Dec 6th, 2012

Today marks the first anniversary of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s historic speech on LGBT rights at the United Nations. On Dec 6th 2011, Hillary Clinton declared “Gay rights are human rights, and human rights are gay rights” and urged countries across the world to end discrimination against LGBT people and secure their dignity and rights.

On the first anniversary, Orinam.net is honored to bring you the full Tamil translation of Clinton’s historic speech. Our special thanks to translator and Orinam.net Co-editor Shri and reviewers Poongothai Balasubramaniam and Madhan.

ஹிலரி கிளிண்டன் ஐ. நா சபையில் வழங்கிய மனித உரிமைகள் பற்றிய உரை

Oh beloved son!
I, your mother, have something to ask
Carrying you in my womb was no easy task
I ask not for the sun or the moon
I, your mother, seek a simple boon

Don’t tell your father who you really are
Your aunt shouldn’t know whom you long for
Hide from your uncle that you have a man in your life
Let your brother-in-law not know, your in-laws are not from a wife

I don’t want the world to find out my son is queer
I can’t deal with the ridicule, hate and fear
Don’t put your father through this ordeal by fire
It took all of our lives and struggles to reach here

Oh, beloved son!
I, your mother, have something to ask
Carrying you in my womb was no easy task
I ask not for the sun or the moon
A dutiful son will not deny a mother her boon

—
But, oh mother!
Even Kaikeyi’s boon was only for fourteen years exile
But what you ask of me is a lifetime of lies so vile!

Transcreated from the Tamil original by the author with input from Kinsey3 and Tilak.

Rosanna Flamer-Caldera has been active in the struggle for queer rights in Sri Lanka and internationally since 1999. She was a founding member of Women’s Support Group (1999), the only organization for lesbians, bi women and trans people in Sri Lanka; and Equal Ground (2004), a mixed LGBTQ organization in Sri Lanka. In this exclusive interview with Orinam.net, Rosanna shares her views on the most pressing issues faced by the Sri Lankan queer community.

Currently what are the top priorities for LGBTIQ rights groups in Sri Lanka?

Decriminalization, sensitizing the masses to accept and understand LGBTIQ persons, sensitizing the LGBTIQ community to understand and accept themselves, addressing violence against the LGBTIQ community.

What do you think is the more promising route to obtain rights for LGBTQ people of Sri Lanka — legislative, legal, or ballot?

Legislative/legal yes, but even if the law changed today, acceptance by society will not. So we do have to sensitize the people, society at large and make them understand and accept us.

What legislative and judicial measures are LGBTQ rights groups in Sri Lanka advocating?

We are advocating for the decriminalization of homosexuality here and asking for protection under the law.

Is there any geographical variation within Sri Lanka in terms of visibility and acceptance for LGBTQ people?

Of course there is – urban areas tend to have more out and open LGBTIQ persons whilst the rural areas tend to have a more hidden population of LGBTIQ. And again of this variation, lesbian and bisexual women and FTM transmen are more invisible than gay and bisexual men and MTF transwomen in both settings.

How does the Sri Lankan media cover LGBTQ issues?

Sometimes quite badly and sometimes very well. It all depends on the media. By and large, we find the Sinhala newspapers do tend towards homophobic and sensational negative articles about the LGBTIQ community. English newspapers give us wide positive publicity on the one hand and then turn around and trash us in the next instance. The Tamil publications have really not covered the topic as much and there is no clear pattern of homophobia with them – they tend to either not cover or remain silent, which I feel is better than a newspaper publishing trash for the sake of increasing their readership.

Does any specific gender, linguistic group, religious group, or class face harsher challenges within the Sri Lankan LGBTQ community?

Like everywhere, Muslim groups tend to be the harshest and the most conservative. Having said that we do have many allies in the Muslim community. The Tamil community too is very conservative compared to the Sinhala community. However, when we do our outreach and sensitizing programs, the people we sensitize and speak with are more accepting once they understand what we are all about.

What are the problems lesbians and bisexual women face in Sri Lanka?

They are mostly invisible; they face forced heterosexual marriages, violence from family members, imprisonment (by family), ostracism by family and society, unwarranted sexual advances by men, mental and physical harassment, and so on. Suicide is also high amongst lesbians and bisexual women due to families tearing apart couples and forcing the women into heterosexual marriages or preventing them from being together.

What is the visibility of FTM people?

Not that high. Most FTMs have a hard time adjusting in society and are often ridiculed and harassed, sometimes leading to violence against them.

What sort of crisis response exists for individuals?

Equal Ground has a counseling hotline and a crisis management unit which deal with issues that arise. We evaluate the problem and respond accordingly.

What is needed in terms of support to individuals?

More funds! As an organization we can only do so much. Our biggest problem is accessing funds.

What is the position of the law in Sri Lanka on same-sex relationships?

Under the Sri Lanka Penal Code Section 365A both lesbians and gay men are criminalized.

Has the involvement of Equal Ground in broader causes such as tsunami disaster response impacted the perception of the organization?

I believe it is our work ethic and our professionalism that counts now, actually. In some areas, yes, the work we did during the post Tsunami period still evokes good feelings in people in the area.

What role do you see for transnational solidarity, e.g. From India or other South Asian neighbours in support of the LGBTQ movement in Sri Lanka?

I believe that regionally, we must stand united and fight for justice and equality together. The decisions and gains in LGBTIQ policies and law reverberate and we see people actually having a dialogue and thinking of things in a different way – if India or Nepal or Pakistan can do it, why can’t we? I also think there should be more avenues of collaboration and participation in order to further the cause.

Interesting article written in 2003 by Sandip Roy, former editor of Trikone Magazine, on how LGBT Indians and other South Asians have been using the internet to socialize, organize, and form communities. Excerpts can be read online as part of the book Mobile cultures: new media in queer Asia By Chris Berry, Fran Martin, Audrey Yue from Duke University Press.

Our lives are about silences. Our lives—as trans, as khush, as gender queer, as shiva-shakti, as bisexuals, as lesbians, and gay people –are about silences. The silence of knowing and of not-knowing. Of acceptance and of denial. The silences of our families and communities about all of who we are. And then there are the silences within us–we are both silent and silenced by fear and by love: fear of our family and love of our family that holds us all in thrall.

I came to the US exactly 25 years ago. I arrived a Tamilian, a Brahmin, a Feminist, a divorced woman—each of these descriptors invoking a particular gestalt. In the years that have followed, I became the wrong “Indian,” an East Indian, a third world citizen, a woman of color, an Indian American, and most recently a S. Asian. I was a Non-Resident Alien, and now am a Resident one; and when I go across spaces to what I still call “home,” I have become a compact, Americanized acronym: NRI—Non-Resident Indian. My personal story is not important except as it gestures to those larger social, political and cultural landscapes that shape and reshape our identities—and the constant making and remaking of our self-markers.

And of what exactly are we afraid to speak? I ask all of you to look at me: in the US, I am constructed quite simply as S. Asian, and in one of the following slots: LGBT. But my identity as a member of Khush is neither simple nor singular. Because to ourselves we are NOT S. Asian: we are Sri Lankan, Nepali, Bhutanese, Bangladeshi, Burmese, Afghani, Iranian, Malaysian, Pakistani, and Indian; we are Muslim, Sikh, Zoroastrian, Parsi, Buddhist, Hindu; we are from Bihar and Punjab (across borders) and Kashmir and Assam and Dacca and Khulna and Northwest Frontier Province an Jaffna and Trincomalee; and as if this were not quite enough we are chettiar and sunni and gajjar and brahmin and sanketi and burgher and moor and malay; and we are Tamilian from Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka; and we can be Mirpuris and Saraswats. And of course we are FOBs and ABCDs and ABCDEFGs.

Why do I invoke this laundry list of identities?
I want to suggest that these are the unspoken histories of our identities as Khush—the hidden freight of our silences. And these shape and inform how we think of gender and therefore of sexuality and sexual orientation. Our understandings of our selves as men/women, male/female—from clothing to hair to appearance to emotion to attitude to desire and attraction ––is a dance at the intersections of all these multiple identities. In simple terms: we must understand our Khush identities in the context of our religion, caste, region, language, and geographies.

Our gendered selves then are deeply cultural—and so are our sexual selves. After all, we cannot and should not understand our sexual selves apart from our gendered selves. And yet, by and large, much of what I speak about here is irrelevant and tangential to the US LGBT context, and remains subterranean to our community identity as we try to fit our many selves into the neat and angular acronym: LGBT.

And so here are two moments in time: My niece who goes to grad school here came recently to stay. She has known me since the age of 2 as “mami”- the wife of her ‘mama’ —and for over twenty years I have been her favorite mami. There was nothing in her worldview or upbringing to prepare her for the transitioning of her favorite mami to “a queer mami.” And after long conversations of anger, pain, loss, and laughter, she could re-admit me into her life as her queer and favorite mami.

Another moment: a young man in the LGBT community whom I met several years ago as a fellow community organizer, started to call me “kaki. He was in search of a kaki in a lgbt world filled it seems with just friends, boyfriends, exes and khushgirls. And just recently he performed pranam for me–that ancient Hindu gesture seeking my blessings.

Two different moments. Moments suspended in time and space. Moments of healing when those competing identities—always held apart, always put asunder-came together. And I could be “mami” and “queer”, a “lesbian” and “kaki” all at the same time.

The lives of heterosexuals are all about ANDs, not ORs. For over twenty years, I have been trying to “come out” in the US –as a Tamilian (whose cultural and political ethos was often marginalized in the national politics of that time); AND as a Brahmin (shaped by the anti-brahmin rhetorics and politics which gave me a particular sense of my privilege and put my marginalizations in context); AND as a feminist shaped as much by Sivasankari (a Tamil writer) as Virginia Woolf; AND as a woman married to a man who chose to walk in the queer world; AND as an activist and an academic. The US however demanded a somewhat uni-dimensional coming out: a singular, lean lesbian.

For those of us who live at the intersections of several identities, we often struggle to find a space we can call “home.” And often it seems that home is in those gaps. Those fissures. Those fragments. Despite our theoretical emphasis on intersections, we live in a binary world that makes our multiple identities oppositional. Conflicted. Competing.

Moments of simultaneity and wholeness are perhaps a gift in any world. And the few moments that I have felt “whole,” when I can be Brahmin&queer&tamilian&feminist & wear a sari & jeans & dance to the blues as much as to the Bhangra,—such moments have been rare and few; and when I think about it, these would not be remarked upon in the hetero world at all, where such togetherness is an everyday, lived reality. And yet, in our world, it is infrequent. And it should be our right to have—as individuals and as a community.

And my career—such as it has been in the US—has followed the same trajectory: the US academy wanted me to be post-colonial, rather than a teacher of African American literature; wished for me to be international rather than see me as a US feminist of color; and did not give me authority to cross disciplinary boundaies. The injunction to teach who we are rather than what we know, the continued push to color-code and fit into neat boxes of disciplinary expertise and specialties have dogged my various attempts at teaching. And so here I am: an accidental administrator. And so it is not so very odd at all that I should now be working –a Tamilian Brahmin woman at a Catholic/Jesuit school –doing LGBT work—that very paradox offering me the most creative space yet to re-make myself as madisaar dyke.

In the decade that I have spent in these varied communities, I have come to learn this as the deepest lesson: that there is NO LGBT community out there really. It is our particular challenge in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender communities—it is our particular challenge that we must all BUILD community even as we seek to find our selves. Unlike most other groups that are built around racial, ethnic, religious identities—we in the LGBT world must constitute our communities even as we struggle to define our own identities—and this can prove arduous, difficult, contrary, and be plain exhausting.

The variegated diversities of our communities means that our shared spaces can be the fault-lines or they can be the bridges as we try to hew home out of these fragments; and I have not even started to itemize the laundry list of identities when we consider that lean slashed US acronym: A slash PI (A/PI). As A slash PI LGBT we are often invisible to ourselves and to others in our diversity —as we are asked to fit into the US demand for a monochromatic understanding of racial differences. And we can not begin to be part of those national conversations until and unless we can first address these issues among ourselves.

Most of us here are in voluntary groups—we are not registered organizations in any form or fashion, and yet we are often called upon to function as if we are. And this tension between who we are, who we are perceived to be, and who we perceive ourselves to be has been both generative of the best we can be, as it has also been deeply divisive and restrictive.

So I want to use this moment to CALL OUT to our selves—to hold ourselves accountable to each other and for each other—because we are the community we seek to build and to find, and we are each responsible for and capable of building this community. So to all those who come seeking for Khush (LGBT group in DC), or APIQS (Asian Pacific Islander Queer Sisters) or AQUA (Asian Queers United for Action)—I want to say : there is no aqua, or apiqs or khush apart from YOU. We have to be that which we want to find. And that is the mystery and the paradox of our community work.

And that is why I think our places of coming out need to be spaces of coming together—of all of who we are and who we can be. And creating such feminist spaces is about making our universe large—so that such competing and conflicted binaries can come together as shimmering, shining possibilities. Each moment making possible the next.

Despite the existence of desi queer collectives and communities here in DC, the responses and reactions of many Americans (both white and black people) to the visible presence of a queer person coming from India (me, in this case) have been a wee bit strange for me. As long as they assume I am a queer from here (the US), the conversation and their interest in talking to me goes one way. The moment they come to know that I am an out-queer living in India, everything changes. Sometimes it feels like a healthy interest, on their part, in knowing how it is to be queer and out in some other cultural, political, religious space. Some other times, they quickly conflate the images and news of punishment and execution of homosexual people in west Asian countries together with their general, relative ignorance about the East  in total, and suddenly I am a whole other person for them.

One person even suggested that a continued US presence in that area will help to kill off fundamentalism and make this easy for you all! First, I really saw in my mind’s eye all Asian countries losing borders, melting and becoming a huge blob that he could conveniently call that area! Secondly, it was a very confusing argument for me: that a queer-hating government’s deplorable attempts at ravaging Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan only in the interests of access to oil resources, can even be validated as something that will prove to be easy on homosexual people in the long run. That opinion was twisted at so many places that it sent me on a dizzy spell! The issue of homosexuality, freedom, war, plundering, imperialism, coercive thrusting of one brand of democracy etc. were all so generously conflated into one single statement that it left me speechless for a while as to which one I take issues with first.

Another interesting experience I have had is when I become the quintessentially exotic Other: dancer, Indian, queer. I exist in this very objectified space for some people especially after performances. Dancing, in itself, is an exercise in vulnerability. To put one’s (gendered, sexed, coloured) body out there in that space and move in ways that call attention to it are, for me, moments when I willingly make myself vulnerable, not to physical abuse, but vulnerable to gaze, identity-framing, and objectification. Then some of them want to know some specifics. If I am Hindu or Muslim? Since I am Hindu, some of them try to know where I stand vis-a-vis the Kamasutra and Khajuraho temples.

The only stand I really have vis-a-vis these two is that I have partly read a cheap (unillustrated!) edition of the Kamasutra and I have visited the Khajuraho temples!

However, without trying to be so obsessively anti-Orientalist, I try to make use of these knowledges (if you can call them that), to talk a bit about the positions that different cultural traditions take towards sexuality. By being hyper-sensitive about how I am perceived, I do not want to lose making at least part of my position clear to such people . My engagement with cultural theories should not only enable me to talk to academics and other people who do theory, but empower me to deal with undeniably concrete realities when I am faced with them. I cannot walk out from such situations saying that people don’t understand that my identity is a free-floating signifier and they are doing huge disservice to the world of discourses! But it does baffle me when I cannot, somehow, afford to be half as ignorant as they are: ‘You don’t know who Mormans are?’ ‘You don’t know what Quesedilla is? what Halloween is?’ ! The expectation of knowing is very unequal.

One day, I ended up going to a meeting of the lgbt chapter of a widely-known human rights organization in DC, with an American friend. There were five people there, including me! My sense of pride in my support group in Chennai and its meetings grew manifold! In that meeting, for this one guy who appeared to me the group chairman or something, I did not exist! We sat around a table in Starbucks. I was like one foot away from him. But I simply did not exist. I am glad he did not place his heavy bag on me thinking that the chair was unoccupied! My friend sensed it, got annoyed and said ‘Aniruddh, why don’t you tell us about the campaign against the anti-sodomy law in India?’ I still did not exist for him, hence I also did not have a voice! The other two were interested and asked questions.

A few days hence, while walking back to my apartment after a late rehearsal, I was waiting at the traffic lights to cross. A very loud black man singled me out for harassment! He walked behind me two blocks yelling, ‘Hey! Are you Paki? You muslim asian? Are you terrorist? You gonna blow up ma place? etc! I felt like I was walking under a particularly unwanted spotlight in that mixed neighbourhood. At the human rights organization meet, there was an attempt at invisibilizing and here in this incident on the road, I was super-visible as something I am not. In this man’s ignorance, I ended up being all that threatens America.

I am not simply complaining. What I am saying is that, I begin to feel that even when one travels for the first time somewhere, that romantic sense of happy anonymity that I used to believe in, is not really there. Perhaps it existed in those times when communities really lived in complete ignorance about one another and occasional travellers (like Hieun Tsang or Fa Hien or Marco Polo) operated as windows to cultural exchange. Now, in spite of the so-called information explosion online, on TV, etc., what we have is not so much as awareness as it is some funny, a priori knowledge about you that precedes you where you go. You don’t really get to go somewhere just as you, hoping that no one knows you, you don’t know anyone. People sort of already know you in a million different ways, most of which constitute a type, and they either verify you against that prototype or simply take you to be that. Even when you concede ignorance about them, the concession becomes one-way sometimes.

It is in these moments that I have been able to arrive at significant cultural understandings. Not about some specific culture, but in terms of ‘difference’,’Other’,’perception of the Other’,’ignorance’,’unevenness of that ignorance’ etc. It is in the face of these realities that my theory and politics have had to play out. I have found my engagement with theory [I mean cultural theory(-ies)] very empowering. I now find this engagement much more interesting and productive than a battle of theories that I often engage in.

An after-thought: I want to say that I am not positing, or subscribing to, a false binary of Theory and Reality or Practice. However, I have come to make a distinction between theorizing simply as a stimulating intellectual exercise and theorizing as a liberatory practice. By liberatory,I mean something that inserts that zone of self-reflexivity between experience and response. It gives a zone to move in where what comes under scrutiny is not just the experience but also one’s sense of one’s self.

This post was written originally in Oct 2007 for Pass the Roti on the Left Hand Side.