Discussion, Delhi Panchayat, Resisting Stigma and Homophobia (Jeevanandhan Rajendran)

Discussion, Delhi Panchayat, Resisting Stigma and Homophobia

Director: Jeevanandhan Rajendran

Duration: 00:27:14; Aspect Ratio: 1.333:1; Hue: 21.027; Saturation: 0.235; Lightness: 0.429; Volume: 0.092; Cuts per Minute: 10.758; Words per Minute: 142.462

People’s Panchayats on Resisting Stigma and Homophobia; Action Plus - a Coalition for Rights, Education and Care in HIV and AIDS. The Audience Question and Answer session at the Delhi Panchayat led to interesting discussions on the role played by education and social class in the societal manifestation of homophobia, the history of homophobia and discrimination on the Indian subcontinent, and the steps being taken to increase awareness about queer realities by queer rights activists.

Mr. Chandrashekhar: My name is Chandrashekhar from Jammu University. I have one question to madam who is sitting here, we are talking about planning and we are talking about Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha and those who protest their voices are heard, they are listened to, they take the support of violence, but those who deal non violently, who talk with love, they are not listened to so may be there come a time when they too walk on this same way of violence so why don't we listen to them, why don't we treat them as are ordinary people like us, why to think that they are abnormal, in every person there is this thing, no one is normal or abnormal in the society. There is a degree, everyone is not on the point, someone is up, someone is down, so please pay attention to this please and in this media can play a good role. Thank you.
Anjali: Definitely, thank you.
Delhi
People's Panchayats on Resisting Stigma and Homophobia; Action Plus - a Coalition for Rights, Education and Care in HIV and AIDS. The Audience Question and Answer session at the Delhi Panchayat led to interesting discussions on the role played by education and social class in the societal manifestation of homophobia, the history of homophobia and discrimination on the Indian subcontinent, and the steps being taken to increase awareness about queer realities by queer rights activists.
action plus
ashok row kavi
awareness
british
christianity
colonization
delhi
education
gauri
history
india
indrani gupta
jivi sethi
meena seshu
middle-class
normalization
people's panchayats on resisting stigma and homophobia
saleem kidwai
social class
srivath
sunil gupta
syeda hameed
working class
Delhi, India

Mr. Rajiv Verma: It's not a question, just a small thought I want to share, I am Rajiv Verma from Makearts, topaids and is part of the department of global art and health at UCLA and what I was hearing is that we need to take it outside this conference room, mainstream it, take it out to the public and I think art can be very effective medium on communicating and I want to still quote the work of what Sunil has done, and I want to bring from the group about a recent project we had done at UCLA, you are aware of they was a short window when gay marriages were allowed in California and then there was a proposition to allot that and in response to that and in response to that we took up a project to showcase lives of people of 13 gay marriages and how this proposition is against human rights, it's discriminatory, I would urge you to look at this website it's called 13lovestories.com and may be something like that we could perhaps attempt doing it here, a photography project lead by a south African photographer Gideon Mendal, he takes your portraits and the participant is to go home and showcase their own lives which is very normal lives everybody leads, so may be we can talk Anjali and your whole team with action plus and see how we can to a similar project in India so it's 13lovestories.com, have a look please.

Mr. Ranjan: I just want to know one thing, my name is Ranjan I don't represent an organization and that's my question. All you NGO people are here, where are the gay people? Why haven't we been told that this was happening? I am here because Sunil.
Anjali: why haven't we been told, because we have put this extensively on all the e networks.
Mr. Ranjan: I would have seen it, I talked to at least a dozen gay friends in Delhi, nobody knows about it.
Anjali: It's on all the networks, it's on the LGBT networks, it's on AIDS India, it's on.
Mr. Ranjan: can I have 5 gay men standing up in the audience here?
Anjali: If they want to
Mr. Ranjan: if there are any.
Anjali: No no I am sorry there are 5 gay men and those who want to stand can stand and those who don't need not. There are many gay men here.
Mr. Ranjan: it should be out there on guys4men, it's not there, it should be out there facebook it's not there.
Anjali: Guys4men is a cruising site right.
Mr. Ranjan: so what it's a gay site.
Anjali: No let's not get into this, I am sorry we have advertised it extensively.
Mr. Ranjan: I was just giving you my opinion.
Anjali: Ya, thank you.
Mr. Ranjan: my question to the lady over there, she talked about discrimination and the social economic group, where is the middle class, there is a gay middle class, why aren't we talking about that, why are we talking about people below the poverty line and saying that's where MSM is
Anjali: No but that's not what she said, that's not what she said.
Mr. Ranjan: Discrimination is maximum in the lower socio economic group, that's what she said. Ask her.

Delhi
People's Panchayats on Resisting Stigma and Homophobia; Action Plus - a Coalition for Rights, Education and Care in HIV and AIDS. The Audience Question and Answer session at the Delhi Panchayat led to interesting discussions on the role played by education and social class in the societal manifestation of homophobia, the history of homophobia and discrimination on the Indian subcontinent, and the steps being taken to increase awareness about queer realities by queer rights activists.
action plus
ashok row kavi
awareness
british
christianity
colonization
delhi
education
gauri
history
india
indrani gupta
jivi sethi
meena seshu
middle-class
normalization
people's panchayats on resisting stigma and homophobia
saleem kidwai
social class
srivath
sunil gupta
syeda hameed
working class
Mr. Haishabeen: hi Anjali, my name is Haishabeen my question is to Saheeda Hamid what she said about the youth and discrimination, my request and information to everyone is that, there is the first case of discrimination against homosexuals in this world and we don't relate to that original story, it's started from the Jews at that time and has continued for Christianity and Islam and now it has infiltrated to different communities and different countries but the communities which were not touched by these three religions, mynas and aesthetic civilization and plus this civilization paperugani they have no discrimination against homo sexuality and this was the situation in India also, we did not have any discrimination against homosexuals where in this whole we have all influence of British colonization's so why don't we work on the origin of homophobia as more academic and more informative, why don't we see the sources and reasons for that.
Anjali: if I am not mistaken, the book that Salim and Ruth had worked on does deal with some of the issues that you are bringing up, I think they have.
Mr. Haishabeen: you are right, the scenario is Judaism and that is much more further in time, two to three thousand years old so it could be very helpful.
Anjali: ya, sure absolutely I think it's a point well taken. Great

Nidhi Jaiswal: I am Nidhi Jaiswal I am from school of public health, post graduate from institute of medical research, Chandigarh, so my question is for Dr. Shirvath, he is from Chennai I think so, first of all I would like to congratulate you for your efforts that you are making and I want to ask you that you mentioned that you are going to make efforts for bringing up the outreach programmes in the schools, I would like to know the status of sex education in your state, whether it is accepted or not and another question is what kind of approach would you take to bring the concept of gender identity and sexuality in the schools, what would be your focus?
Dr. Shirvath: First I would like to answer your question on the concept of sex education in Chennai or in Tamil Nadu, we are trying our level best to bring it in the schools, when I was in the school, when there was reproductive system classes, the entire chapter was skipped, now we are trying to incorporate about sexuality and gender identity in the schools and we are working on couple of projects, we are doing little bit of advocacy works on that, so we will be soon working on that and there is a greater degree of sensitizing multiple department in the government for example there is sensitizing policemen towards transgender women and the effeminate men in Chennai it's happening, it's happening for the last one year which is very successful, after this outreach programmes I mean the policemen, the violence against the transgender has gone down and the Tamil nadu government have come up with Advani welfare association which is welfare association for the transgender and they are promoting art and literature for the transgender's also and with this programmes, with this programmes happening they came up with a couple of projects where they actually started talking about trans gender women, how they were held with higher respect during the literal years and in the imperial years and that actually brought out the status of the transgender women to a higher degree but there was a recent incidence about a guy being kidnapped by trans gender women and forcibly converted into transgender, what happened was the media is sensitizing too much without actually knowing the facts because I know the person personally I know the person who has allegedly kidnapped, I know the person completely, she is a kothi and she was operated in consent also but the thing is there was misinformation all through but the media started sensitizing the entire issue now out of proportion so this is where now we are actually planning to sensitize the media and we are associating with Sanghmar, Chennai and Bangalore and we are starting this sensitizing programme among multiple journal, when I say about outreach programmes to the peoples and the schools, a couple of weeks back we did a street play on the beach, where we explained about the trans gender women also, how the hormonal things are happening and what makes them to be gay and trans gender so at the school levels, I would like to incorporate counselors, I just want to make sure that we incorporate counselors at the school levels and we would like to make workshops in schools or at least a couple of meetings at every school and college because I personally feel that schools are the places where the people tend to get the concepts, it's deep routed from the school times, that is when the concept gets deep routed, once we just make sure that they are very clear about the concepts I don't think there is a necessity for them to be homophobic because phobia is the fear of unknown, when you don't know something you generally get fear for that so when you know the concepts clearly I don't think anyone will be afraid of homosexuals. Thank you.

Having done this Bangalore panchayat very successfully I have this to share with everyone here, action plus has provided this forum to start thinking of this subject and it was very new and it was really done well, after the programme we had this briefing with my team in Bangalore at IMSA India and my house keeping staff one of the person shared this with me and it was very encouraging. She said I will go tell my children, next time when you see a person like this stop making fun of them, they are like us and I thought that was a huge success.
Anjali: ya, I think yes many people have said that it's at two levels we have to work, one is changing society at large but what can we do at our own level to bring about a change, every step is going to matter.
Starting at the unit of family.
Anjali: absolutely self, I would start at self right.
Delhi
People's Panchayats on Resisting Stigma and Homophobia; Action Plus - a Coalition for Rights, Education and Care in HIV and AIDS. The Audience Question and Answer session at the Delhi Panchayat led to interesting discussions on the role played by education and social class in the societal manifestation of homophobia, the history of homophobia and discrimination on the Indian subcontinent, and the steps being taken to increase awareness about queer realities by queer rights activists.
action plus
ashok row kavi
awareness
british
christianity
colonization
delhi
education
gauri
history
india
indrani gupta
jivi sethi
meena seshu
middle-class
normalization
people's panchayats on resisting stigma and homophobia
saleem kidwai
social class
srivath
sunil gupta
syeda hameed
working class

Meena: I don't have a question but I actually have a comment, I come from the sex workers rights movement and forever we have been saying that we cannot talk to the sex workers alone, we need to reach out to the women's rights people, we need to reach out to the human rights people, we need to reach out to various other constituencies if we want the issue of sex workers rights out there as everybody is a gender and I think what action plus is doing is actually just that, we cannot, we should actually stop talking to each other. We need to talk to an outside, an external community and this is absolutely important and therefore even in pune when we did the Pune panchayat the entire audience actually was not from the community of, they were representatives but the entire audience was not and it was so powerful because you had people who had never engaged with homophobia in terms of it as homophobia out there, they had all these feelings inside may be but they never engaged with it, they never met anyone, in fact one of the women in the audience came up and for the first time she had actually gone and shook hands with a trans gender person without feeling intimidated because of the panchayat and I was like this is where we need to go, this is exactly where we need to go. and I think that is very important and action plus I think is really trying to do this, trying to reach out to different constituencies and we would like the community support in this, we want the community to say, come on there is some other group which is not a group from the LGBT community who is trying to do this and we need encouragement for that, we need support from the community to do this because the community must realize that if we have to, like Ashok said, make it saharj which is some kind of normalization it will have to come from the outside of the community.

Very very quickly I don't want to waste your time two efforts exactly I am following your tread, one is that there has been an effort, you have to go and fight in the most conservative backstage, you can't talk to each other so what is necessary for example last year there was a huge effort in Bangalore to bring all Hindu leaders together, mostly they have talked to all faith leaders of the Christian community, first time Hindu and Muslim religious leaders were called in that was amazing because my direct fight was with the biggest trouble maker, Togadia, and it was amazing how much that fight became, lot of other religious leaders came in when I started fighting and it's important to take this battle into their strong hold, it's no use talking to each other, no use converting each other, it's useless, that's one, the second part is what I think I heard from Dawn like what group in Bombay is doing like this khule azadi collective, we have been going and asking each candidate, going to party offices that look we are this strong because politics here means vote banks numbers and of course you invent numbers, 40 million, for all I know they are 60 buy saying that you are going to miss our vote if you don't listen, this is what, there are only three points we are asking, we are not asking for too much, be considerate, listen. And you will be surprised at how carefully they are listening, okay so these two efforts again and again I say, you are saying that we must talk to people who are not converted, the effort is on but it has to be in many different directions for example I don't see any effort from our communities to what has happened in parliament, how dare this Venkanaya could give us moralistic talk, that is also he is on his way out and it's time to fight him, we have to take it there inside that they cannot take away sex education, they have taken out everything on sexuality, they have taken out specially things on same sex, they have taken out sensitization of girl children and it should not be tolerated, we have to take it into for example there is a parliamentary forum on HIV AIDS and sexuality, why don't we go and fight there so of course all new faces will come in, bigger problems, but we need to take it there and we need to take it, you will be surprised that imam's were willing to throw open mosque's to HIV+ people, we were surprised that even someone like Togadia said that temple fund should be given for giving free meals to HIV+ people, now hold them to their promise damn it, you see no use just taking this talk to one step, keep on following it up, for that I require more alliances, fair enough.

Anjali Gopalan: There is a question for Indrani

Question 1: We are talking about low socio-economic groups and discrimination. We are not even talking about the middle classes over here. Are we saying that there is no homosexuality in the middle class? …they are not even ready to come out.
Srivath: I think that's not true. I come from a middle class family and I have a lot of my friends who are from the middle class. I had to start working since my dad was no more. When my dad died, I had to work, study, do everything. It's not that the middle class does not come out…please! I have a hell lot of people who are out to their families and are so accepted. I would say class difference doesn't make a difference. It's not that they don't have any problems, the problems are different. For me, I always had this pressure of proving myself all through so that when I branch out on all my facets, at least they would not look down on my sexuality. That is what I thought, but again, that was not the case. When you are what you are, people accept you for what you are. That's it.
Delhi
People's Panchayats on Resisting Stigma and Homophobia; Action Plus - a Coalition for Rights, Education and Care in HIV and AIDS. The Audience Question and Answer session at the Delhi Panchayat led to interesting discussions on the role played by education and social class in the societal manifestation of homophobia, the history of homophobia and discrimination on the Indian subcontinent, and the steps being taken to increase awareness about queer realities by queer rights activists.
action plus
ashok row kavi
awareness
british
christianity
colonization
delhi
education
gauri
history
india
indrani gupta
jivi sethi
meena seshu
middle-class
normalization
people's panchayats on resisting stigma and homophobia
saleem kidwai
social class
srivath
sunil gupta
syeda hameed
working class

Comment 2: (Shweta talks about her experience with transgenders and how we need to make others aware on an individual level. She talks about the state of discrimination that exists and fear about the transgenders).
Delhi
People's Panchayats on Resisting Stigma and Homophobia; Action Plus - a Coalition for Rights, Education and Care in HIV and AIDS. The Audience Question and Answer session at the Delhi Panchayat led to interesting discussions on the role played by education and social class in the societal manifestation of homophobia, the history of homophobia and discrimination on the Indian subcontinent, and the steps being taken to increase awareness about queer realities by queer rights activists.
action plus
ashok row kavi
awareness
british
christianity
colonization
delhi
education
gauri
history
india
indrani gupta
jivi sethi
meena seshu
middle-class
normalization
people's panchayats on resisting stigma and homophobia
saleem kidwai
social class
srivath
sunil gupta
syeda hameed
working class

Delhi
Meena Seshu: You know this is exactly what marginalization is all about. That you do not accept a community for what they are and whichever class or caste they belong to. They actually get thrown out by their families and choose to leave their families and then occupy very, very marginalized spaces. Then I think the caste and class are sort of lost when you're transgender. In Sangli we have worked with Muskaan which is a group of Kothi and transgendered people and sex workers and they belong to all castes and all classes in that society. They're all thrown out and then they have to occupy a class and a caste of their own which is a totally marginalized space. And then behaviour patterns obviously follow that. So I think that is something we cannot forget.
People's Panchayats on Resisting Stigma and Homophobia; Action Plus - a Coalition for Rights, Education and Care in HIV and AIDS. The Audience Question and Answer session at the Delhi Panchayat led to interesting discussions on the role played by education and social class in the societal manifestation of homophobia, the history of homophobia and discrimination on the Indian subcontinent, and the steps being taken to increase awareness about queer realities by queer rights activists.
action plus
ashok row kavi
awareness
british
christianity
colonization
delhi
education
gauri
history
india
indrani gupta
jivi sethi
meena seshu
middle-class
normalization
people's panchayats on resisting stigma and homophobia
saleem kidwai
social class
srivath
sunil gupta
syeda hameed
working class

Delhi
People's Panchayats on Resisting Stigma and Homophobia; Action Plus - a Coalition for Rights, Education and Care in HIV and AIDS. The Audience Question and Answer session at the Delhi Panchayat led to interesting discussions on the role played by education and social class in the societal manifestation of homophobia, the history of homophobia and discrimination on the Indian subcontinent, and the steps being taken to increase awareness about queer realities by queer rights activists.
Srivath: When it comes to lesbian women, we used to do group therapy sessions for sexual minorities. I have come across only three lesbian women till date. And I'm doing it for like a year now. I've met like thousands of gay men but very few lesbian women. Whenever we try to outreach them and bring them to such programmes, I personally feel they have a feeling of insecurity because most of them are in the family already – I mean they're married and they have kids so there is quite a degree of insecurity in coming out. Because when they see women, they see her as a figure of family.
Pramada: That is precisely my point – that there is such a silencing that you find only three women. Because women's sexuality does not count if you do not fit in into any structure. Basically women are supposed to be upholding family tradition, honour, shame etc. a lot of women in this country are not taught to earn for themselves. So they cannot be independent. How do you think they're going to ever come out? And also there is no conversation happening around these issues in public spaces of women loving women or whatever name you want to give it. I think if we don't have those spaces, you can go ad nauseum trying to figure out where they are. Why are they not in media spaces? We talk about coming out in media spaces. They are not coming out because they cannot go back to their house, people out them and they lose what little bit of family space they had and unlike a lot of men maybe women cannot sleep on the streets. So I think there is a whole history that one really needs to look at and why that kind of silencing is happening all the time.
action plus
ashok row kavi
awareness
british
christianity
colonization
delhi
education
gauri
history
india
indrani gupta
jivi sethi
meena seshu
middle-class
normalization
people's panchayats on resisting stigma and homophobia
saleem kidwai
social class
srivath
sunil gupta
syeda hameed
working class

Delhi
Gauri: I want to ask the lady who spoke about transgenders giving their blessings in exchange for money. How many more years will we earn our livelihood by doing that? The hijra community should be able to look beyond that. Unlike the MSMs and others who can vote and have an identity of their own, homosexuality comes under the male category atleast. Where do we go? We don't even have an identity. How long am I supposed to bless people? It will do nothing for me. Even I want to sit in an office with a laptop next to you and speak to Sujata Rao of NACO face to face. I don't have an identity – that identity is of prime importance. Please ponder on that.
People's Panchayats on Resisting Stigma and Homophobia; Action Plus - a Coalition for Rights, Education and Care in HIV and AIDS. The Audience Question and Answer session at the Delhi Panchayat led to interesting discussions on the role played by education and social class in the societal manifestation of homophobia, the history of homophobia and discrimination on the Indian subcontinent, and the steps being taken to increase awareness about queer realities by queer rights activists.
action plus
ashok row kavi
awareness
british
christianity
colonization
delhi
education
gauri
history
india
indrani gupta
jivi sethi
meena seshu
middle-class
normalization
people's panchayats on resisting stigma and homophobia
saleem kidwai
social class
srivath
sunil gupta
syeda hameed
working class

I want to ask one question to madam, for how many years more should we offer prayers, eunuchs should go beyond prayers whereas here in the forum, MSM, lesbian, they themselves have an identity, means they can vote like he said we go to the leaders and since they are homosexuals, they come in the male category, where should we go? we don't have an identity, you see this, we want to start from the root, you are saying we should pray, how long should I pray, nothing will happen for me with prayers for my coming future, I am tired now, I too want to sit next to you in your AC office taking my laptop and go and speak to Sujata Rao directly, I myself want this, we are tired now of praying for trans gender's, we are tired even getting prayers. We want our identity, who are we to give prayers. We are not a prayer machine, I myself want that I should do something and have an identity, I want that we should have a third gender identity, for me my identity is very important, I don't have an identity, please think about this.
Delhi
People's Panchayats on Resisting Stigma and Homophobia; Action Plus - a Coalition for Rights, Education and Care in HIV and AIDS. The Audience Question and Answer session at the Delhi Panchayat led to interesting discussions on the role played by education and social class in the societal manifestation of homophobia, the history of homophobia and discrimination on the Indian subcontinent, and the steps being taken to increase awareness about queer realities by queer rights activists.
action plus
ashok row kavi
awareness
british
christianity
colonization
delhi
education
gauri
history
india
indrani gupta
jivi sethi
meena seshu
middle-class
normalization
people's panchayats on resisting stigma and homophobia
saleem kidwai
social class
srivath
sunil gupta
syeda hameed
working class

I am agreeing with what she said that they should have an identity and what they said that the paper flower does not give fragnance, paper flowers never dry up, so till when should we pray, means that is nothing, poor thing, poor thing should not be the word for them, they should have a self identity, it should be MSM or lesbian or homosexual, they too should get a status in society. Thank you.

I would just like to comment on whatever the previous person said, we don't want a particular status in the society, we just want to live as we want, we want our own identity, it's not being getting status as MSM or lesbian or a gay, that's it. Thank you.

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