( FREE ) TO LOVE?

This month is celebrated as PRIDE MONTH all over the world.

June 2020 marks the 50th anniversary of annual LGBTQIA+ Pride traditions.

June was chosen for, LGBTQIA+ Pride Month to commemorate the Stonewall riots.

The Stonewall riots were a series of spontaneous, violent demonstrations by members of the gay community in response to a police raid that began in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City.

LOVE, is defined in uniquely distinct ways, every time, by every other individual, in every new story.

Though those who ever lived the experience of it knew, believed and vouched for one thing collectively, i.e. LOVE IS LOVE.

More often than not there is a constant bewilderment, lack of clarity and information and obviously the lack of education around not just the many pride events held during this month to recognize the impact LGBTQIA+ people have had in the world but also about many other details that go along with the LGBTQIA+ community in our society.

Though, this community is not that a foreign a concept that our society is making it look like. Instead, the ancient Indian history has many texts not just recognizing it as natural but also accepting it with utmost respect and equality.

For instance, Rig-Veda, one of the four canonical sacred texts of Hinduism contains the phrase Vikriti Evam Prakriti. (Sanskrit: विकृतिः एवम्‌ प्रकृति, meaning what seems unnatural is also natural), which some scholars believe recognizes homosexual/transsexual dimensions of human life, like all forms of universal diversities.

Even after the Supreme Court of India, repealed Section 377 there is a long road that we need to walk down a long road together, so that one day we coexist in a space where, nobody has to ‘come out of the closet’, one will just say that I am in love. And that will be all that matters.

So the first step ahead would be actively educating ourselves and spreading awareness about the LGBTQIA+ population. And here is an attempt to take that first crucial step towards clarity, information and acceptance.

UNDERSTANDING LGBTQIA+

Understanding these terms is essential to,

• Ensure sensitivity toward LGBT individuals.

• Promote cultural competence among the healthcare providers and society at large.

LESBIAN

The term usually refers to a woman whose primary sexual and affectionate orientation is towards other woman.

GAY

This term is used in some cultural settings to represent men who are attracted to men in a romantic, erotic and/or emotional sense.

BISEXUAL

Bisexual or BI is a person who experiences sexual, romantic, physical, and/or spiritual attraction to more than one gender, not necessarily at the same time, in the same way, or to the same degree.

TRANSGENDER

A person whose sense of personal identity or gender does not correspond to the sex they were assigned at birth, or does not conform to gender stereotypes. Sexual orientation varies and is not dependent on gender identity.

For more clarity on the underlined terms, please refer to the link to our Instagram post https://www.instagram.com/p/CAZ_BlNgZ6z/

QUEER and QUESTIONING

QUEER: A multi-faceted word that is used in different ways and means different things to different people- attraction to people of many genders, don’t conform to cultural norms around gender and/or sexuality. A general term referring to all non-heterosexual people.

QUESTIONING: An individual who is unsure of and/or exploring their gender identity and/or sexual orientation.

INTERSEX: An umbrella term that describes people born with any of 30 different variations in sex characteristics including chromosomes, gonads, sex hormones or genitals.

ASEXUAL: A broad spectrum of sexual orientations generally characterized by feeling varying degrees of sexual attraction or a desire for partnered sexuality.

+: This includes identities such as pan sexual, bi curious, gender fluid, or those for whom we do not have established terminology yet.

ALLY: Ally-ship is the action to working to end oppression through support of, and as an advocate with and for, a group other than one’s own. An ally is someone who confronts hetero sexism, anti- LGBTQIA+ biases; one who believes that hetero sexism, homophobia, bi phobia and trans phobia are social justice issues.

WHATEVER YOU IDENTIFY AS BE AN ALLY OF LOVE.

BEING A LGBTQIA+ IN INDIA

India is the land of diversity and hence very often, one might see majority standing on different poles, when talking about the acceptance and representation of LGBTQIA+ community in homeland.

A tribunal recently ruled that in educated urban India, the only danger to lesbians in India is from their own families. And it comes as no surprise as suicides by lesbian women in India make headlines year after year. On the other hand there is widespread practice of family members forcing LGBT people to undergo some Corrective therapies forcing them to stay in psychiatric wards after they chose to come out.

PSYCHOLOGICAL CHALLENGES FACED BY THE MEMBERS OF LGBTQIA+ :

Ours is a society with a rigid set of social-cultural expectations and norms.

Coming out in such rigid scenarios is all the more emotionally unsettling and the lack of support from family and/or community can prove to be a big blow to the mental health of LGBT people.

• Isolation

• Pressure to conform

• Depression,

• Thoughts of suicide

• Psychosomatic diseases.

• Deep distrust (not just with respect to the family members but also of the medical community.)

• Mindless mockery and bullying is a behavior that can deeply affect many belonging to the community.

These are just a few of many mental and emotional health issues that the members of the community are subjected to.

WHY IS ACCEPTANCE THAT BIG AN ISSUE ?

The very fundamental reason that seeds rejection of even normal concepts and issues like love, relationships, sex etc. is that parents in Indian culture have a hard time accepting their children as sexual beings.

• Thwarting the discussions around sexual and gender identities.

• Wrapping any and every information concerning sex in shame.

• Hushing and silencing children on any or every other question they ask, that makes the responsible adults uncomfortable.

This absolute absence of open communication is the very obvious, very ‘visibly there’ reason from where all the unnecessary guilt and confusion begins towards the acceptance of something that is nothing but NATURAL.

SUPPORTING LGBTQIA+ :

• Each step forward towards a better and stronger future starts from home.

• Parents need to learn to listen and let their children open up about difficult issues.

• TV and movies could prove to be the most effective tools in redefining the roles and attitudes of families in rural India as they are accessible to even the rural populations of India.

• Schools and colleges all over India should take up institutionally approved LGBT activism in the form of gender and sexuality clubs.

• Students must be taught about their basic human rights and the tools available to protect those rights.

• Students must know about the legal frameworks and options to challenge these frameworks.

• Bridging the gap between academic knowledge and everyday behavior, for instance, most educated citizens support alternative sexuality and gender identities, though when it comes to day-to-day behavior, most often shy away from questioning the stereotypes.

• Allies. Questioning and putting a pause to a series of oppressive behavior, be it rampant cracking of Homophobic jokes or unnecessary bullying at schools, colleges, work place or the community.

• At last, the role of government is that it effectively put in effort towards the upliftment of LGBTQIA+ community and curbing the oppression of LGBTQIA+ rights.

There can be no better way of creating a truly inclusive society in future than to prepare the future generation and the future leaders of the country, today. To make them aware about human rights and believe in the LGBT rights are the proactive ways to ensure that there is no gap between the theory and their practice of it today for a safer and more inclusive society tomorrow that values diversity and accepts the uniqueness of fellow citizens.

We at SafeRealm are a team of certified and LGBTQIA+ friendly mental health workers.

Anything that’s on your mind lately that you would want to ask, discuss or talk about? We are right here!

Get in touch with us :

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