Contacts: dialogues.diversity@gmail.com, orinam.net@gmail.com

TRANSGENDER-AFFIRMING GUIDELINES FOR INDIAN WORKPLACES

Two community collectives, Orinam in Chennai and Diversity Dialogues in Bangalore, have launched a guide for employers  who seek to make workplaces inclusive and welcoming of transgender employees, and support employees who are choosing to come out as transgender.

Being transgender, intersex, non-binary or genderqueer (henceforth transgender+) is a challenge to finding and retaining education and employment in India. The few individuals who manage to acquire education and access to employment opportunities constantly face a choice between affirming their true (gender) identities and staying in long-term careers.

Many workplaces in India are already likely to have transgender+ individuals working with them. These individuals, who may have been recruited through mainstream recruitment channels and are actively contributing to the business, may not openly identify as transgender and are perhaps living and expressing in the gender assigned at birth, and are forced to conform/pass as cis-gender. Some others may be transgender and living in their preferred gender(s), without disclosing their gender assigned at birth.

Very few employers in India are known to be inclusive of transgender+ individuals and/or allow/support their gender affirmation within the company.

Orinam believes that “Organizations committed to diversity and inclusion need to create a safe, welcoming and inclusive environment for transgender+ employees, both existing employees and new recruits, to be recognized in their gender, and create channels for requesting support if and when required.”

“Affirming the gender of transgender employees, with respect to inclusive policies and benefits, is an essential part of creating an inclusive environment. The resource guide from Orinam and Diversity Dialogues is an attempt to encourage HR professionals or business leaders to implement the guide and build inclusive practices towards the transgender+ community.” said Diversity Dialogues.

“As transgender+ persons we go through unnecessary scrutiny at interviews or otherwise. People sometimes think it is their right to ask deeply personal information about our genitalia, about our sex lives, about our transition surgeries. While all they should be caring about are our names and pronouns, treating us like regular individuals. The guide provides essentials about culture and acceptable behavior required for organizations to be transgender+ affirmative”, says Aditya Batavia, who works at an Indian retail conglomerate, and identifies as a man.

“As a transgender person and IT professional, I have had to refrain from potential job opportunities, faced micro-aggression, and been denied client-facing moments because of my identity/expression. The anxieties and fear of discrimination, difficulties in finding another job, and risk of losing livelihood prevent many of us transgender+ people from revealing our true gender and force us to live dual lives. Post- the NALSA and 377 verdicts it’s the right time for business community to pitch in and address discrimination faced by transgender+ community in their organizations as they now have moral and legal obligations to ensure a safe, inclusive and healthy workplace“, says Kanaga, a transwoman working as Domain consultant for a large Indian IT services provider

“Understanding issues related to transgender identity at work place (just as other issues related to diversity and inclusion) is a layered matter which will have to be revisited and updated from time to time and experience to experience. An open and embracing attitude and kindness is the key. I feel this document clearly shows the sincerity and hard work put into recognizing core issues related to transgender persons’  inclusion at workplaces and is very beautifully put together” says Shyam Balasubramanian, an assigned female at birth transgende, transmasculine person, who works as a DFT engineer in the semiconductor/chip design industry.

Most of the recommendations in this guide are relevant to all institutions: corporates, not-for-profit NGOs, government departments, public sector undertakings, or any other.  The guidance around acknowledging self-identification of transgender persons flows from the directives of the Supreme Court of India’s landmark 2014 ruling on transgender rights in National Legal Services Authority vs. Union of India and Ors.

The guide is dedicated to  the memory of Anannya Krishnan, a transgender woman in Chennai who was part of the Orinam collective. Despite a promising career as a pharmacologist in the  drug safety vertical of a Chennai business, Anannya faced numerous struggles to find a place to live, and have her family acknowledge her gender identity. These struggles proved too much to handle, and she took her life on Dec 30, 2017.

Diversity and inclusion is an intent and can be implemented by every organization, irrespective of nature of work, size, scale or anything else. The recommendations in this guide urge organizations to embark on this journey.

The guide may be downloaded here.

Also view: Employers’ Guide to Making Indian Workplaces LGBTIQ+ inclusive and Videos on LGBT+ inclusion at Indian workplaces

Follow Diversity Dialogues on Facebook , YouTube and instagram @dialoguesdiversity

Follow Orinam on Facebook and Twitter @chennaipride, and visit our website www.orinam.net

The symposium aims to bring together organizations representing employers, employees and civil society to address the specific challenges of being lesbian, gay, bi, and transgender in the Indian workplace, and to share their experiences. The event is co-organized by two non-profits, Workplace Pride, Amsterdam, and Solidarity Foundation, Bengaluru.  Community partners include Community Business and Orinam. The  symposium is hosted by the RELX Group.

If you’re a community member, ally, and/or interested in knowing how workplaces can recruit and retain talent from LGBTIQA+ communities, this meeting and networking opportunity is for you. Participation is free, but registration is required. Register at http://india2017.archives-workplacepride.org/registration/

Date: Friday, May 19th 2017
Registration:  Free: click HERE
Time:10 am – 3 pm

Location: Leela Palace Chennai, Adyar Sea Face, M.R.C Nagar, Chennai, Tamil Nadu 600028, India

The event will be preceded by a reception on Thursday 5 pm – 7  pm at the same venue.

For more information, email solidarityfoundation2013@gmail.com or orinam.net@gmail.com

INTRODUCTION

Pride marches across the world have become important events for the show of strength and solidarity of the queer community. Pride celebrations, especially in India, are more than just a colorful parade. Prides are platforms for protests, for voicing out against oppression, and calling for an equal society. In recent years, Pride marches have embraced the idea of intersectionality – an idea that talks about equality beyond the lines of gender and sexuality. Queer individuals who walk the Pride march have identities beyond their queer identities. When we call for freedom and equality on the lines of gender/sexuality, we ought to recognize the call for equality on the lines of caste, class, region, religion and other divides or inequalities that exist today in the country/society.

Apart from incorporating these intersectionality groups, Namma Pride 2016 (Bangalore Pride 2016), went a step ahead and became India’s first pride to be made accessible to persons with disability.

This document talks about the need for accessibility, key steps taken to build accessibility and the Namma Pride 2016 journey of building accessibility.

WHY SHOULD YOU MAKE PRIDE ACCESSIBLE?

While queer prides should also call out inequities in the society that exist for people with disability from a political and equal rights stand point, there are four more arguments that make the case stronger:

1. Intersections: queer and disabled: Yet another aspect about the identity of a person, queer or otherwise, is ability/disability. There are many people with disability who may be queer (including asexual). And there are many persons who identify as LGBTQ+, who may be living with a visible/invisible disability. The intersections are largely unspoken about because sexuality of a person with disability itself is an unspoken topic. The society looks at persons with disability as largely asexual beings (a feeling  that is sometimes internalized within the persons themselves). So, for a person with disability (who fights with enough battles already), to have explored their sexual identity, and be able to openly come out and say that they do not fall in the mainstream heterosexual cis-gender category is pretty uncommon. This does not mean that persons who are both queer and disabled do not exist.
2. Shades of similarity between both communities: Persons who have worked closely with both queer and disability communities know that there are striking similarities between the two. The situations may be different, but the pain, evolution and introspection that an individual from both communities goes through is similar. The problems of inequity that plague both the communities today are also similar. The coming together of both communities adds more strength to the movement of inclusion.
3.  Accessibility is good for everyone: Like any other case, interventions made to include a particular section of society are largely good for everyone else too. Making Pride accessible for persons with disability has ensured that senior citizens, children, and people who just need a place to sit during the march can also participate. It has helped in reaching out to a larger audience, and enable participation of more individuals, as parents, friends, and colleagues can participate despite their age, and physical abilities they may have. Further, despite the greater visibility of young people in public LGBTQ+ community events, many members of the community are aging as well, and this opens doors to them.

Caveat: The core message of Queer Pride is the need for recognition and inclusion of people of diverse genders and sexualities. Making Pride disability-accessible does not detract from this message.  Rather, by making Pride accessible, you affirm your commitment to include other groups, and your recognition of the intersectional nature of oppressions and identities.

HOW DO YOU MAKE PRIDE ACCESSIBLE?

Key decisions to be made

1. Pride team buy in: If you are taking the lead in proposing this idea, make sure that the Pride team signs off on the concept, budget and other requirements. Accessibility is a key component of every activity in Pride and therefore, team agreement is imperative. If majority of the team is bought in, go ahead. Address any questions, comments or thoughts on this in the first meeting itself, before you take it forward.
2. Have a separate team focused on accessibility: It would be good to have accessibility champions right from the start – the team can be 3-4 members, but members who are passionate about the concept. The team should include an expert in accessibility/ disability and preferably a person with disability as well. The responsibilities will be to work closely with other teams (especially logistics), to conduct accessibility audits, to create awareness in both the communities about the other and to plan the march well. Having 10-11 volunteers (as a part of the extended team) would be good during the march.
3. Just for Pride march? Or all events? Ideally, accessibility should be taken care of for all community events, not just for Pride. Making any event fully accessible may be an extension especially if you are doing this for the first time, however you could decide to provide specific assistance to any person with disability who wants to participate.
4. Inclusion towards all disabilities: Like sexualities and genders, disabilities are diverse, including locomotor, speech and hearing, psychosocial, visual disabilities, and beyond. Pride should be accessible for persons with less visible/invisible disabilities as well.
5. Decision on budget: Making Pride accessible does involve a budget. A range of INR 8000-15000 should be kept aside for this effort.

Nine Steps to make Pride accessible

1. All venues for all events should be reasonably accessible: Choose venues that have ramps or two steps and not more to ensure accessibility. If you have videos, having a sign language interpreter or subtitles will ensure one can read.
2. Having a footnote in all your communication: Indicate that the event is accessible for persons with disability. Provide coordinates of go-to people, in case people want to participate and need assistance. Potential participants could reach out in advance and specify the assistance required, so that the team could provide the same. The communication should be kept simple and the website/app accessible for persons with visual impairment.
3. Partnering with an accessible cab service provider: This caters largely to persons with locomotor/mobility disability. For the Pride walk itself, you could tie-up with cab services that provide special cabs equipped with aids such as extensible ramps to accommodate wheelchairs, and/or have seating that is easily accessible for persons with disability to mount/dismount. In Bangalore, we tied up with Kick Start Cabs for Namma Pride 2016 who provide such services.
4. Sign language interpretation, subtitles and basic friendliness:  Interventions to include persons with hearing and speech impairment may be made by providing sign language interpreters at major events such as post/pre-Pride speeches, and by ensuring that videos, and movies at screenings are sub-titled. Be friendly and speak to them – most of them will know how to lip read. Having a small notebook and pen will also help.
5. Assign volunteers to each individual with visual impairment: For persons with visual impairments and disabilities that do not come under the above two categories, inclusion can be done with the help of volunteer assistance. We just need to assign a buddy/volunteer with every individual to walk along and describe the happenings of the pride, and help them navigate tricky terrain (such as potholes).
6. Education on LGBTIQ to persons with disability and vice versa: Do sessions, create videos to educate both the communities about each other. Many persons with disability may never have heard of Pride and many queer persons may never have met a person with disability – so educating both sides is imperative.
7. Volunteer training: Share videos like ‘Awkward No More’ to help volunteers understand what it means to volunteer with persons with disability. Partnering with a disability organization and getting volunteers from there is another idea, where extensive training may not be required.
8. Planning, organizing before the march:
   • It is alright to ask persons with disability to register beforehand for special assistance – to accommodate their need.
   • Make a list of persons who have reached out and shown interest in joining.
   • Talk to each individual about what accommodations are required, how flexible they are for walking short distances for example. Be very clear about what is possible and what is not possible Say NO if you cannot accommodate certain requests (for example pickup from home). Respect persons with disability.
   • They have been navigating their way through an in-accessible world every day, so they can make their decisions on how to participate and would ask for help when required.
9. Accessibility Audit: It would be useful to have step-by-step and turn-by-turn clarity of the pride route beforehand, with distance markers. It will be also good to know from the traffic police about points where traffic will be halted, cross-overs and one-ways. Ideally, an accessibility audit should be done by members of the accessibility team to walk the entire route of the pride to assess bottlenecks and challenge point for accessibility. Document hard to walk or wheelchair inaccessible terrains. Ensure police permission is also taken for the cabs/vehicles. Note specific places where cabs/vehicles cannot pass along the pride (one-ways, small lanes etc.). Create an alternate divergent route for the vehicles to take and join back. Note halt points for water and refreshments – they could be kept same as where persons with disability choose to mount/dismount cabs to walk the pride.

Useful references

1. Education on disability for LGBTQIA members (used to create awareness) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NwbgwwUrsE
2. Education on LGBTQIA+ for persons with disability (used to create awareness) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sy-AaJ98yM8
3. Suggested note on disability in all the communication on the event (translate as needed): “If you are a person with a disability and/or would need special accommodation to participate in this event, please write to us at xyz@abc.com, providing details about your requirements. We work with you to make your participation possible.”

EXPERIENCE AT NAMMA PRIDE 2016 AS A DISABILITY-ACCESSIBLE PRIDE

Namma Pride 2016, held on November 20, was the first Pride in India to be made accessible for persons with disability. The core accessibility team implemented all of the above steps to ensure that it was made accessible. There was also extensive campaigning done in advance to ensure participation of persons with disability in this celebration.

Outcome: Approximately 40 persons with disability participated in the Namma Pride 2016 march and associated events. This included persons with visual impairment, speech and hearing, and locomotor impairment. There were about four people who identified themselves as queer persons with disability. The feedback was extensively positive with many of the persons with disability having this experience for the first time.

Overall, it was a wonderful foray and was much appreciated by all. As always, any new initiative is a journey of progressive realization, and this was no different. There were a few key learning points, which we are sharing so that you can keep this in mind as you build an accessible Pride.

Key learning: 1) Maintain and buffer additional time to assemble and organize the persons with disability contingent (we already had but it tended to spill over). 2) Keep the cabs in the middle of the Pride march, both led and followed by people. If the cabs lead, the cops tended to speed up the whole march by asking cabs to move faster. 3) It is very important to have the Pride route decided well in advance – changes to the route can lead to a lot of chaos.

The team that made this happen

Core Team: Madhumitha Venkataraman, Ritesh Rajani, Naveen Joshi, Vishnu Soman, Vidushi Jayaswal, Vishnu Soman, Ajmal Muheed, Manas Modi, Manisha Shastri

Partnering Organizations: Enable Community, Kick Start Cabs, GiftAbled Foundation, Adarsh College, YUVA

Extended support from: Romal Liasram Singh, Priyank Asha Sukanand, Nakul Sharma

Volunteers: Madhumitha Venkataraman, Ritesh Rajani, Naveen Joshi, Naren Pai, Rishika, Noah D’Mello, Jason Jacob, Dharam Veer, Ranjitha K, Rohan, Vishwajit Singh, Kamlesh Singh

Email madhumitha.venkataraman@gmail.com for more information on this initiative

CONCLUSION

Building accessibility is a journey of progressive realization, so starting small is good and building on it every year, essential. The objective is not necessarily to have hundreds of persons with disability to participate, but to create a Pride where they are welcome to participate. It is very much like when we create an LGBTQ+ inclusive society, the objective is not for everyone to come out but have a safe/welcoming environment where they can choose to be out. Start by reaching out to small circles in the disability community and invite them to the accessible Pride. It is alright to take small steps in the right direction of full inclusion. Let’s create a more inclusive and accessible Pride for everyone. Happy Pride!

July 2016: A team of diversity professionals based in Bengaluru has launched a guide [click here] that Indian employers can use to help make their workplaces inclusive with respect to sexuality and gender identity.

The authors draw on their diverse experience as allies, employees, employers, educators and members of marginalised communities to condense a wealth of wisdom and practical tips into 13 pages of succinct text.  They walk the uninitiated through the rationale for LGBTIQ+ inclusion, basic concepts of gender and sexuality, the cultural and legal context, characteristics of inclusive workplaces, policies and best practices, and links for further reading.

A highlight of this guide is an overview of the essential parts of  Supreme Court’s NALSA ruling on transgender rights, specifically around the right of trans people to self-identify as male, female or third-gender, and non-requirement of surgery or any other medical intervention for legally recognizing transgender identity.

Also useful is the clarification that supporting LGBTQIA+ people will not place an organization in contravention of Section 377, the antiquated sodomy law that criminalizes certain behaviors, not identities or orientations. Section 377 has often been cited as a concern by Indian employers, including Indian branches of multi-national corporations, and has been used to justify inaction in the area of LGBTIQA+ inclusion. Such concerns are unfounded, as this guide makes clear.

Besides the authors’ obvious competencies in the field, the guide has benefited from review  and input by community members and development professionals, including those working in the field of counselling and psycho-social health, and those associated with Good As You, one of India’s longest-running support groups for the community. These insights have led to such vital policy recommendations as:

Extend support, counseling or mentoring benefits to ensure that they are equipped to handle LGBTIQ-specific needs. Situations that might affect the mental well-being of queer employees could be: coming to terms with their sexuality and/or gender identity, coming out to family, handling marriage pressure, relationship issues.

The guide may be downloaded here.

A previous article

It now seems that it is not just alternative narratives that are under threat, but even quotes of ‘standard’ narratives that are being silenced. At the time of writing, On Hinduism by the same author faces recall and pulping. One of the ‘offensive sections’ in the book, as cited by the petitioners (from the report in the Outlook weekly here) is this:  Lakshmana… says, ‘ I don’t like this. The king is perverse, old and debauched by pleasure. What would he not say under pressure, mad with passion as he is? The king referred to in that piece of dialogue is Dasharatha, father of the deified Rama and his brother Lakshmana, the apotheosized paragon of fraternal conduct. The petitioners who apparently treat such deification and apotheosis as undeniable truth, are perhaps shocked at an attribution of such filial irreverence towards Dasharatha, the revered patriarch and head of the archetypal Hindu-Undivided-Family on part of Lakshmana, the foremost of the Ram Bhakts (devotees of Rama). The trouble is, the Sanskrit version of the Ramayana most commonly accepted as the original one, namely the version attributed to the poet-saint Valmiki of uncertain historicity, puts those very words in the mouth of Lakshmana:

Valmiki Ramayana Ayodhya Kanda Sarga 21 Verse 3

C. Rajagopalachari, Indian independence activist, scholar of Indian classics and patron-saint of sorts for the Indian ‘centre-Right’, had no compunctions quoting other verses similarly unflattering to the patriarch, from the same chapter in his well-loved English retelling of the Ramayana, which can be read here. Even your enemies, O Raama, when they look at you begin to love you, but this dotard of a father sends you to the forest. It turns out that Lakshmana doesn’t seem to have been in a mood to stop with verbal barbs. Verse 12 of that very chapter goes “If our father with an evil mind behaves like our enemy with instigation by Kaikeyi. I shall keep him imprisoned with out personal attachment or if necessary, kill him.” This is not Doniger’s Lakshmana speaking, but Valmiki’s Lakshmana, if only those who claim to treat that retelling of the epic as their ‘scripture’ had been paying attention. Both Rajagopalachari and K M Munshi,  founder of the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan which published the former’s Ramayana were in their time considered Hindu stalwarts and respected spokespersons of Hinduism. Those who self-identify as Hindus today, at least those among them who would like to consider themselves literate and liberal, must be gravely concerned about the precipitous fall in the quality of their spokespersons from those endowed with classical scholarship to bumptious demagogues and cultural protection-racketeers who make a mockery of India’s much-vaunted intellectual traditions.

So much for why liberal Hindus, whom I am told constitute a silent majority, must be concerned about the fate of The Hindus and On Hinduism. Why should humanists be concerned about the straitjacketing and suffocation of mythical narratives and retellings? Here’s a snippet from a conversation that might help understand what’s at stake here for anyone who values equity and diversity. In this section of a Tamil video made by members of Orinam, a Chennai-based organization for LGBT advocacy, a participant speaks of how  writings by Devdutt Pattanaik on homosexuality in Indian epics were a useful conversation-starter while coming-out to a straight friend interested in Indian lore. In a report of the Bangalore Pride Walk of 2013 published in the Nirmukta blog, one of the placards is quoted as asking “Our epics do not discriminate, why do we?” Well, it turns out that while the epics by themselves don’t lend themselves to a single discriminatory slogan and may on occasion even supply a humanist slogan, the Doniger-haters’ reading (actually ‘unreading’ and attempted unwriting) of the epics does indeed discriminate. Like the scriptural literalism afflicting the Religious Right in the US (conveniently selectively), what afflicts such ‘defenders-of-the-faith’ in India maybe called an epic litero-clasm, an infliction of iconoclasm on any  literature, however classical, that does not align with the palingenetic myth they are peddling and seeking a monopoly for. Their motto may well be “No listening. No story-telling.“, a more menacing variant of the grudging “Don’t Ask; Don’t Tell.“, and they seek jurisdiction and the last word over every town’s night-life and any bed-time story that departs from their revisionist ‘history’.

Be it Koushal vs Naz,  or Batra vs Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd., such unimaginative and inhuman readings of either Law or Lore, represent different fronts in the same larger struggle. The ‘defenders of the faith’ are ostensibly wielding legal and constitutional means, but relying on the unspoken, implicit and very palpable threat of orchestrated civil unrest. The threat is not vaguely implicit but has been manifested unmistakably in the past, be it a ransacking of an archive when a hagiography was revisited scholastically, or the vandalizing of art galleries when mythical motifs were reimagined. With such an intimidatory history and with colonial-era legal provisions by their side, such custodians of ‘normalcy’ are attempting, and alarmingly appearing to succeed, in an attempt at usurpation of cultural space and disinheriting anyone whom they consider not ‘normal’, of the slightest socio-cultural capital. This cultural disenfranchisement calls for a resolute resistance to enforced dourness and colourlessness with undimmed rainbows, and can begin with something as simple as Iranian youngsters celebrating a ‘pagan’ Nowruz in the face of the Ayatollahs’ strictures.

Additional references:

1a. Calling out selective literalism in Hinduism and Christianity during ‘conciliatory’ arguments with the religious
1b. Traditions of LGBT acceptance in Shramana traditions, notably Jainism
(Ravichander R speaking at Thinkfest 2014, Chennai)

2. Sculptural references to homosexual activity in shrines
(and why such shrines and epics are of interest to humanists)
(S Anand speaking at Thinkfest 2013, Chennai)

This essay was originally posted in the Nirmukta section of the Free Thought blogs.

The workplace occupies significant part of our daily lives. Gone are the days when we used to carry only our heads to work. These days, a work situation requires so much creativity and energy that it demands you in complete form. It is essential for one to take one’s head, heart and needless to mention—physical or ethereal— body! Our sexuality and gender, naturally, follow us to our workplaces.

Putting aside the more advanced aspects of human resource policies around LGBT inclusion such as partner policies and spouse health benefits, I’d like to reflect on the many everyday instances where our genders and sexualities are made to feel left out; or by contrast, picked on. Take, for instance, the office water cooler. While gulping down a tumbler-full, one feels the need to make small talk with one’s co-workers. One cannot help but touch upon topics of market, politics and – everybody’s favourite – relationship status. I have been asked about my non-existent girlfriend so many times now, that I feel obligated to have one just so that those few seconds of futile socializing pass by without choking. Nothing very dreadful for LGBTQ so far, and one’s LGBTQness doesn’t need a place in documents and policies of the firm just for this much. We have learnt well, over the years, to dodge these prying questions.

But, then if you become the outcast for not incessantly talking about girls (speaking for self here, my lesbian and bi women friends can modify suitably), and not being interested in ogling at  every “chick” walking by, you are likely to attract some nasty comments. No, being called gay isn’t nasty. Being called gay nastily is. Because then you are being discriminated against, and you know that the ludicrous thing here is not something you said or did, but your being (or even the notion of your being) gay. Now these jokes and jibes at your expense may or may not make you strong, depending on your mettle, but you definitely don’t deserve this at your workplace. You are fighting enough battles within and out already!

To reduce this struggle for workplace equality to a mere consequence of being in the closet, and exhorting all people to come out, is inappropriate. Coming out has always been, and will always be, a matter best left to each individual’s circumstances. We all get there at our own pace, with or without support, with or without effort. To push sexual minorities to a corner through callous remarks and insinuations, and then expect them to bounce back, knocking down their closet doors and emerging in a flurry of rainbows so that the politically correct response “Oh, you’re Gay! We support you!” can then be activated is rather cruel. There is no need for that kind of pressure, at least not at the workplace where there is already pressure to perform.

Organizations are well within their right to chose their modes and values of their functioning. But it is productive for them in the long run, if they are able to keep people together. A company need not be ostentatiously “gay-friendly” with designated staff sporting ‘ally’ badges and websites celebrating their Gay Employee of the Month, or whatever. A ‘be and let be’ policy is good for starters. What I ask for is sensitization of everybody in the workplace. If  individuals choose to come out as a consequence of this policy then all’s fine and well: we could then go for ‘all homo’ picnics and probably drag along our ‘fag hags’. But it’s paramount that the modern company in India acknowledge that we LGBTQ people are here, visible or not, and that the company wants them here no less (and no more) than anybody else who is as qualified and competent.

Apart from the need to have non-discrimination policies at work, LGBTQ support groups external to the firm have a very important role to play in producing environments of understanding. Public discourse generated by events such as panel discussions, movie screenings,  events that you could take or refer your co-workers to as part of sensitizing them, needs to keep happening. On the flip side, there is very little meaning in treating  non-normative sexuality or gender identity as something flashy and different, and regarding LGBTQ colleagues as a rare or exotic species, in the name of inclusiveness. What we need in the workplace is an atmosphere of continuous and intrinsic inclusiveness that is not contingent on people being out. Such an atmosphere is not created merely by companies jumping on the gay-friendly bandwagon because of commands from headquarters or new policy imposed on a local office by the powers that be. Knowledge, sensitivity and genuine intent to address LGBTQ issues are the needs of the hour. Such inclusion without explosion will surely take some time, and businesses must take it up as a part of their larger inclusion and diversity mandate.

In a nation where persecution of inter-caste couples painfully makes it to the front page everyday, recognition of same-sex partners by organizations is still a matter of wishful thinking. Nonetheless, proper orientation (yes, the one with Powerpoint ppt-s too!) of the leaders of organizations is essential to make every individual more informed and sensitive on LGBTQ issues. We understand that a majority do not know, hence do not understand. Facts and data will work in our favour, if the point below does not:

It has been four years since the historic Naz Foundation judgement decriminalized us. We have four long years of evidence to our credit to say, “Look! The country hasn’t gone to the dogs because of us, as you feared! Has your family structure broken down? Don’t you still live your every day as it pleases you? The only difference is: now, WE have the opportunity to do so too!”.