“Take me to church
I’ll worship like a dog at the shrine of your lies
I’ll tell you my sins and you can sharpen your knife
Offer me that deathless death
Good God, let me give you my life…”
a song by Hozier and indeed it’s a sin in our country, it is not easy being “other kind of couple”. They were born sick, you heard them say.
I’ll start with an incident when my mother felt the restaurant’s ambience just got bad when a young lesbian couple walked in. Are they this bad to even look at? Is it a disease that is contagious according to parents? Well let me tell you this practise is not new. Same –sex relationships have varied over time and place.
In a 1976 study by Gwen Broude and Sarah Green compared attitudes towards and frequency of homosexuality in the ethnographic studies available in the standard cross-cultural sample. They found out of 42 communities; homosexuality was accepted or ignored in communities, 5 communities had no concept of homosexuality, 11 communities considered it undesirable and 17 communities strongly disapproved and punished it. It began with Sac and Fox Nation ceremonial dance to celebrate the two-spirited person, painted by George Catlin (1796- 1872) .
Now let’s come to the harassments they go through, it is not only the females that get harassed or abused by men, homosexuals fall under the same category: they are taunted at, being dissed. The ones who come out of closets are the ones who face the most problems and the ones who can not are simply inside an invisible cloak, scared to show their emotions.
Many of us don’t see them or approache them; I also get the feeling that people who support homosexuality are sinners as well in the eyes of “the society”. Hijras (a subset of transgender community) are different in India – by hijras (shemales) we think of them as people who have different identity and are called the third gender, people who blesses us when a new child is born. “They are just like garbage, jobless and only here to collect money by blessing the child with God knows what? To be like them? Well, society certainly disapproves.
In college admission forms there are three categories under sex these days , transgender has been included, but the question is who will declare him/her to be a transgender with the fear of getting beaten up or get ridiculed and taunted?. I am from a girl’s only school and college and I understand it very well, especially in the school days that same sex attracts, our school had some lesbian couples who behaved like lovers in class and like friends outside school. It is a complicated sexual orientation they go through. Some, after passing school realise that it’s better to be “normal” but from inside they fail to convince their minds. That in the process they live a life of denial, a lie, needs no elaboration.
This can’t go on, this can’t be the future where the real you can’t be shown to the world, if you do you have to walk through fire to prove yourself. Yes, homosexuality cannot give start to new life, but nevertheless it can give a start of a new love and that is what the world forgot about. “Love is about love, not gender.”
(SRINJEETA CHATTOPADHYAY is a student of 3RD year Communicative English in Basantidevi College (CU). She wants to pursue further studies in linguistics. She is an avid painter and is passionate about reading and loves to delve into the intricacies of the human mind.)