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The first legal same-sex marriages in Massachusetts were performed on this day in 2004.
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Where were the first legal same-sex marriages performed in the United States?
The first legal same-sex marriages in the United States were performed in the state of Massachusetts, following a landmark court ruling in 2003 that declared a ban on same-sex marriage to be unconstitutional.
How did the legalization of same-sex marriage in Massachusetts impact other states?
The legalization of same-sex marriage in Massachusetts set a precedent for other states, and served as a catalyst for the national debate over same-sex marriage. It also paved the way for other states to legalize same-sex marriage in the following years.
When did same-sex marriage become legal across the United States?
Same-sex marriage became legal across the United States in 2015, following a landmark Supreme Court ruling that struck down bans on same-sex marriage in all 50 states.
Interfaith and inter-caste relationships have always been difficult in India. As the Supreme Court hears petitioners pleading for marriage equality, the time is ripe to see how laws and hatred have stopped love.
KOLKATA — When 34-year-old Krishna Gopal Chowdhury (he/him), a designer hailing from Kolkata in the eastern region of India fell hopelessly in love over the internet with Anisuzzaman Khan aka Anush (he/him), a fine arts practitioner from Bangladesh, he knew that his love was up against some of the toughest hurdles these countries had to offer.
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Chowdhury flew to Bangladesh in September 2019 with a surprise proposal, and the couple kissed at Dhaka Airport ignoring startled gazes, in a country where homosexuality is illegal. Thereafter, Anush faced harassment, torture, and shaming at home, and relocated to Kolkata, settling on a work visa.
Happily staying together since 2022, this inter-faith, inter-country, same-sex couple is a bold statement on the resilience of love against man-made social, religious, and legal barriers.
Unfortunately, however, they also symbolise just how difficult it is to fall and stay in love in India, in a time and age where intolerance, hatred, and violence seem to be at an all-time high. The Narendra Modi government’s stand in the Supreme Court, opposing same-sex marriage, is yet another show of intolerance towards the sexual minority.
Mutually exclusive identities
Given that the LGBTQ+ community is a minority and can offer only limited support to its members, the growing atmosphere of religious hatred in the country has isolated them doubly. When Chowdhury, who is a Hindu, adopted the predominantly Muslim “Mehfuz” as his middle name, in a show of solidarity with his partner, and started observing Islamic festivals as a way to experience his partner’s culture, he started facing backlash from his Hindu acquaintances among the queer community in India.
“They asked me if I had converted to Islam and if I ate beef. During a Yoga session in the Himalayan town of Hrishikesh, participants had schooled Anush on how India is a tolerant country but Bangladesh tortured Hindus. Several Hindus from the community stopped inviting me to their pujas at home,” Chowdhury said while describing how religious hatred had further divided the already-vulnerable community.
He remembered how a queer friend from Hyderabad quizzed him on his faith. “He was exposing his own hypocrisy. The same person had told me stories about sexual encounters with young Muslim men. When you can sleep with a ‘beef eater,’ what’s the problem in loving a person of that culture and faith?”
Like Krishna and Anush, 32-year-old Rayyan (she/they), a Muslim transfeminine and pansexual content creator from Mumbai has been on the receiving end of prejudice for their faith and sexual orientation, both.
“Surprisingly, India’s queer community treats ‘Muslim’ and ‘queerness’ as mutually exclusive identities and is uncomfortable about merging the two. Even devout Muslims who pray five times a day and wear salwar kameej have to leave behind their Muslim identifiers when they go to queer parties.” What they meant is, being visibly Muslim would isolate them within the community.
Love jihad
It is not just about sexual minorities. Marriages between Muslim men and Hindu women have become particularly dangerous, as there are non-family and non-state actors who get involved and make a mess of the situation. India’s Hindutva groups are calling such marriages ‘love jihad’ – a false phrase for the bogey of a conspiracy launched by Muslim men to lure Hindu women into the trap of marriage with the aim of gaining numerical superiority.
Last November, two families in Maharashtra had to cancel the reception to be held after an interfaith couple’s wedding after Suresh Chavhanke, the head of Sudarshan TV and well-known for spreading hatred against Muslims, tweeted a photo of the invite, revealing the address of the venue, calling it a case of ‘love jihad.’
This February, at Uttar Pradesh’s Bareilly, members of Bajrang Dal roughed up a couple, accusing the man of ‘love jihad.’ When the police reached the spot, they took the couple to their station where they also summoned the couple’s parents. No case was registered against the Bajrang Dal vigilantes, as the police said the ‘aggrieved parties’ decided to settle it mutually.
“Interfaith marriages are becoming not only difficult but also dangerous. In Maharashtra, the state government’s recently-formed committee to monitor couples in interfaith marriages has increased the risks of couples living away from family for safety reasons,” said Vishal Vimal, an interfaith and inter-caste marriage activist based in Maharashtra. “Governments are making the lives of interfaith couples tougher,” he said.
Even as the Supreme Court, in February, expressed its intention to hear a batch of petitions challenging recently-enacted laws restricting religious conversion for the purpose of marriage, and sought responses from states that enacted such laws, the situation on the ground remains critical.
Interfaith and inter-caste relationships have always been difficult in India but it is easy to see how the situation has worsened since the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power.
For marriages of interfaith couples solemnised under personal laws such as Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Parsi, and Jain Marriage Acts, the bride usually converts to the groom’s faith before marriage. For those who do not want to involve religion or priests, there is the Special Marriage Act 1954, which is also used in interfaith and intrafaith marriages.
However, since 2017, several Indian states, most ruled by BJP – Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Haryana, Jharkhand and Karnataka – have framed laws restricting religious conversions for the purpose of marriage, laws that have colloquially earned the nomenclature of ‘love jihad laws.’ For those who prefer the Special Marriage Act, there is a threat of vigilantism.
For marriage under the Special Marriage Act, the couple will have to serve a notice to the marriage officer 30 days prior to the date of marriage and this notice will be put on display at the marriage registrar’s office for people to raise objections. This helps prevent fraudulent marriages, it has been argued. But in recent years, such notices given by interfaith couples, especially involving Muslim men and Hindu women, have gone viral on social media, often jeopardizing planned ceremonies and inviting threats.
“The atmosphere of fear among interfaith couples has significantly increased and such couples are now exposed to safety and security threats,” said Athira Sujatha Radhakrishnan, who is based in Bengaluru. In 2020, she found to her utter shock that her marriage notice had gone viral on social media and later found a PDF document in circulation on WhatsApp containing a list of 120 interfaith marriage applications, including the one of her with her fiancé Shameem, compiled as cases of ‘love jihad’ going to take place.
“We could navigate through the situation perhaps because we were more privileged compared to many others and we also had access to support mechanisms,” she said, adding, “Most couples wouldn’t initially get permission from the parents. They will first have to deal with their parents, then with their safety and financial stability. They will not have the time to take up the larger battle. Therefore, we decided to take the legal battle one step ahead and petitioned the supreme court for removing the clause mandating prior public notice.”
While the apex court in 2022 dismissed her petition, arguing that she was no longer ‘aggrieved’ as she had completed her marriage, there are others who have filed similar petitions in court.
Riling up the conflict further, Maharashtra recently announced the formation of a committee named Interfaith Marriage: Family Coordination Committee, which is to monitor interfaith marriages and will try to connect the women in such marriages with their parents. As alleged by social workers, the government seems to be tightening its noose around inter-faith couples by making conversions nearly impossible yet largely necessary, exposing them to communally driven hate crimes.
Wading a sea of impossibility
Large swathes of northern India are known for the notorious practice of ‘honour killing’ – in which family members kill the daughter or her inter-caste/inter-faith lover to protect family respectability.
Though the Supreme Court had, in a landmark verdict in 2018, upheld consenting adults’ choice to love and marry as a part of their fundamental rights, and issued a set of guidelines for the protection of such couples, the clauses in these new anti-conversion laws serve the exact opposite purpose – they expose the couple before family members.
“The government’s objective is clear – there should not be any inter-faith marriage in India. I am okay with the fact that you are establishing laws preventing conversion in interfaith marriages, but then why are you not simplifying the civil marriage laws via the Special Marriage Act?” says Asif Iqbal, founder of Dhanak For Equality, a non-profit organisation that fights for the fundamental right to choose a partner and raise awareness about the same.
Asif is hinting at the confusing web of legal paraphernalia that the government has instituted that gives the false sense of justice but if executed is a clear attempt to strangle the individual’s freedom to choose a partner.
Filmmaker Q has similar opinions hailing love to be a power that is as threatening as it is vulnerable: “When you are in love, you are completely disarmed and opening up your most vulnerable self to the person you love and inadvertently to the society around. In a traditionalist society like ours, ruled by a brutal hierarchy of caste and class, this creates a big impact, and therefore rules are tightened around love that is inter-caste, inter-class or inter-faith.” he says, reinforcing the central idea expressed in his 2009 documentary titled Love in India which explored the complex web of contradictions that love and sex create in the conservative land of Kamasutra.
Will love survive in India amid politically manipulated hatred? Rayyan, a true believer in the potential of love, is still wading through a sea of impossibility. “As a Muslim, it is impossible to be apolitical in India. I cannot chain my religion and censor my voice for the sake of social acceptance” they say.
Hoping for at least some things to change, Supreme Court lawyer Arundhati Katju tweeted a photo last Tuesday of herself with her legal partner, Menaka Guruswamy, accompanied by the caption “Equality before the law, and the equal protection of the laws” and the hashtag #marriageequality.
This was just about an hour before they were set to enter a big battle not only in their professional but also personal lives – the beginning of the final hearing in the Supreme Court, seeking marriage equality. The advocate duo had played a pivotal role behind the apex court’s striking down of Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), that decriminalised homosexuality, in 2018.
As LGBTQ+ rights continue to be a global struggle, there's a widening gap between countries making strides towards equality and those experiencing regression due to political, cultural, and religious opposition.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Foreign Minister Penny Wong joined 50,000 people to march in support of queer rights across the Sydney Harbour Bridge for World Pride in early March. A week earlier, Albanese became the first sitting prime minister to march in Sydney’s Mardi Gras, something he’s done over several decades.
And yet at the same time, in another part of the world, Uganda’s parliament passed a string of draconian measures against homosexuality, including possible death sentences for “aggravated homosexuality”. Any “promotion” of homosexuality is also outlawed.
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Seven years ago, I co-wrote a book with Jonathan Symons called Queer Wars. Back then, we suggested there was a growing gap between countries in which sexual and gender diversity was becoming more acceptable, and those where repression was increasing.
Sadly, that analysis seems even more relevant today.
A growing gap
Some countries have been unwinding criminal sanctions around homosexuality, which are often the legacy of colonialism. This includes, in recent years, former British colonies Singapore and India.
But others have been imposing new and more vicious penalties for any deviation from stereotypical assumptions of heterosexual masculine superiority (what Australian sociologist Raewyn Connell terms “hegemonic masculinity”).
Anti-gay legislation is currently pending in Ghana, which led US Vice President Kamala Harris to express concerns on a recent visit.
These moves echo the deep homophobia of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has bizarrely linked intervention in Ukraine to protecting traditional values against LGBTQ+ infiltration.
Meanwhile, reports from Afghanistan suggest that anyone identified as “LGBT” is in danger of being killed.
Indonesia recently passed legislation penalizing all sex outside marriage. This follows years of anti-queer rhetoric from Indonesian leaders and crackdowns in regional areas.
And while the Biden administration is supportive of queer rights globally, the extraordinary hysteria around trans issues in the Republican Party reminds us the West has no inherent claim to moral superiority.
People gathering during a protest defending LGBTQIA+ rights.
Speaking at the World Pride Human Rights Conference, both Wong and Attorney General Mark Dreyfus made it clear Australia would press for recognition of sexuality and gender identity as deserving protection, as part of our commitment to human rights.
Wong also announced a new Inclusion and Equality Fund to support queer community organizations within our region.
Australian governments have usually been wary of loud assertions of support for queer rights. This is partly due to a reasonable fear this merely reinforces the perception that such language reflects a sense of Western superiority, unwilling to acknowledge other societies may have very different attitudes towards gender and sexuality.
Australia is part of the Equal Rights Coalition, an intergovernmental body of 42 countries dedicated to the protection of the rights of LGBTQ+ people, and has supported sexual and gender rights in the country reviews undertaken by the United Nations Human Rights Commission.
Australia has a minimal presence in Uganda, and direct representations are unlikely to have much effect. Uganda is a member of the Commonwealth, as are Ghana, Kenya and Zambia, where official homophobia appears to be increasing. But there’s little evidence the Australian government sees this as a significant foreign policy forum, or is prepared to push for sexual rights through its institutions.
As persecution on the basis of sexuality and gender identity increases, more people will seek to flee their countries. Queer refugees face double jeopardy: they’re not safe at home, but they’re often equally unsafe in their diasporic communities, which have inherited the deep prejudices of their homelands.
The UN’s refugee agency reports that most people seeking asylum because of their sexuality are unwilling to disclose this, because of discrimination within their own ethnic communities. This makes it impossible to have accurate numbers. But a clear signal from Australia would be a powerful statement of support – that it understands the situation and welcomes people who need flee because of their sexuality or gender expression.
An official Canadian government document states: "Canada has a proud history of providing protection to and helping to resettle the world’s most vulnerable groups. That includes those in the Two-Spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and additional sexually and gender diverse community."
After years of resistance, more and more major beauty pageants are selecting transgender women to compete. It's shaking up ideas about inclusivity, questioning the modern world’s beauty standards — and perhaps redefining gender itself.
Jenna Talackova’s selection to compete for Miss Universe Canada in 2012 was a watershed moment for both beauty pageants and transgender rights. Believed to be one of the first trans women to participate in a major beauty contest, Talackova won the title of Miss Congeniality, and many hoped it would pave the wave for more trans pageant contestants around the world.
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It would take awhile, but just over a decade later, the revolution that Talackova sparked is finally gaining momentum. As Berlin-based Die Welt reports, Germany just announced that for the second year in a row, a trans woman has made the finals of its national pageant. Last week Miss Universe Puerto Rico said it will include its first openly transgender woman, all adding to a wave the past three years of top pageants opening up to trans contestants to compete.
Not surprisingly, there has been resistance. Last year, a U.S. judge rejected the appeal of Anita Green, a transgender woman, who had sued The Miss United States of America pageant for barring her from participating in the competition.
Meanwhile across the world, Miss Fabulous Laos 2022, a beauty pageant competition that allowed transgender women to participate, has been discontinued after the country’s ruling party banned transgender people from entering any beauty pageants.
Still, it seems as though the universe of women’s beauty pageants is reaching its transgender tipping point with more and more competitions opting for inclusivity, questioning the modern world’s beauty standards and redefining gender itself.
Here’s a look at some of the transgender women participating in beauty pageants around the world:
🇪🇸 Ángela Maria Ponce — Spain
In 2018, 26-year-old Ángela Maria Ponce became the first openly transgender woman to win Miss Universe Spain and the first transgender contestant of Miss Universe.
Since winning her title, Maria Ponce has modeled for top-end magazines, including Vogue Spain, and agencies. She has also worked to reduce stigma around LGBTQ+ people, saying that her mission since winning Miss Universe Spain has been to convey a message of “equality, respect and diversity”.
🇩🇪 Saskia von Bargen — Germany
Saskia von Bargen, a 19-year-old transgender woman from Lower Saxony, has been selected among the ten finalists for Miss Germany 2023. Last year, Gadou Amadou, a trans woman also from Lower Saxony, made it to the semi-finals.
🇺🇸 Brían Nguyen — United States
Brían Nguyen, a 19-year-old student, made Miss America history when she became the first transgender woman to win the Miss Greater Derry title, which allows her to compete for the title of Miss New Hampshire next year. She is the first transgender title holder within the Miss America Organization.
Her crowning sparked a backlash, with some criticizing “woke ideology”. This included 1998 Miss Great Britain winner Leilani Dowding, who wrote that young women today are not being given the same chances she had. In response, Nguyen started a social media movement #QueensAreEverywhere to help the next generation develop self-confidence.
🇵🇷 Daniela Arroyo González — Puerto Rico
In 2023, Daniela Arroyo González became the first openly transgender woman to compete in Miss Puerto Rico to represent her country in the Miss Universe contest. Miss Universe Puerto Rico made the announcement online.
“She wants to create positive changes within communications,” the contest’s Instagram post stated. “She longs to live in a less polarized society, where differences can be appreciated and embraced as something positive that unites instead of something that separates.”
Arroyo is also an activist. She is the co-founder of the Puerto Rico Trans Youth Coalition, a community-based organization that supports trans, intersex and non-binary youth.
🇿🇦 Lehlogonolo Machaba — South Africa
In 2021, 24-year-old Lehlogonolo Machaba was the first openly transgender woman to enter the Miss South Africa pageant. The following year she also qualified as one of the 30 participants.
🇺🇸 Kataluna Enriquez- United States
Twenty-seven-year-old beauty queen Kataluna Enriquez is the first openly transgender woman to be crowned Miss Nevada in 2021 and to compete in Miss USA.
🇫🇷 Andréa Furet- France
Last year, 20-year-old transgender actress Andréa Furet made history as the first openly non-cis candidate in the Miss France pageant. In an interview with Elle, Furet stated that she had dreamed of entering the Miss France competition even before her transition.
Furet is an actor by profession. She is the star of the film Il est elle (He is she), for which she received the award for best actress at the Festival des créations télévisuelles de Luchon.
🇳🇵Angel Lama- Nepal
In 2020, Angel Lama was the first transgender woman to be a finalist in the Miss Universe Nepal. In 2018, she was crowned Miss Pink Nepal, an LGBT+ pageant.
After almost five years of promises, the UK government says it will again introduce legislation to ban conversion therapy — and in a policy shift, the proposed law would include therapies designed for transgender people.
Conversion therapy, which includes a range of practices that aim to change someone’s sexuality or gender identity, has long been controversial. Many in the LGBTQ community consider it outright evil.
As the practice has spread, often pushed on young people by homophobic family members, there has been a worldwide push to make conversion therapy illegal, with the UK as the latest country set to ban such practices as electric shocks, aversion therapy and a variety of other traumatic, dangerous techniques to try to change someone's sexual preferences or gender identity.
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The British Association for Counseling and Psychotherapy, the professional body which governs therapists in the UK, calls the practice “unethical (and) potentially harmful.”
For one Canadian man, therapy included prescription medication and weekly ketamine injections to “correct the error” of his homosexuality, all under the guidance of a licensed psychiatrist. Some people are forced into treatment against their will — often minors — but most of the time, those who receive conversion therapy do so willingly.
The UK announcement of plans to ban conversion therapy for England and Wales comes after four separate British prime ministers had promised, for almost five years, to ban the practice.
When the British government first considered legislation to ban conversion therapy back in 2018, it was expected to include gender identity as well as sexuality. But the government backed down in the face of conservative opposition, watering down the bill to cover only efforts to change sexuality. This week, however, gender identity was reinstated.
If the UK moves ahead with the legislation, it would join more than a dozen other countries and jurisdictions in the world that have enacted some sort of restriction. Here is a quick overview look at where governments have, and have not, moved to ban conversion therapy.
What were the first countries to ban conversion therapy?
Brazil was the first country to pass a nationwide ban on conversion therapy related to sexual orientation — in 1999, almost a decade before any other country. The ban was expanded in 2018 to also include gender identity.
In the following years, Samoa (2007), Fiji (2010), Argentina (2010), Uruguay (2017) and Taiwan (2018) passed laws to ban healthcare professionals from practicing conversion therapy on the basis of sexual orientation, and, in the last three cases, also gender identity.
In Ecuador, conversion therapy was banned in 2014 after media reports prompted more than 100,000 people to sign a petition demanding the government shut down clinics that used brutal techniques including torture, sexual violence and imprisonment. A 2018 Reuters investigation found numerous clinics still operating.
In 2016, Malta became the first European country to introduce legislation criminalizing conversion therapy. The island nation, often ranked as one of Europe's most LGBTQ-friendly countries, announced in Jan. 2023 that the law would be expanded to make it illegal to advertise or promote the practice.
The Maltese legislation came two years before the European Parliament voted to ask member states to ban the practice.
Conversion therapy for minors has been banned since 2020 in Germany, where advocates estimated that prior to the ban, about 1,000 people were subjected to conversion therapy every year.
Previously, some licensed German doctors provided therapy aimed at changing a patient’s sexuality and gender identity. One doctor told a German journalist with Die Zeit newspaper who went undercover in 2014 to document healthcare professionals offering the practice, that he “became” gay because of a scar on his chin. The doctor billed €92.50 for the session; another doctor rubbed oil on the journalist’s forehead and offered a prayer to “exorcise the spirit of homosexuality.”
German law now also makes it illegal for parents to force their children into therapy — but it remains legal for people over the age of 18, a decision criticized by opposition parties when the legislation was introduced. At the time, the German government said that a ban covering adults might not pass a legal challenge, and that their priority was to ensure young people weren’t subjected to conversion therapy.
Albania’s professional order for psychologists banned its members from offering conversion therapy in 2021, effectively making the practice illegal nationwide.
The following year, the French parliament voted unanimously to ban conversion therapy for sexuality and gender identity.
Skirting bans with online therapies
After years of dragging its feet on the bill — which the government had previously introduced but failed to move through parliament despite broad support — Canada banned conversion therapy targeting sexual orientation and gender identity in Dec. 2021.
The law also bans taking minors outside of the country for conversion therapy. No one has been charged since the legislation came into effect.
The law can also only control what happens within the country’s borders: with psychologists and therapists increasingly offering services online since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, conversion therapy practitioners based in the U.S., where it remains legal in many states, have targeted Canadians.
A recent investigation by Canadian broadcaster CBC found American "life coaches" freely offering conversion therapy to Canadians online, despite the ban.
In New Zealand, a ban passed in 2022, with opposition from just eight members of parliament. Like Germany, New Zealand’s law only concerns minors.
In Spain, Australia and Switzerland, several provinces and states have their own bans, and the Spanish government proposed legislation in 2021 that would implement a ban nationwide.
The practice is still legal in Italy, where recent research suggests as many as one in 10 young LGBTQ+ people have experienced it. The current Irish government has pledged that this year it will propose a bill to ban conversion therapy on the basis of sexuality and gender identity, after a 2018 bill failed to make it out of the legislature before an election.
Mixed messages in the U.S.
Twenty five states in the U.S., as well as the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico have also banned conversion therapy — in many cases only for minors. However, it remains legal in the other 25 states, and efforts to ban the practice in many have attracted intense conservative opposition, as the debate now includes the movement by conservatives to instead ban gender transition services
Lawmakers in nearly a dozen U.S. states have introduced a wave of anti-trans legislation since 2020, including bills in Oklahoma, South Carolina, Kansas and Mississippi that criminalize providing transition-related healthcare, even for adults.
In Texas, where lawmakers have proposed some of the most extreme legislation, conversion therapy remains legal — and in 2022 the governor ordered the state’s child protection agency to investigate parents whose children had received transition-related healthcare.
Exorcisms and "corrective" rape in Asia
In many countries around the world, conversion therapy remains not only legal, but increasingly popular.
In Indonesia and Malaysia, for example, these “therapies” are openly sponsored by governmental agencies as the official response to sexual and gender diversity issues and can include exorcisms and “corrective” rape. The Malaysian government even produced an app in 2016 that promised to help the LGBTQ+ community “return to nature.” It was removed from the Google Play store only last year, as it was breaching the platform’s guidelines.
In China, patients are subjected to electric shocks or cold showers and are given a cocktail of medication that includes antidepressants and nausea-inducing pills they have to take when watching gay pornographic movies. Some hospitals offer blood tests, DNA analyses and brain scans as well. If the results are normal, and they usually are, the doctor tells the patient that they can be cured because their "problem" is not genetic.
Welcome to Worldcrunch’s LGBTQ+ International. We bring you up-to-speed each week on a topic you may follow closely at home, but can now see from different places and perspectives around the world. Discover the latest news on everything LGBTQ+ — from all corners of the planet. All in one smooth scroll!
This week featuring:
Exiled transgender Qatari royal
Switzerland struggling with “gay conversion therapy”
U.S. signs “Respect For Marriage Act” into Constitution
… and more
✉️ You can receive our LGBTQ+ International roundup every week directly in your inbox. Subscribe here.
TW: This content may address topics and include references to violence that some may find distressing.
🇶🇦🇬🇧 Leaks Show How A Transgender Qatari Royal Found Asylum In UK
Leaked documents obtained by The Sunday Times reveal that an unnamed “trans princess” belonging to Qatar’s Al-Thani royal family escaped during a family trip to London in 2015, fearing persecution in their home country. They were then granted asylum by Britain.
As reported in the documents, the member of the royal family told the UK Home Office that “growing up in Qatar has been the most difficult thing” they ever had to do. In Qatar, transgender people can be detained for "violating public morality", which requires no trial or official charge. Recently, a Qatari transgender woman has spoken out about her fear and the dangers she faces being transgender in a country with very strict laws against it. "I am very afraid, but I just want people to know that we do exist," she says.
⚽️ World Cup Update: Homophobic Slurs, France Voices Support, Snapchat Filters
Inside a soccer stadium in Qatar during the 2022 FIFA World Cup
Although the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar is drawing to a close, there’s been no shortage of controversy as human rights remain a hot topic in the infamously conservative host country. Here’s an update on LGBTQ+ related World Cup events:
• FIFA to investigate homophobic chants by Mexican supporters
Mexican fans were asked not to use their notorious anti-gay “puto” chant, but it became a ritual for the country’s fans during goal kicks by goalies of opposing teams. Now, as Mexico is eliminated from the competition, FIFA has opened an investigation into the chanting and will ultimately look to bar fans from future matches hosted by Mexico.
• LGBTQ+ friendly journalist Grant Wahl dies
Tributes have been pouring in after celebrated U.S. sports journalist Grant Wahl died in Qatar. Wahl reportedly died after suffering an aortic aneurysm, according to his wife, and no foul play is suspected. His passing came just days after the journalist made the news for wearing a Pride shirt to a match in Qatar in a display of support for the LGBTQ+ community. A second sports journalist has since also died suddenly while covering matches in Qatar.
• France speaks out, at last
Though players have refrained from wearing the “One Love” armbands in support of the LGBTQ+ community, world diplomats and executives around the world are showing support in other ways. The Sports Minister for France, Amélie Oudéa-Castera, wore a sweater to the France-England match last week with rainbows on its sleeves.
Additionally, French player Antoine Griezmann has voiced his support for the community once again. Asked about his past positions and possible embarrassment at the idea of playing a World Cup in Qatar he said, "A little embarrassed? Yes and no. No matter where I am in the world, they know they will always have my support. But I'm a footballer, that's my profession. My country calls me to play a game, I come with pride. They have my full support, all my respect," he insisted.
• An LGBTQ+ Snapchat filter
World leaders from LGBTQ+-friendly countries such as Germany, Great Britain, and Denmark have found a way to help show support for the community with an initiative using a Snapchat filter that enables World Cup fans to post virtual Pride rainbows from Qatar despite its harsh anti-LGBTQ+ laws.
• Irish model Vogue Williams slams lack of UK support
After refusing her invitation to Qatar in support of her gay sister, Irish model and TV presenter Vogue Williams has criticized David Beckham for not speaking out in support of the LGBTQ+ community, calling on him to donate some of his earnings to LGBTQ+ charities in Qatar to provide “much-needed safety to those living in terror”.
🇷🇺 Russia's First Queer Museum Closes After Only 5 Days
On the eve of the law banning LGBTQ+ propaganda, Russian activist Peter Voskresensky opened a Queer Museum dedicated to LGBTQ+ history and aesthetics in St. Petersburg.
"Opening the museum is a political gesture because now Russia is passing a law that will not only make LGBT people invisible but will call their existence into question," says the museum's founder.
But just a couple of days later, the museum was closed — but not before an estimated 200 people had a chance to visit it. Among the visitors was a priest from the Association of Christian Eucharistic Communities. "My congregation is mostly LGBT parishioners; I'm afraid many will have to go underground," the priest commented.
🇬🇭 Ghana Offers Trauma Counseling After Hate Speech Boom Since Musk’s Twitter Takeover
Anti-LGBTQ+ hate has spiked on Twitter since Elon Musk took over the company. Human rights organizations in Africa worry that online hate will drive the LGBTQ+ community away from the site — or even translate to offline harassment and violence.
In response, campaigners in Ghana have even started offering online safety training and trauma counseling to their communities.
🇰🇷 South Korea Rejects Plea To Recognize Trans Soldier’s Death As “On Duty”
A military committee decided last week to classify the death of Byun Hee-soo, South Korea’s first transgender soldier who was found dead a year after being forcibly discharged from service, as "general death". Her family and LGBTQ+ rights activists had called for the Army to categorize her death as “on-duty”, but the panel rejected the claim, arguing that Byun's death had no "significant causal connection" with her military service.
Byun Hee-soo had voluntarily enlisted as male in 2017 and served as a tank gunner at an armored unit in Gyeonggi Province. In 2019, she underwent sex reassignment surgery in Thailand and expressed her desire to continue serving as a female soldier. The army discharged her in January 2020 saying the surgery rendered her mentally and physically unfit to be on active duty. She had filed a suit over this decision but died in an apparent suicide in February 2021 before any hearing in her case. The "general death" categorisation is, however, a recognition of her death as a soldier and not just a citizen.
🇮🇹 Right-Wing Italian Mayor Says “Si” To Gender-Neutral Toilets
Mario Conte, the mayor of Treviso and a Northern League Right Wing party member, backed gender-neutral toilets in the Mazzotti Technical Tourist Institute of the Venetian city. This was surprising due to the possible repercussions of this position inside the Party. The city of Treviso last June formally allowed the change of gender of a trans student on the diploma of the city's art school.
Conte explains that the request came from the students and for this reason it is legitimate and must be accepted "to avoid wrong attitudes towards the students who have made their will clear".
🇨🇭Switzerland At A Loss On How To Deal With “Gay Conversion Therapy”
How do you deal with “gay conversion therapy” that doesn’t call itself that? Swiss parliamentarians are wondering how to regulate the practice (which can range from everything from talking, to extreme practices like electroshock) when the very groups that do it avoid the label.
As more European countries put bans into place (Greece, Germany, France, and Malta already, potentially soon joined by Spain and Belgium), Switzerland fears that bans in those countries will bring more practitioners and “patients” to the country.
🇺🇸 Joe Biden Signs “Respect For Marriage Act” Into Constitution
Just a quarter of a century after U.S. Congress defined marriage exclusively as the “union between a man and a woman,” U.S. President Joe Biden signed into law a landmark legislation protecting same-sex marriage in the Constitution after it was approved by Congress.
This legislation, called Respect for Marriage Act, asks for states and federal governments to acknowledge the validity of same-sex marriage as well as interracial marriages, even when it has been performed in another state. House speaker Nancy Pelosi thanked the lawmakers and advocates who helped the legislation. “Not only are we on the right side of history, we’re on the right side of the future: expanding freedom in America,” she said.
🇲🇽 Man Prosecuted For Femicide Against A Trans Woman For First Time In Mexico
Transfemicide doesn't exist as a crime in Mexico’s penal code, so the first prosecution of a man for femicide against a trans woman sets a precedent. Testimonies collected indicate that the man, whose name was not released, attacked the victim with an object after an argument.
According to official figures, until May 2021 there were 25 investigation folders on violent deaths of trans women in Mexico’s capital.
🇧🇧 Caribbean Islands Approve Same-Sex Marriage, Barbados Decriminalizes Gay Sex
The joint Court of Justice of the Caribbean islands of Aruba, Curaçao, Sint Maarten and Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba has ruled in favor of extending marriage rights to same-sex couples. According to the Curaçao Chronicle, “The court has come to the conclusion that excluding same-sex marriage is in violation of the prohibition of discrimination and incompatible with state regulations.”
Meanwhile, Barbados Téa Braun, chief executive of the human rights organization Human Dignity Trust, said that “what people choose to do with their private relationships is not the business of the law.”
🇮🇩 Indonesia’s New Ban On Sex Outside Marriage Is Huge Threat For LGBTQ+ Community
Indonesia lawmakers unanimously passed a new criminal code that outlaws sex outside of marriage. This new ban will also apply to foreigners and tourists and forbid cohabitation for people who are not married. “It’s another nail in the coffin for LGBTQ+ people,” Dede Oetomo, an activist with the LGBTQ+ rights group GAYa NUSANTARA, told AFP.
Indonesia has seen a surge of religious conservatism emerge in recent years around the country that is strongly affecting the LGBTQ+ community — for example, in the semi-autonomous Anteh province, public flogging of homosexuals still take place.
OTHERWISE
• Through photographs, narratives, paintings, videos or performances, the Habibi, The Revolutions Of Love exhibition which lasts through Feb. 19 at Paris’ Institut du Monde Arabe explores queer identities and their place in countries where the LGBTQ+ community often faces discriminations or legal sanctions. 76crimes focuses on Em Abed, a pioneering Lebanese trans woman in the 1990, and how she’s featured in the exhibition.
• For Pink News, Ukrainians Irene and Hanna reflect back on their heartbreaking decision to flee to neighboring Poland shortly after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of the country in February for fear of being targeted as a lesbian couple.
Queer artists are finding their voices in the thumping beats and dance-hall rhythms of reggaeton, a genre that has historically been anything but inclusive.
RÍO PIEDRAS — It’s midnight at the Casa Cultural Ruth Hernández Torres, a historic house that serves as a cultural and community center. Blue and pink lights flash as Ana Macho takes to the dance floor. Sporting pink sunglasses and athletic attire, surrounded by dozens of fans swaying to the Caribbean rhythms, the artist sings about freedom, survival, and economic and social justice.
“It’s about the paradise that Puerto Rico is, but the one who lives here can’t live it,” says Ana Macho, whose original song “Blin Blin” embodies this message.
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A local celebrity as a drag queen performer since 2016, Ana Macho identifies as a nonbinary person who celebrates gender diversity. As an unconventional yet rising star, the artist represents a new wave of reggaeton, the Latin dance music genre that has traditionally embraced hypermasculine, heterosexual norms.
The rise of a genre
The style originated in the 1990s as a fusion of reggae, dance hall, hip-hop and electronic. It has become a global phenomenon, with growing fan bases in India, Egypt and South Africa. Since the genre already violated social conventions about appropriate behavior, the emergence of “queer reggaeton” was inevitable, says Patricia Velázquez, co-director of the Hasta ’Bajo (All the Way Down) Project, which researches and documents reggaeton.
It allows us that kind of assertiveness, that aggressiveness.
The shift began with pioneering women — including Lisa M., who came out of the closet via a Facebook post in 2010, and Ivy Queen, who received an award from the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation in 2008 — and became more mainstream with Bad Bunny, a gender-bending man who has been the most listened-to artist on the Spotify music platform for the past two years. In Puerto Rico, demonstrations against alleged government corruption, misogyny and homophobia in 2019 inspired a broader spectrum of emerging artists to write and perform about social issues.
Experimenting during lockdowns
“[Reggaeton] is an X-ray of how people live in Puerto Rico,” Velázquez says, predicting that gender-nonconforming artists will continue to gain popularity, influencing each other and their fans.
“It’s a genre of music that’s tightly tied to irreverence, and that attracts many oppressed bodies: feminine bodies, queer bodies,” says Ana Macho, who had wanted to break into reggaeton for some time, but “did not know how to make music from my reality.”
The pandemic provided the final push: In the loneliness of lockdown, the artist experimented with writing and performing original music, which went on to attract thousands of Instagram followers and YouTube views.
“How could I make music from my genuine perspective and [have] people like it?” Ana Macho remembers thinking at the time.
One of Ana Macho’s fans, Carlxs Sepúlveda Lespier, a young transgender woman and activist, was inspired to write her own songs, which she hopes to record.
“It allows us that kind of assertiveness, that aggressiveness, that ‘here I am, I’m not bad, don’t criminalize me,’” she says. “It’s mostly things I want to say to myself.”
Members of the Hasta 'Bajo Project, pose with Ana Macho at the Casa Cultural Ruth Hernández Torres.
Coraly Cruz Mejías, GPJ Puerto Rico
From machismo to inclusivity
For male reggaeton singers like Justin Cintrón, who performs under the stage name Juztiin White, the transition from a machismo style to a more inclusive ethos was unexpected, though not necessarily unwelcome.
It’s a genre of music that’s tightly tied to irreverence.
“It’s something new, it’s shocking, it’s something that can give people a lot to talk about,” he says. But that’s part of the evolution of music, he adds, as well as the creative freedom of each artist.
These cultural shifts also have prompted conservative backlash, including from the Proyecto Dignidad (Dignity Project) party, which elected its first legislators to Puerto Rico’s Senate and House of Representatives in 2020. Party spokesperson Raymind Ruiz says nearly half of its members are people aged 35 and younger who don’t see Puerto Rico’s family values reflected in artists and lyrics that promote homosexuality.
“It is not culturally or traditionally [common] in Puerto Rico to see a female with a mustache, with unshaven armpits, or to see a man with a shiny suit,” he says.
Improving safety, increasing acceptance
Conservative Puerto Ricans also have objected to reggaeton for objectifying women, Ruiz says. With queer reggaeton — and the increased visibility of gay and transgender Puerto Ricans in general — their concerns are that children shouldn’t be exposed to confusing ideas about gender and sexuality, he says.
“We don’t reject the reality of diversity,” he says. “We know that it’s part of the human process right now. But we do depart in the face of the biological reality that a man is a man and a woman is a woman.”
But queer and transgender Puerto Ricans say that seeing themselves represented, even in a music form that rose to fame with chauvinistic personas and lyrics, can save lives.
Converging without judgment, finding community and celebrating individuality.
Puerto Rico ranks 22nd of the 56 U.S. states and territories in terms of laws and policies that support the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer community, according to the Movement Advancement Project, a U.S.-based nonprofit research and advocacy think tank that promotes equal rights. According to 2019 United States Census Bureau estimates, Puerto Rico has more than 6,400 same-sex couple households. Based on a 2015 survey of its LGBTQ community, conducted by researchers from the University of Puerto Rico Medical Science Campus and George Washington University, more than 70% of respondents had experienced violence or discrimination at school, at work, and when using health services.
In recent years, Puerto Rico’s activists and progressive political parties have proposed several measures to improve safety and increase acceptance. In January 2021, Governor Pedro R. Pierluisi declared a state of emergency due to an increase in gender-based violence, effective until June 2022. A proposal to outlaw conversion therapy, already banned by a previous governor’s executive order in 2019, was defeated in a Senate committee vote in May.
Changing for the better
For Ana Macho, Sepúlveda and other public members of the queer community, legislative efforts are not progressing quickly enough. “It makes our lives uncertain, which means that our mental health is uncertain,” Sepúlveda says.
“In Puerto Rico, there’s a lot of fear around what’s different,” Ana Macho says. “Before, we had to listen to other people’s music, but now we have our own music. That’s what I think is important about what is being done.”
This growing diversity of reggaeton performers and fans has led to the creation and expansion of businesses, bars and parties where queer people gather to hear and dance to music that represents them. In these safe spaces for “jayaera” — a slang term for the search for happiness and empowerment — they can converge without judgment, find community and celebrate their individuality, Ana Macho says. “We’re seeing now how gender has begun to break its own chains in the way that reggaeton is expressed, the things that it talks about.”
Reggaeton culture “is changing,” Ana Macho says, “and the intention is to keep changing it.”
In countries and communities where sexuality is often kept under wraps, more and more women are taking up their microphones, pens and keyboards to talk about intimate issues without filters.
When the subject of African women's sexuality gets media coverage it's almost always a bad thing, says Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah, a Ghanaian writer based in London: "through the spectrum of disease, HIV or repeated pregnancies."
While universal access to sexual and reproductive health services remains a central issue in West Africa, Sekyiamah wants to share other narratives. To do this, she co-founded the blog: Adventures from the Bedrooms of African Women.
Sex outside of marriage, interracial relationships, threesomes, asexuality or practical and anatomical questions: no sex topic escapes Sekyiamah, who grew up in a very religious country and studied at a Catholic school in Accra.
Polyamory and polygamy
Forget about relations only for procreation and make room for pleasure: "It is a space open to African women where we can talk about sex freely and honestly," says Sekyiamah. More than 10 years after the creation of her blog, she has dedicated her work to sharing a range of sexual experiences, most recently with the book Sex Lives of African Women (Little Brown Book Group, July 2021). The text is a sociological look into the love lives and intimacies of African households through the testimonies of women from 30 countries on the continent.
Not a single word referring to our sexual anatomy is used in a normal way
One of the people featured is Nura (the first name has been changed by the author), a 42-year-old Kenyan woman married to a Senegalese man. Nura tells of her difficulty integrating into a polygamous household, and explains that she feels her sex life is subject to a timetable and to her husband's variable endurance.
"’Oh my God, I'm tired!’ my husband exclaimed one day. ‘I thought we were only going to have sex once a month.’ (...) He probably thought that at 40, my libido would decline," Nura explains.
Herself polyamorous and bisexual, Sekyiamah explores a wide spectrum of living one’s sexuality in the 21st century, including heterosexual and queer relationships as well as monogamous, polygamous or polyamorous couples — sexual practices and preferences she embraces even as homosexual relationships are prohibited in Ghana.
The columnist's blog is a space open to African women where they "can talk about sex freely and honestly"
Talking about sexuality without judgment and under the cover of anonymity is also the goal of the Sudanese and Jordanian hosts of the podcast Jasadi (“My Body”), launched in 2019 by the production company Kerning Cultures, based in the United Arab Emirates. Named the best podcast in the Middle East and North Africa by Apple, the show invites women to question taboos related to sexuality and the female body in Arab societies.
"Not a single word referring to our sexual anatomy is used in a normal way," laments one of the guests. Another said she regretted the systematic use of anglicisms to name female genitalia, or the schoolyard mockery of the term "mahbal" ("vagina" in Arabic), which is phonetically close to the word "ahbal" (stupid).
For these "sexperts," there is no question of evading and resorting to innuendos or childish vocabulary to define sexual anatomy. It is on the other hand urgent to free oneself from the dominant heteronormative discourse.
"P as in pansexual, Q as in queer, R as in rim job (anilingus).” This is the kind of sexual primer that can be found on the Instagram page of the successful podcast The Spread, created by 38-year-old Kenyan Kaz Karen Lucas. A lesbian who identifies as non-binary — she uses she/they pronouns —, the ex-rapper has become a leading voice in Kenya’s LGBTQA+ community in five seasons and nearly 90 episodes.
It’s an important role in a country where the film “Rafiki” (by Kenyan director Wanuri Kahiu) was temporarily censored by authorities for depicting a lesbian romance. Lucas intends to "decolonize sexuality" in earnest by inviting gynecologists, obstetricians and other sexologists to speak on her show.
Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah has dedicated her work to sharing a range of sexual experiences, most recently with the book Sex Lives of African Women
Another podcast innovator is the British-Nigerian Dami Olonisakin, better known as Oloni. The 31-year-old started The Laid Bare podcast in 2018. She now has built a community of 500,000 followers across social media platforms. On her Instagram page, she uses filters while sporting sexy outfits. And on the mic, she talks about sex without a filter. From the orgasm gap between women and men to solo female pleasure, through the use of sex toys and BDSM practices, her freedom of tone connects sex with emancipation.
And in the post #Metoo era, sexual harassment and abuse are no longer ignored. Oloni, who proclaims in her bio that "consent is sexy," will star in an upcoming Netflix special called “Sex: Unzipped.”
But despite her growing fame, she still takes the time to go to schools and talk to students about sexuality, giving younger generations the resources and knowledge she and other sexperts had to find for themselves.
Turning identity and language on its head, this unique drag queen performer and activist is challenging preconceptions — even within the LGBTQ
LAHORE — Muhammad Moiz has multiple personas: a brash, outspoken woman behind Snapchat filters called Shumaila Bhatti, ruminating on family, Rishta Aunties, lip fillers, wedding seasons and gossip; a drag queen who does dirty comedy all about sex and sexuality called Miss Phudina Chatni; and a podcast where Moiz and a friend are just being their introspective, irreverent selves.
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Shumaila Bhatti was Moiz’s first foray into comedy, while Moiz was still in the U.S. on a scholarship. Also known as the Desi Bombshell – because she made jokes in Punjabi, she’s a Bhatti after all – her page has almost 200,000 followers on Facebook.
After that incredible success, the Miss Phudina Chatni show started – inspired by RuPaul – when Moiz came back to Pakistan; the name is a sexual pun in and of itself, a play on Pudina Chutney with the slang words for vagina and licking thrown in.
Moiz is also a Khwaja Sira community member and an activist. Moiz does not use the term transgender because of the places and language it comes from. Moiz says this is an anti-colonial, anti-imperial, native identity, not one framed by Western terminology.
"Khawaja Sira" roughly translates to caretaker of a home, as eunuchs were to the Mughal courts; in literal Persian, ‘Sira’ means resting place, ‘Khawaja’ means master. More figuratively, it’s a term that provides a safe haven and shelter for an entire spectrum of gender identities and sexualities, without the ‘white labels’ of (LG)BTQI – emphasis purely on the latter – that Moiz says makes the indigenous sound “alien.”
Khawaja Sira encompasses people born with male bodies but carrying the spirit of a woman
Khawaja Sira encompasses people born with male bodies but carrying the spirit of a woman, it encompasses crossdressers, the sexually curious, non-binary people – people born with ambiguous genitalia or modified genitalia (like the eunuchs); Khawaja Sira is a way of being, in spirit, in thought and has little to do with the corporeal form.
The conservatives speak against LGBTQ, but they don’t speak against Khawaja Siras because they were historically ordained in courts, in Islamic scholarship, and called on by local communities to, for instance, celebrate the birth of a child. There’s a sufi element to the term as well. The ‘guru’ and the ‘chela’, the master and the disciple. Moiz espouses the term ‘Qalandar’, because Moiz’s master was a devotee of Sehwan Sharif, one of the most popular shrines in Sindh, the shrine of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar.
Moiz was born in Abbottabad, a city in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa but one where Hindko is widely spoken, particularly among the Hazara community. This is why Moiz’s own identity is so fluid. Moiz switches perfectly between Punjabi, Urdu and English during the drag routine. Even Moiz’s pronouns say they/her/him on their Instagram with 30,000 followers. ‘They’ being the preferred pronoun.
I met Moiz when Miss Phudina Chatni was performing in Lahore this November. The first question I asked was about the multiple tattoos. The Hindu goddess Parvati on one forearm, an Imam Zamin over that bicep, and on the other forearm, the proportions of the Golden Ratio in its diagram form, something that has fascinated the disciplines of geometry to architecture to art from ancient times.
In drag, I saw Miss Phudina Chatni wearing a sparkling orange lehenga choli with an embroidered green dupatta and a blonde wig. Her comedy is riotously dirty. Adult comedy is an understatement, she leaves no swear word untouched, no part of the body unused, no act of pleasure unmentioned. Most of it is Miss Chatni’s own sex life, but sometimes she takes digs at the heteronormativity around her, and heterosexual men in general, the guardians of patriarchy. When the egregious swearing starts, she says, “Before you think of canceling me, remember Shehzad Ghias is still alive.” Ghias is a fellow comedian who has been frequently canceled.
You can thank me now ladies, I’ve just educated your husbands.
Just after that, she takes a minute and asks the room to look around at all the heterosexual men sitting there, “even your significant others”. The room goes quiet. After a minute has passed, she says, “Don’t like anything you see, na?” That is the tragedy of heterosexuality, she goes on, it looks so mundane. “It’s better to become a lesbian. Even if you don’t, I recommend you have another woman go down on you at least once in life, trust me they won’t be as incompetent as these guys.”
“I’ve tried explaining vaginas to heterosexual men many times,” she goes on. There’s the hole where you’re supposed to enter, over that is a tinier hole which is the urethra, and above both of those is the magic button you’re looking for, the clitoris. “Most men can’t seem to find it, like it’s something invisible.” Then she tells the audience what the clitoris is called in Punjabi – incidentally a popular breakfast choice – and what is supposed to be done to it. “You can thank me now ladies, I’ve just educated your husbands.”
Towards the end of the show, she takes out a vibrator and turns it on, on the lowest settings first, and puts it next to her microphone. Slowly she raises the settings and finally to the maximum where the room is just reverberating with the sounds of buzzing. Rapid, overwhelming. Then she says, “Now tell me if your man can do this”.
In the middle of her routine, she ponders over the words penis and vagina being so vanilla, so boring. They lack the descriptive range that Urdu and Punjabi words for genitalia have, she says. For big ones and small ones, for wide ones and narrow ones. “Like the Punjabi word for a small penis. You know, for all the Aitchisonians [those who studied at the Aitchison College in Lahore] here.”
Then come her sexual escapades. “You know you’re on Lahori Tinder when all the good looking men are from India.” She says of Lahore, which is so close to Amritsar that Tinder’s search distance shows people from across the border. Her hookups drive her to DHA Phase 7 Lahore. “Whether it’s Karachi Phase 7 or Lahore phase 7, all phase 7s have the same purpose: to provide empty roads where people can have sex in parked vehicles.”
On one such hookup, she says, she was in a Suzuki Mehran having sex in the winter and the windows started fogging up, reminding her of that scene in Titanic. She thought why not, “I’ll put my hand on the side window too”. Only when she pulled it back, she was staring into the face of a police officer, peering in. The thulla – as a policeman is called in Lahore – said what are you doing, in a threatening tone. She answered, “Can’t you see?” “This tiny vehicle is shaking left and right like there’s an earthquake out there.” She had to bribe him to go away and the sex wasn’t even worth it. “Lahori boys, I swear.”
Talking about sex in Pakistan, traditionally a taboo subject, she says once you peel away the sanctimonious outer layer of a pious society, there isn’t even a homosexual or heterosexual or bisexual, there’s just sexual. “They don’t spare anyone or anything here”.
Moiz has been Khawaja Sira activist longer than they have been a performer. Away from the comedy, Moiz is an academic, a public health practitioner and has a masters degree in global health policy. Moiz is also on the streets protesting, and in the courts fighting cases.
Moiz was vocal against a famous Khawaja Sira celebrity, Kami Sid, over the alleged rape and murder of a 13-year-old who came to join the community. Moiz is also the survivor of an attempted gang-rape by the Beelas [according to Vice, “predominantly ex-lovers or intimate partners of transgender people who seek revenge after being denied sexual or romantic consent”] in September 2021 because Moiz has been vocal against them too, likening them to an organised crime syndicate, preying on the Moorats – the effeminate, the essence of the Khawaja Sirah community – and other non-binary, ‘effeminate’ men.
In Khawaja Sira terminology, there are those who identify as Moorats, and those who use them for sex work, their patrons, the Beelas. Most Moorats’ source of income is from them.
Some from within the community aren’t happy with the protests, saying Moorats and Beelas have a co-dependent system going back decades and the Khwaja Sira community has always settled their matters internally, not in courts, which were imposed upon them by the British, and the remnants of the British in South Asia that are now nation-states.
In fact, their desire to remain independent and autonomous as a community involves an improvised version of the Farsi language; the Khawaja Sirah Farsi is unique, it is not Persian, it is not Urdu. it’s a coded, secretive language to communicate amongst one another without fear or judgment, while signalling to each other that they’re part of the commune. But lives are at risk, including Moiz’s own, hence the desire to get the state involved in the protection of all its citizens.
They want to queer the mainstream.
In other interviews, Moiz has said they don’t want to mainstream the queer, they want to queer the mainstream, which is what popular drag artists like Begum Nawazish Ali and Moin Akhtar’s Rozi were doing before them. Phudina Chatni’s shows are doing just that: where being queer isn’t a niche label but the norm. Abolish toxic masculinity, Moiz says, and embrace femininity. Abolish the gender of the ‘man’, the son, the brother, the father, so they don’t have daughters, sisters and mothers for them to act as overseers. Abolish these tilted power dynamics.
At the end of the Miss Phudina Chatni show, she says to an enthralled and packed audience, that looking at gender as a binary is “idiotic”. It doesn’t make any sense. “The future is femme, the future is brown, the future is queer. Get used to it,” she signs off.
The writer is a freelance journalist and tweets at @haseebasif.
The confinement experience could turn brutal for those forced to live with relatives who would not tolerate a member of the family living their sexual orientation openly as a young adult. Here are stories from urban and rural India.
Abhijith had been working as a radio jockey in the southern Indian city of Thiruvananthapuram when the COVID-19 pandemic hit in March, 2020. When the government imposed a nationwide lockdown, Abhijith returned to the rural Pathanamthitta district , where his parents live with an extended family, including uncles, cousins and grandparents.
Eighteen months later, he recalled that the experience was "unbearable" because he had to live with homophobic relatives. "Apart from the frequent reference to my sexual 'abnormality', they took me to a guruji to 'cure' me," Abhijith recalled. "He gave me something to eat, which made me throw up. The guru assured me that I was throwing up whatever 'demon' was possessing me and 'making' me gay."
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Early in 2021, Abhijith travelled back to Thiruvananthapuram, where he found support from the members of the queer collective.
Inspired by their work, he also decided to work towards uplifting the queer community. "I wish no one else goes through the mental trauma I have endured," said Abhijit.
Abhijith's story of mental distress arising from family abuse turns out to be all too common among members of India's LGBTQ+ community, many of whom were trapped in their homes and removed from peer support groups during the pandemic.
Oppressive home situations
As India continues to reel from a pandemic that has claimed more lives (235,524) in three months of the second wave (April-June 2021) than in the one year before that (162,960 deaths in March 2020-March 2021), the LGBTQ community has faced myriad problems. Sexual minorities have historically suffered from mainstream prejudice and the pandemic has aggravated socio-economic inequalities, instigated family and institutionalized abuse, apart from limiting access to essential care. This has resulted in acute mental distress which has overwhelmed queer support infrastructure across the country.
Speaking to queer collective representatives across India, I learned that the heightened levels of distress in the community was due to longstanding factors that were triggered under lockdown conditions. Family members who are intolerant of marginalized sexual identities, often tagging their orientation as a "disorder" or "just a phase", have always featured among the main perpetrators of subtle and overt forms of violence towards queer, trans and homosexual people.
Calls from lesbians and trans men to prevent forced marriages during lockdowns.
Sappho For Equality, a Kolkata-based feminist organization that works for the rights of sexually marginalized women and trans men, recorded a similar trend. Early in the first wave, the organization realized that the existing helpline number was getting overwhelmed with distress calls. It added a second helpline number. The comparative figures indicate a 13-fold jump in numbers: from 290 calls in April 2019-March 20 to 3,940 calls in April 2020-May 2021.
"Most of the calls we have been getting from lesbians and trans men are urgent appeals to prevent forced marriages during lockdowns," said Shreosi, a Sappho member and peer support provider. "If they happen to resist, they are either evicted or forced to flee home. But where to house them? There aren't so many shelters, and ours is at full capacity."
Shreosi says that the nature of distress calls has also changed. "Earlier people would call in for long-term help, such as professional mental health support. But during the pandemic, it has changed to immediate requests to rescue from oppressive home situations. Often, they will speak in whispers so that the parents can't hear."
Lack of spaces
Like many of his fellow queer community members, life for Sumit P., a 30-year-old gay man from Mumbai, has taken a turn for the worse. The lockdown has led to the loss of safe spaces and prolonged residence at home.
"It has been a really difficult time since the beginning of the lockdown. I am suffering from a lot of mental stress since I cannot freely express myself at home. Even while making a call, I have to check my surroundings to see if anybody is there. If I try to go out, my family demands an explanation. I feel suffocated," he said.
The pandemic has forced some queer people to come out
Sumit is also dealing with a risk that has hit the community harder than others – unemployment and income shortage. He's opened a cafe with two other queer friends, which is now running into losses. For others, pandemic-induced job losses have forced queer persons from all over the country to return to their home states and move in with their families who've turned abusive during this long period of confinement.
Lockdowns force coming out
According to Kolkata-based physician, filmmaker and gay rights activist Tirthankar Guha Thakurata, the pandemic has forced some queer people to come out, succumbing to rising discomfort and pressure exerted by homophobic families.
"In most cases, family relations sour when a person reveals their identity. But many do not flee home. They find a breathing space or 'space out' in their workspaces. In the absence of these spaces, mental problems rose significantly," he said.
Not being able to express themselves freely in front of parents who are hostile, intolerant and often address transgender persons by their deadname or misgender them has created situations of severe distress, suicidal thoughts and self-harm.
Psychiatrist and queer feminist activist Ranjita Biswas (she/they) cites an incident. A gender-nonconforming person died under suspicious circumstances just days after leaving their peer group and going home to their birth parents. The final rites were performed with them dressed in bangles and a saree.
"When a member of our community asked their mother why she chose a saree for someone who had worn androgynous clothes all their life, she plainly said it was natural because after all, the deceased 'was her daughter,'" Biswas recalls.
The Indian queer mental health support infrastructure, already compromised with historical prejudice, is now struggling
In India, queer people's access to professional mental healthcare has been "very limited," according to community members such as Ankan Biswas, India's first transgender lawyer who has been working with the Human Rights Law Network in West Bengal.
"A large majority of the psychiatrists still consider homosexuality as a disorder and practice 'correctional therapy'. It's only around the big cities that some queer-friendly psychiatrists can be found," Biswas said. "The pandemic has further widened the inequalities in access to mental health support for India's LGBTQ community."
Biswas is spending anxious days fielding an overwhelming amount of calls and rescue requests from queer members trapped in their homes, undergoing mental, verbal and even physical torture. "We don't have the space, I just tell them to wait and bear it a little longer," he said.
Medical care is dismal
Anuradha Krishnan's story, though not involving birth family, outlines how the lack of physical support spaces have affected India's queer population. Abandoned by her birth family when she came out to them as a trans woman in 2017, Anuradha Krishnan (she/they), founder of Queerythm in Kerala who is studying dentistry, had to move into an accommodation with four other persons.
Isolation triggered my depression
"I am used to talking and hanging around with friends. Isolation triggered my depression and I had to seek psychiatric help." Living in cramped quarters did not help with quarantine requirements and all of them tested positive during the first wave.
What is deeply worrying is that the Indian queer mental health support infrastructure, already compromised with historical prejudice, is now struggling, placing more and more pressure on queer collectives and peer support groups whose resources are wearing thin.
During the 10 months of the first wave of the pandemic in India in 2020, Y'all, a queer collective based in Manipur, received about 1,000 distress calls on their helpline number from LGBTQ+ individuals. In May 2021 alone, they received 450 such calls (including texts and WhatsApp messages) indicating a telling escalation in the number of queer people seeking help during the second wave.
As India's queer-friendly mental health support infrastructure continues to be tested, Y'all founder, Sadam Hanjabam, a gay man, says, "Honestly, we are struggling to handle such a large number of calls, it is so overwhelming. We are also dealing with our own anxieties. We are burning out."
Sreemanti Sengupta is a freelance writer, poet, and media studies lecturer based in Kolkata.
In a country where homosexuality is still penalized, the feminist LGBT+ group Nassawiyat launches a poetic and political video series to try to change conservative mindsets.
"My hair has never been like others, people have always described it as ugly, frizzy..."
So begins "Nouwara," the first episode of the web series Homouna (which means "they/them," in reference to the pronoun used to designate a person who doesn't use she or he pronouns).
It's produced by the Moroccan LGBTQ+ feminist group Nassawiyat (meaning "feminist") and financed by an undisclosed backer. Posted on Youtube, Instagram and Facebook, Homouna tells the story of a queer woman in a patriarchal society.
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"I always told myself that my skin color altered my beauty and that I needed to wear colors to make my face look lighter," says the voiceover, illustrated live by the hands of Rim C., a female cartoonist. The quotes are excerpted from 21 interviews conducted by Nassawiyat, which strive to tell the intimate history of members of the LGBTQ+ community in Morocco.
The phrases that touch on self-esteem and the various injunctions of patriarchal society follow each other as the drawings gain color. The female body is always subject to discussion, to evaluation. "My relationship to my body has always been governed by the things I saw, experienced, or heard," says Nouwara.
The variations in one's weight, discussed in this first video, are not insignificant: They help reveal the way it affects mental health: "I eat a lot when I feel like it, and then I lose my appetite when I do not feel well mentally. When I lose weight, I feel really happy even though I can be in a very dark mental space."
As a logical continuation, control over a woman's body is connected to control over her life path, as the narrator's family critiques her physical appearance as much as the fact that she is still unmarried: It's not only important to remain a virgin before marriage to preserve the family's honor, but also to dress in a modest way, hiding one's body.
In the intimate life of Moroccan women, society and family have eyes everywhere, the story suggests. Many women feel like objects to be grasped rather than full human beings. To make everyone happy, except yourself, you stick to the rules, tick the boxes.
Another look at gender and sexuality
The illustrations help the series push the women out of their boxes, escape their obligations, as they describe themselves through the oppression of a system, with the drawing eventually unfolding to represent a liberated woman. The lines become more and more enlightened, accompanied by powerful words: "From now on, I make peace with myself, I am a beautiful woman, period." Episode 1 lasts only a few minutes but sounds like a short meditation session, with an undeniable poetry, which makes you want to discover the rest.
Prison for "licentious or unnatural acts toward a person of the same sex."
Nouwara does not only need to emancipate herself from her relationship to her body and the gaze of others. She also has a confession to make; she loves a woman and would like to be free to flaunt her homosexuality. Outside the fantasy world of animation, this is still impossible in Morocco, where the penal code charges up to three years of imprisonment for "licentious or unnatural acts toward a person of the same sex." In April 2020, a widespread campaign of outing homosexuality of many Moroccans shook the country.
Homouna aims precisely to raise awareness of the existence of this LGBTQ+ community, described as "vulnerable and resistant." Being a queer woman, being queer in the diaspora, being transgender, being intersex... each of the other four episodes bring together the testimonies of these Moroccans.
As many movements, documentaries, TV series and films around the world contribute to a broader look at women's bodies, gender diversity and sexuality issues, Nassawiyat wants this North African kingdom to play its part.
Government regulators in Beijing have banned the TV and streaming appearance of what is referred to with the slur "niang pao" – literally, "girlie guns." It is clearly a homophobic and transphobic measure, but the real aim may be to keep the increasingly powerful tech platforms in line.
-Analysis-
The Chinese government has recently taken action against what it calls “sissy men" – males, often celebrities, deemed too effeminate.
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On Sept. 2，2021, government regulators banned their appearance on both television and video streaming sites. Using the Chinese derogatory slur “niang pao" – literally, “girlie guns" – Chinese cultural authorities explained that they were rolling out a rule to purge “morally flawed celebrities" in order to “correct aesthetics" in “performing styles" and “wardrobes and makeups."
Technically this is a rule, not a law. But thanks to the strong control the Chinese government exerts over industry, the tech companies that give these celebrities a platform have quickly fallen in line.
The international community may view the rule as yet another example of Chinese repression centered on LBGTQ communities.
To me, it's no coincidence that the ban has come during the intense national campaign against China's domestic big tech giants, which the government increasingly sees as a threat to its ability to keep tabs on its citizens.
In the mid-2010s the Chinese government's grip on the country's entertainment sector began to weaken after decades of control over who could star on TV and what sort of stories could be told. TV dramas, films and talent shows produced by private tech companies started to take off, while ratings and ad revenues of state-owned television stations tumbled.
For example, images of two men kissing and holding hands were banned. So creators simply used dialogues and gestures, like intense eye contact, to convey homosexual intimacy. Furthermore, these rules didn't regulate the physical appearance of characters.
Since 2017, shows produced by the country's leading video streaming platforms – many of which mimic the basic format of shows like “American Idol" and “The Voice" – have launched the careers of a number of effeminate male celebrities.
These shows include “The Coming One" and “CHUANG 2021," which appear on Tencent Video, a streaming site owned by Tencent, the Chinese technology conglomerate that also owns WeChat. Meanwhile, “Idol Producer" and “Youth With You" appear on another video service provider, iQiyi, a subsidiary of Baidu, the Chinese equivalent of Google. The male participants in these shows are often young, dress in unisex clothing, and apply orange-red eye shadow and lipstick, along with heavy makeup that whitens their skin and thickens their eyebrows.
Contestants compete on 'CHUANG 2021.'
In the past, female audiences would clamor for masculine looks or physiques in their male celebrities. Today's young Chinese people, on the other hand, are more open to challenging gender stereotypes. Within online fan communities, femininity in male celebrities isn't stigmatized; instead, it's celebrated. They'll call their female idols “brother" or “husband" and their male idols “wife" – names meant more as compliments than insults.
This shift can be traced, in large part, to the influence of K-pop, the South Korean pop music phenomenon in which many of the singers reject traditionally masculine ideals.
An easy way for male actors to achieve stardom is to appear in adaptions of “boys' love novels," an online fiction genre originating in Japan that features homoerotic relationships between men.
Take the actor Zhang Zhehan. For years, he played masculine characters in several TV shows. Still, he remained largely unknown until he appeared in the adaption of the boys' love novel “Word of Honor," which appeared in early 2021 on Youku, a streaming service owned by the tech giant Alibaba.
His female fans even invented a meme to describe Zhang's rapid rise to fame: “manning up for a decade failed, but [he] succeeded as a wife overnight."
Despite their perceived effeminate mannerisms, these male celebrities have amassed a huge following among female viewers. Typically, their shows can generate billions of views and considerable ad revenue.
Celebrities whose fame emerged out of shows like “The Coming One" and “Idol Producer" are called “traffic stars" because they're more dependent on their massive followings than on any specific skill such as singing, acting or dancing.
Two members of the Chinese boy band WayV — Photo: Instagram
Since views, shares and likes have become the dominant metric for a celebrity's popularity and market value, fans will organize to actively manipulate social media features such as ranking lists and trending topics in support of their idols. This “data worship" – to use the terminology of the Chinese authorities – ultimately boosts the revenue of the big tech companies that promote and host the stars.
Therefore, the profits of tech companies and the proliferation of internet influencers, movie stars and TV personalities have become increasingly intertwined.
For a country seeking to rein in the power of big tech companies, these effeminate idols become an obvious target.
Although it could be argued that everyday LGBTQ people aren't the real target of the most recent policy, I believe it will almost certainly have a pernicious effect on China's marginalized gender groups and LGBTQ communities.
In China, the government has long exploited gender and sexuality in the service of political needs. During the first three decades of the People's Republic of China – from 1949 to 1978 – homosexuality was portrayed as the epitome of capitalist vice and was, therefore, seen as incompatible with the values of the Communist party-state.
After China's market reforms in 1978 and the “opening up" of the country, people – especially in China's cities – became more comfortable calling themselves gay.
In the lead-up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the state-run Xinhua News agency even published articles championing the gay website Danlan – a precursor to Blued, the most popular gay dating app in the world – in order to portray China as an inclusive and diverse place and to deflect international criticism of China's poor record on human rights.
Thanks to digital technology and the growth of online subcultures, China has achieved some real progress in the acceptance of gender and sexual minorities over the past decade. Young women often speak of having a “gay confidant" (“gaymi" in Chinese), while young straight men are keen to call their male friends “good gay buddies"(“hao jiyou").
So it's a bit surprising to see a gender slur – “girlie guns" – being written into government policy and repeated throughout the country's mainstream media outlets.
And it isn't difficult to envision more anti-LGBTQ bullying, harassment and violence in schools and workplaces as a result.
After all, if the government condones a slur, who's to say it's wrong to use it to attack others?
Bridgetown, Barbados
