It is no secret that queer lives in semi-urban India are different from those in urban cities. As someone who grew up in the underground queer culture of Jabalpur in Madhya Pradesh, life for us in small towns existed in a parallel universe, in the dark of the night. We hid in the shadows to find solace, the only place where we could be our true selves, for our identities had to be safely concealed from the heteronormative world.
In many parts of India, queer people do not have access to physical spaces of their own. The COVID-19 pandemic has made socialising even more elusive, especially in the smaller cities, due to which whatever little sense of community they had has also deteriorated. This has, in turn, also restricted queer folks from finding friends from the community and engaging with them.
For me, it was the internet that helped in more ways than one, playing an integral part in my growing up. In a way, social media became my safe space. Research indicates that real-world support is most necessary for well-being, and online support does not compensate for it. But since there are simply not enough physical spaces to access, the digital world is what helps LGBTQIA+ individuals find their community.
“My real life is nothing like how it is online,” says Tina Samtani from Madhya Pradesh. “I can’t go out without being asked questions, and I am policed 24/7 inside my house. I don’t know if my family will ever truly understand who I am,” she says.
Creating a little online space for herself with a pseudonym has helped her, Tina says, because she can continue to hide and find a community at the same time. “But it is like a double-edged sword. As a queer woman, it is always difficult to navigate public spaces and form a queer support group, or a friends group. So, I sought to find that community online.” But although it was a great start to find a lot of queer connects, it posed its own set of challenges — catfishing, lack of physical connection, and the constant fear of being out to the wrong people among them, she adds.
Shreyash Korde, a 23-year-old student living in Jabalpur, says it is difficult for queer individuals to navigate their lives in small towns with no queer social circles or friends. “Living in a small town is a battle that queer people fight on a continuous basis, from having no family or support, constantly being under the radar of people around you, and tamping down the queerness and pride, to facing rape and sexual assault. To top it off is our exclusion from digital spaces,” says Shreyash.
As Daisy from Bangalore puts it, the media’s intense focus on urban spaces plays an important role in weaving a specific narrative around the idea of being queer. “The fact is that there is no one idea or experience associated with being queer. But owing to the privilege of accessibility that urban queers hold, they get visibilty in both digital and public spaces. Inadvertently or otherwise, this sets a standard notion of ‘queerness’, subtly eroding the very base of the queer movement — acceptance for being who one is. Eventually, this established notion of ‘the queer’ leaves many confused as to whether they ‘belong’ or not,” she says.
According to a Stonewall report, it was found that young LGBTQIA+ people often feel isolated from their peers due to a lack of acceptance, and difficulty finding friends from within the community. This isolation was found to significantly impact their wellbeing and mental health. According to the LGBT HERO’s LGBTQ+ Lockdown Wellbeing Report, loneliness became an epidemic during lockdown, with young people being hit the hardest. Before lockdown, 21% of LGBTQ+ people said they experienced loneliness “very often” or “every day”, says the report, pointing out that this more than doubled to 56% during lockdown. Among under-18 LGBTQ+ people, more than two in three (67%) felt lonely “very often” or “every day” during lockdown.
Despite having established laws and recognition for queer rights, LGBTQIA+ individuals even in a country like England still feel disconnected from society, and experience loneliness. So one came imagine the situation in India, where queer rights and lives are constantly threatened. It is more than likely that the number and statistics surrounding the loneliness suffered by queer individuals might be exponentially higher in India.
Digital spaces can often create a mirage of catapulting queer progress in the country, while further marginalising those who aren't from urban spaces and have little to no access to them. There are several people who feel that representation in these spaces is oftentimes fabricated and shows a limited reality, which many who are not from metropolitan cities cannot relate with.
“The mainstream notion about ‘queerness’ is mostly accommodated by the bougie queers of the urban spaces. Concepts like pride marches, gay parties, etc are restricted majorly to urban areas. On the other hand, a queer person from a semi-urban or rural space has got a different idea of queerness altogether. Many of them may not even be aware of the concept of ‘coming out’. We, as urban queers, are exposed to a lot of literature on feminism, queer theory, and intersectionality, through which we have the privilege of understanding and contemplating our gender identity. But these are mostly unavailable to queer persons from non-urban regions, and their lived experiences are never highlighted,” Daisy points out.
According to Ankush, who hails from Raipur in Chhattisgarh, gatekeeping is a prevalent issue. “We are constantly expected to fit into elite structures, and excluded for not catering to one particular way of being presentable. For instance, I was excluded from a social media campaign during pride month because I couldn’t fit into the pseudo, online aesthetic that passes off as elite and glamorous on the internet. Many opportunities that come up, like a fellowship or campaign, are directly allotted to urban queers. We are constantly excluded because of our non-urban queerness. Besides, to get opportunities, your social media numbers also matter,” he says.
Kochi-based Nidhi says that queer people are often subdued by their straight (cis-het) peers, and are not represented in the same way as they are. “As an artist, I have faced rejection because of my identity, which reflects the truth of these so-called ‘inclusive online spaces’. Queer artists are repeatedly forced into the background of major projects, and never represented in the mainstream,” she says.
Arijita Sen, a queer affirmative therapist living in Mumbai, many of whose clients are from tier 2-3 cities, points out how social media marginalisation can build loneliness. “Queer individuals experience minority stress as it is, and a dichotomous lifestyle can cause further anxiety. On an emotional and psychological level, they can feel isolated and have a sense of paranoia. They can feel invisible, as though their concerns are not significant enough to be heard. Self-doubt and frustration are also common psychological responses. Some are also at higher risk of suicide and self-harm.” Add to this the online gatekeeping, which limits queerness to social media following or aesthetics, the problem gets exacerbated, she says.
“One’s online life may seem to be fun, and filled with confidence, support, and love. But if their real life continues to be empty, it can worsen the feeling of loneliness, make one feel inadequate, and cause massive dissatisfaction, in turn leading to anxiety, depression, or other negative impacts,” Arijita adds.
“There are various factors that amplify this loneliness — such as one’s first sexual experience, which is often less than ideal for queer people in small towns,” says the therapist. “They can even develop a post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) because of it, and begin to avoid socialising with other queer folks in their area. Due to a lack of access to proper mental healthcare, this PTSD can also normalise their loneliness,” she says.
This highlights the importance of real-life communities, Arijita says. “It has been found that a community bond, and especially friendships, can reduce minority stress or loneliness to some extent. Studies associate involvement in community activities negatively with loneliness, motivation for concealment, and internalised homonegativity,” she adds.
Queer collectives such as The Chinky Homo Project, meanwhile, have been playing a crucial role in on-ground community building. “Digital spaces definitely exclude people from a certain class and circle. So, in an attempt bid to bridge this gap, we had recently worked on a multilingual book to reach out to, mobilise and engage with non-English speaking community folks in the region,” says Kumam Davidson Singh, co-founder of The Chinky Homo Project, which started in Delhi, but now functions from Manipur, Arunachal, and Mizoram.
The collective has also been trying to use visual media such as comic strips to engage with different circles, says Kumam. “We aim to support queer persons in the city and elsewhere by creating a room and archive of our own, where we, in all our diversities and vulnerabilities, can acquire a semblance of belongingness. We also take crisis calls in our capacity and extend mental health support, livelihood support or rehabilitation, or at least build linkages of the same, besides facilitating art creations by community folks.”
But despite all these, Kumam admits that the collective’s reach remains largely urban, and restricted to art and movement circles. “We plan to reach out to smaller towns and villages through community gatherings and fests in the years to come. Our interaction with the mainstream media remains sparse as well. They can help reach out to queer folks of small towns and villages, and bridge some of the gaps that we face,” he adds.
Hyderabad-based Meera Sanghamitra, who is a member of the National Alliance of People's Movements (NAPM) as well as the Women and Transgender Organisations Joint Action Committee, concurs that there is a massive digital exclusion, even in terms of policy-making. “We are at a very interesting cusp. There is so much digital push at one level, and on the other there is little regard to the broader adverse implications of such digitalisation. Especially in the past two decades, all policy has been approaching citizens through digitalisation and surveillance. We have seen how top-down 'digitisation' of land records can adversely impact land holding and cultivation rights of Dalit, bahujan farmers communities. Likewise, the ill-conceived National Mobile Monitoring App has been further depriving many NREGA workers of their right to work,” she says.
Besides, the recent mechanism by the Government of India for online registration to obtain gender-identity certificates is still beyond the reach of a large number of working class trans people, she points out. “In many states, there aren't clear systems for granting ID cards in person.”
“While digitalisation can be helpful in some ways, especially in terms of enabling communication across classes, it can't be looked at in vacuum. It disproportionately affects those facing many barriers of technology, language, caste etc. Digitalisation should work as an enabler to access rights, and not become a means for further deprivation,” she adds.
According to Prijith P K, who is an SOGIESC (sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression and sex characteristics) consultant and gender trainer, the digital space has played a great role in bringing queer people into common platforms, thus creating a climate of connection that aids their surival. “But at the same time, this space has also become a tool to marginalise and exclude queer people, with malicious, queerphobic attacks, and open calls to challenge our rights. New age media allows anyone to write and spread unscientific, queerphobic discourses and insult us in public,” says Prijith, a former member of Queerythm, an LGBTQIA+ collective based in Kerala.
“A solitary life is miserable for any queer individual. During childhood, we used to think that we were the only ones in the world like this. But after meeting like-minded people, many of them through social media, we get an opportunity to explore and understand our own identity, which in turn gives us immense pleasure and confidence to survive. The culture and circumstances in small towns and villages are entirely different from the metro cities. Life, experiences and scale of freedom here are all incomparable and unique,” he adds.
In recent years, COVID-19 has taught us an important lesson about the importance of a community, especially for people coming from marginalised identities, says Chittajit Mitra, a member of the Resistive Alliance of Queer Solidarity (RAQS) from Allahabad. “We cannot leave out queer folks from smaller cities and villages from our conversations anymore, just because it is the easier thing to do. Instead, more discourses on queer issues needs to happen in native Indian languages, so that we don't alienate queer people who might not be comfortable with English,” he says. “Also, I hope more and more collectives are formed in tier 2 or 3 cities, so that we can have that rainbow future that we all dream of.”
Aditya Tiwari is an award-winning journalist and queer activist.