regarding the word “Pride” and “Being Proud” I agree with Rashmi’s comments.
Talking of ‘pride’, it could be a life saver. A few years ago, I happened spend some significant time in Mumbai (Bombay then) for my higher studies. The way I was discriminated for being from Tamilnadu was more shocking and traumatic than any gay issues I had in my life. I was mocked because my state was (and is) not accepting Hindi, for the politics and corruption that happen in my state (as if it does not happen elsewhere in India), bad movies, bad music (they somehow missed all the good ones), the food we eat (rice was considered inferior to roti) and the dark color of my skin (strangely, nobody has even heard of raman, ramanujan or chandrasekar).
I was so depressed, hopeless, helpless and I really started thinking I was from indeed an inferior clan. I was so emotionally broken. Retrospecting, I feel that a sense of pride (which I have now) would have helped me. What was worse? – their derision? Or my reaction? Pride is an effective defense mechanism for one to live. If you see the level at which pride works in the way I am talking about, the author’s pride-choice paradox should not matter. It is about accepting yourself (a trait or interest you acquired by choice or chance) and display to the rest of the world that it does not matter what they think about you, convey them the message that you have complete acceptance of it.
The author seems very fond of applying logical principles to social behavior. I have seen just too many exceptions for it. Of all things, I never thought the nation would fall in love with a crude tamil folk song, but see what happened to kolaveri. This is the first regional song that was aired on national radios on all regions by popular demand. If the composers thought the song should sound like north indian music or international music, not only that we would not have had a chance to display our colors, we would have fared worse in comparison to the music we are trying to compete with. Or for that matter, take ‘silk’. She was a bold maverick of those times. The whole world stood against her, but she did what she did. Today, I could see families watching her biopic movie and discussing about it with a mention of olala.
If we start being pushed around by views of ignorant and prejudiced people, we are going nowhere, not even help changing the very ignorance and prejudice we are fighting against. Do you think, that homophobic incident would not have happened if we marched in order, neatly dressed. Even today, violent attacks happen on people who attempt inter-caste marriages and it is not because they did a pompous parade. What about those oppose the celebration of valentine’s day, who beat up women because in their viewpoint, pr the women who are dressed obscene, according to them. While we can make adjustments not to shock the existing moralities, we cannot start defining our ways based on them. While we have pompous prides, we are also going to have parents marching with them, gay marriages, gay couples with kids, openly gay celebrities and important people, gay matrimonial, quality gay movies and books, gay festivities, gay professional societies – all working at their levels to change the views of the rest of the society. Who knows, if we take this liberal way right from the beginning, it could motivate the non-gay population as well to open their minds. Imagine, being gay, being accepted and gay marriages being controlled by the family, horoscopes and dowry. I don’t want us to end up there. Btw, you cant apply dynamics of rockets to dynamics of society. It is way more complicated and at the same time more fluid and you cannot put a law on how it works.
All the “normal” gay people wear “decent” clothing, carry “respectable” messages, and walk in a “dignified” manner. This sounds like a great idea – but only if this is group is a subsection of the larger gay parade group. While it would be great to have a group represent the “normal” conforming people at a parade, they represent only a section of the lgbtq community. Enforcing one particular group’s viewpoint (conforming, non conforming or somewhere in between) on the extremely diverse lgtbq community is as unrealistic as expecting unbalanced forces to create a state of equilibrium (since we are all getting sciency in here, now I am just trying to conform).
P.S.: Ok, perceptions do matter. But if it was the only thing that mattered, all of us would still be hiding – in very dark closets!
While the author makes some valid points, the article largely is a rant possibly trying to hide his/her own anguish at being gay and having to identify with a community that is NOT normal, decent, conforming to society’s fabric, etc.
Yes, the article is persuasive and well-argued. But it misses the woods for the trees. Nitpicking is what it seems to be doing. It does no service to the gay identity. I doubt if the people who were harassed at the Empire Restaurant were in drag for the author to draw (whatever) conclusions.
Let’s also look at the arguments.
1. Gays are seen as pedophiles: This is a very biased, untrue statement. Most pedophiles that the Indian society would know of would be straight men who would’ve tried to take advantage of the young girls. This is largely shushed away, hidden carefully for the sake of ‘respect’ and the ‘safety of the girl’. Unfortunate but true. Yes, there are pedophiles within the gay community too but this generalisation the author indicates is NOT the public perception that I am aware of.
2. All that the society sees us is in outlandish clothing etc: This is transphobic, and also draws heavily on social/moral policing to make people ‘fall in line’. There is NO mention of ‘let’s gain one thing at one time; we would reach the point when we’re able to be free enough to be cross-dressing/boisterous” or whatever. It’s just finger-pointing that we are NOT blending in. Everyday through the year, even those who were at Pride March in drag, would be trying their best to blend in, conform and be ‘normal’ as the author desires. And, one day they’re out in the open in attires that would make them happy and all the author has to say is ‘This is NOT on’. If a gay man/woman says this, obviously we can’t expect the rest of the society to accept us the way we are. It’s time we rid ourselves of our biases before we talk of the society at large.
I appreciate Neel making bold to share his views. My observations are as follows:
The Pride being expressed is not Pride at being gay (or LBTQ). It is pride at having braved ridicule, harassment and violence from a society that is largely prejudiced against non-heterosexual gender-normative people, and pride at having taken the huge step of disclosing this vital aspect of one’s being to oneself and one’s loved ones.
The ability to be ‘normal’ looking and behaving is itself a luxury not available to all of us. Yes we may wish some gay guys would tone down what is perceived as ‘over the top’ campiness. But what about those men for whom femininity is not a conscious performance, those women for whom masculinity is not something they carefully constructed and refined to make a political statement, but something that is as intrinsic to their being as your homosexuality is to yours?
Your insistence on getting others conform to your ideal of sexuality and gender presentation is, sadly, not that different from the thinking that makes fathers taunt their own sons for being too feminine, send their lesbian daughters to psychiatric hospitals in attempts to make them straight; that gets transgender and genderqueer children teased, beat up and worse by their peers and adults alike.
If you’ve observed Pride marches in Indian cities, you will see not only the flamboyantly attired, the hijras and kothis and twinks twirling rainbow batons, but also gay bhadralok in starched kurta-dhoti singing Rabindra Sangeet on themes that resonate with most Bengalis at Kolkata Pride, sari-clad Madras maamis marching in support of their sons and daughters on the Marina, devout Sunday-church-going Christians who have overcome their prejudice and have showed up in the dozens because their favorite colleague is gay and participating in Bengaluru Pride, the walking-stick-bearing septuagenarian who has, for the first time in his entire life, found himself in the company of people living and breathing the sexuality that he discovered many decades ago and kept carefully suppressed over half a century, enduring all the snide remarks and disdain-disguised-as-pity about his nitya brahmachari status at every family function…
Respectable middle class gay people are only one subset of the LGBT spectrum. Sure, if a contingent of straight-acting gay men in grey business-formal attire wishes to march in mournful silence interrupted only by the pings of mails and tweets sent from handheld devices, so be it.
But if you feel uncomfortable marching in solidarity with other groups for even this one day a year, perhaps you should avoid Pride entirely, and adopt alternative strategies for asserting your identity to those that matter in your life.
There is nothing wrong in having pride marches. After all that is being affirmed is that gays are not ashamed of their sexual orientation. And a little bit of song and dance too is ok. Even in straight marraiges, don’t we have music, and don’t the bride and groom wear elaborate costumes?
Neel’s post raised a storm in my head. Trying to settle down my responses and type them in order.
Read Anis’ response at http://orinam.net/a-critique-of-pride-more-responses/
All Neel needs is some counselling and perhaps some time, to grow up. To the writer : start with Kinsey3′s comment above.