#MeToo Queer Stories

There have been times in the past few days when I have logged on to Twitter and tried very hard not to scream at my screen helplessly. Most tweets don’t come with trigger warnings and it can be extremely difficult for survivors, such as myself. At the same time, instead of joining in with the righteous rage that engulfed my timeline, I just kept mum.

I am a comedian and several of the men named and shamed recently through #MeToo are people I have closely worked with. There is general fear among these wokebois now that I have never witnessed before. These self-professed bastians of free speech have always made women and queer comedians uncomfortable in the green room, unless you happen to speak their language. And at the time of writing this, a female comedian has been accused of harassing another female comedian. It goes on and on. But while I am glad that men from my comedic fraternity are being called out for being creeps, I am genuinely waiting for the #MeToo movement to spill over into the Indian LGBTQ+ community as well; because the stories I have heard of bullying, sexual and mental abuse, and gaslighting from within the queer spaces need to be out there.

At the same time, when girls spoke about guys sending unsolicited dick pics, I wonder where that put someone like me, because that’s just another field day on apps like Grindr and PlanetRomeo, where you get a penis picture in both landscape and portrait mode before a ‘hello’. For gay men especially, the hypersexualised versions you see on TV or film, are all sadly true. Two men in an online chat will reveal way too much to each other, emotionally and physically, and it’s safe to say that there are repercussions. Someone forcing themself on you on a first date is not an uncommon scenario, and there is a lot of casual sleeping around that happens subsequently (it always did). In that regard, a lot of what we have shared on personal chats, along with fantasy sexting, can end up as scandals that can last months. You might run into certain men in urban cities who ask you about your favourite colour or meal, but otherwise it’s just penises for miles.

Growing up queer means growing up with judgement. At every juncture, if you are not trying to fit in, you are trying to subscribe to the heteronormative narrative. Additionally, as abuse victims, telling your story can be an arduous process. There are very few people in my life to whom I have opened up to about being molested when I was five years old. It was my neighbour, a man I wholeheartedly trusted. After almost a year of abuse, we moved to a new town. I hid the trauma of being forced to hold a grown man’s penis. Years later, I was watching Alpaviram with my family, where Pallavi Joshi’s character is assaulted while she’s in a coma, and that’s when it came rushing back. A few years later, I was a fully functioning gay man, but with a secret I could never share with anyone, not even my own family. To this day, even after having come out, I have never mentioned this to my folks, and I honestly don’t know if I can. My one biggest fear was: what if the abuse made me gay?

My abuser went on to marry a woman, and then abandoned her to meet other men, and in the process, ruined her life. She had two kids with him, but she passed away shortly after. The two kids are now being moved around from home to home. Yet, this man roams around free and after all these years, I do not recollect his full name. I have spent a lot of time wallowing in self-pity and anger. And reading accounts of men harassing women online hasn’t made it easier. A friend casually joked about how it’s easier for gay men and women because they don’t have to worry about the other gender suing them. If only they knew.

I started performing stand-up comedy around 2014, and to this day, I am one of four openly gay comedians in the country. I often wondered why more comedians do not feel comfortable being themselves on stage, but after spending four years in the industry, I can understand why. There have been times when producers have asked me to steer away from talking about being gay on stage, and I had to oblige because I wanted to survive in this industry. The toxic masculinity is evident and the first movers in the comedy scene have hardly made someone like me feel welcome. But it also goes out for others in the open mic comedy scene.

Since the accusations began online, I asked survivors to share their stories, and what some of them told me is downright horrifying. It makes me wonder—where did we go askew so terribly as humans that we never discussed the need to reassess traditional gender roles and make sex something that everyone enjoys with consent.

Trigger warning: Sexual harassment/abuse
The names in some of these stories have been modified to protect the survivor’s identity.

1. Infants no more: As I mentioned earlier, queer individuals suffer tremendously because they don’t know whom to turn to. And as we see in the following account, our parents rarely believe us in the first place:
   “I was six or younger. There was this woman who worked for my mother, 19 or 20. She used to play with me, and my mom didn’t suspect anything, because she was a woman. She used to tell me to play Papa and she used to be Mumma, and she’d kiss me and touch me everywhere, and tell me to touch her too. I went along with it, because I didn’t know any better. I realised very late about what had happened. I told my mom about it, and she didn’t believe me. She still doesn’t. I have this crippling fear that the reason I am bisexual is because of the abuse.”
   This is one of the 10 accounts of abuse by cousins and family members that people wrote to me about.

2. Straight Therapy: Neeta from Chandigarh went through this harrowing experience. It was her own family. She came out to her traditional family when they were forcing her to get married.
   “I cannot begin to fathom how I lived through this. It was clear to me from my teens that I wasn’t going to marry a guy. But by the time I was 23, the pressure was immense and my father resorted to beating me physically almost every week. In a flash of anger one day, I told them I like girls and that was that. In November 2016, my cousins came to stay with us, and I was asked to not go to work for a few days and be available to “serve their needs”. You probably understand by now where this goes, but yes, my own family allowed me to be raped for three days consecutively, so I could know what it is like to be married to a man.”
   

3. Dance to my tunes: Ask anyone in Mumbai about rumours about a certain filmmaker or choreographer being gay, and they will agree they have heard something. A friend of mine, Ali, recounted this story to me that unfolded on the set of a famous dance reality show.
   “I was always into dancing. So when I got to work alongside this choreographer for a famous dance reality show, I was ecstatic. Except he wanted to screen every dancer individually. I was the first one to go in, and I was just gushing with joy. He asked me to stretch like we are getting ready for a dance routine. He came close to me and started feeling my calves, commenting on how firm they were. It made me really uncomfortable. And then he asked me strip so I could try out a costume he liked. I immediately left and as expected was fired the next day. This has been weighing so much on me. I moved out of Mumbai for a while to regain my sanity.”
   
   These are just some of the cases that need to be highlighted because the events seem so bizarre and we go on believing that we do not need to educate our kids about sex at an early age. In some instances, cops who are supposed to help victims have also turned out to be perpetrators. And we have also heard of cases of Intimate Partner Violence, where one partner in a relationship relentlessly abuses the other.
   
   “The trauma of abuse leads close to 80% of queer youth towards suicide and self-harm,” says Rajvi Gosala, a social worker and mental health counsellor from Ahmedabad. Gosala herself does not shy away from talking about her disability (her body is paralysed from the waist down) and the fact that her parents worry about her even more so. She counsels in-questioning queer individuals and has helped them find a safe way to cope with their anxieties. She is also a firm believer of self-help and says, “If I help myself around on a wheelchair and go about doing my everyday business, then what’s stopping you? You will always be responsible for your own safety. Not trusting most people helps.”
   
   I spoke to Suraj Sanap, part of Lawyers Collective who works extensively with LGBTQ+ individuals. He says, “At Lawyers Collective, we have not dealt with cases of sexual assault within the queer community very often. This is not a comment on the occurrence of sexual assault, rather on the circumstances allowing reporting of sexual assault within the queer community. For instance, in 2015, a 22-year-old gay man approached us to seek legal advice on filing a sexual assault case under Section 377, against a man he met through an online dating app. However, we advised him that it is in his best interests to not report the case to police, since Section 377 makes no distinction between consensual sex and non-consensual sex, and therefore the client may risk incriminating himself.”
   
   In 2018, a 21-year-old gay man sought legal advice from Lawyers Collective for separating from his family as his father had sexually abused him for many years since his childhood. But things are getting better post the amendment of Section 377. Sanap continues, “As of today, as Section 377 is declared to exclude sex between consenting adults by the Supreme Court decision dated September 6, 2018, gay, bisexual or trans-victims/survivors of abuse/assault may choose to report the offence under Section 377. The provision only punishes non-consensual conduct now. Lesbian women can seek a remedy for sexual assault under Section 375, 376 of IPC for rape. The de-criminalisation of sex between consenting adults by the Supreme Court will allow a more enabling environment for reporting sexual assault cases involving male victims/survivors now, as there is no longer a fear of self-incrimination as a gay, bisexual or trans person reporting non-consensual sex to police or before a court.”
   
   It’s clear that despite the anger boiling over the internet, things will take their time to play out. Because this is a movement, and movements take time. But to really keep the #MeToo revolution alive across the gender spectrum, we have to first acknowledge that we messed up big time. I looked at my friend for a fitting conclusion to this piece, and he just shrugged and said, “There is never going to be an end to this.” I asked why. And without missing a beat, he said, “Because everyone is accusing everyone nowadays, and the problem is, the ones accused know they did it. All we can do now is watch how we behave.”
   
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