In an attempt to have a guilt-free social life (and be happy and spend time with Spider Pig, etc, etc) I’ve been approaching the Bombay queer scene as both a fun diversion and “research worthy” fieldwork practice. Whether or not I ever consider switching gears and studying “my” community (what does that mean, anyway?) is beyond me now, but I’m finding endless fascination with the current landscape of queer politics and sociality. Given that 377 is currently being challenged in the Delhi High Court (which would decriminalize homosexuality, along with sodomy, oral sex, bdsm… you know: all the fun stuff “against the order of nature”), the buzz of possibility sounds optimistic, with hints of an ominous backlash.
Yesterday, a group of (primarily) gay men met to discuss 377, the Bangalore incident (see link above), and the possible effects such reform will have upon their lives.
Out of approximately 30 odd individuals, five women showed up (including me and F).
And so this seems to be the way of it, here in Bombay.
The queer women’s meet-ups are women-only spaces, and the men’s spaces find a sprinkling of queer women, at best. There seems to be no overlap, no collaboration, no discussions across gender lines.
Now, I have had the privilege of coming out in an in incredibly inclusive, gender-queer New York/San Francisco space that belies the more exclusionary politics of smaller communities, diverse political and social realities, and burgeoning queer movements. And with the backlash of prop 8 ever-present in both California and the international queer imaginary, I do not mean for this post to romanticize the US as a queer utopia.
But…
I am struck by the lack of overlap, the lack of solidarity… the divergent trajectories enforcing a gender gap within the queer community of Bombay.
Self-conscious moment: this may be, more than anything else, a class issue. I know no hijras in Bombay, no kothis, no sex workers… The communities I have accessed thus far are English-speakers, (relatively) economically privileged…
while quite a few individuals are not out to their families, their friends, their co-workers, they have located the same networks as me: they are not completely alone, isolated, silent. There are, of course, the lingering fears of outings, the chronic terrors of being arrested, the very real dangers of approaching the law as a criminal and therefor forfeiting basic access to citizenship because of sexual practices and identity.
But class seems very real here: I have found a particular sphere of queer activism which is neither representative of a larger Indian imaginary of queer politics nor the varying regional representations of such movements.
But it is, nonetheless, the face of Bombay’s lgbt scene. Two faces, it seems: boys versus girls.
Last Saturday night was a big gay boat ride of various forms: it began with a series of film screenings with a lesbian/bisexual group in Santa Cruz: we watched a series of short films, including a selection from the Barcelona-based group, “girls who like porno” (check them out, they’re great!). Over chai and biscuits, 15 women discussed the aesthetics of queer porn, the issues raised by “rape fantasies” and other forms of power play, and what, exactly, porn is, anyway. Like any good question and answer session following art or academics, most questions and comments evolved into issues of identity and anxiety: sometimes loosely tied to the material at hand, sometimes so out of left field it was challenging to find the ball. I picked up the latest issue of Scripts, a ‘zine edited by LABIA (Lesbians and Bisexuals in Action), and met a few new people. The evening ended at 9pm.
From there, it was time to switch gears entirely.
Gay Bombay is an on-line community that also hosts parties and meet ups for the gay boys of the city. They organized yesterday’s discussion on 377. I’ve gone to their film screenings. I initially met Spider Pig at their after-pride party in August, and I have a few friends who are pretty active in the various layers of social networking, including list-serving and hitting the queer dance floor. The GB parties I’ve attended (aside from after-pride) have been almost entirely men, with a scattering of queer women here and there. While their parties are usually in town, this particular shindig was held in Bandra, 5 minutes from my flat. For 700 rupees we gained access to three floors of sweaty hard-bodied gay men and four mediocre drinks.
There were – out of approximately 500 men – 10-15 women, and none of them (aside from Spider Pig and myself) had attended the film screenings hosted by LABIA earlier that evening. The music was the usual mix of Bollywood and 80’s music, and the cruising was intense. It was a fun night, but it felt…incomplete. I’m struggling to understand why: if I went dancing in the Castro, I would expect to be surrounded by a similar demographic. Perhaps it’s because the lesbian spaces here are very limited (and, let’s face it, there ain’t no Lexington Club). But I wonder – in light of the incredible changes on the horizon for the country following the Delhi High Court’s decision – if and how a unified queer movement (very much present in many spaces in India) can emerge in Bombay, itself.
Making it in Mumbai 