At the time of writing this article, two women’s photos have been widely publicized in the Kerala media, described as lesbians and accused of involvement in drug deals and sex trafficking. Although these women deny a romantic relationship, and vehemently oppose the other accusations, they fight for the right to live together as companions in the face of opposition from their families. Recently an activist friend lost her flat for sheltering these women, partly as a result of the media publicity; and the women themselves struggle to find the housing and employment they require to live together independently...

As I reflect upon Sahayatrika, as an attempt to develop a support network for lesbian and bisexual women in Kerala, I grapple with questions about the advantages and pitfalls of visibility. The increasing media representations and visibility on the subjects of lesbians and other sexuality minorities exists alongside deep-rooted prejudice and social hostility; and for those of us trying to develop a sexual minority politics in this state (and for those who are not, but still effected by its consequences) we must think about how to negotiate the future. As someone who was fundamentally involved in designing and implementing this project, I propose in this article to reflect upon what Sahayatrika was and was not, what it achieved in such a situation and what it didn’t. It is hoped that the experience of Sahayatrika might provide some lessons and points to ponder for further struggles and endeavours.

I. Introduction

Sahayatrika Project was problematic by almost every indices of political correctness.

It was a political initiative that was made possible through foreign funding - in our most active period, we operated through a ten-month grant from an international agency concerned specifically with sexuality minority issues. It was coordinated by a non-resident Indian (myself) whose major life experiences and political experiences were with gay/lesbian communities in the west - a profoundly different scenario from both the emerging sexuality minority activism in India, and the cultural specificities of "queer" life in Kerala. Sahayatrika itself came to be perceived as representing a community and a movement (one tabloid newspaper estimated our organisation membership as being 1000-women strong!) when in fact our contacts with women were sometimes tenuous and fleeting. And this tenuous community had an invisible spokeswoman with a fake name and dubious identity - "Devaki Menon"- a pseudonym which sometimes represents myself and sometimes Sahayatrika workers collectively.

If at all Sahayatrika has been successful in its efforts to support women-loving-women in Kerala and to raise awareness about their marginalization, this is above all because it sought to address the needs of a real and living—though mostly hidden-- population. In this paper, I use terms like "lesbian and bisexual," "women-loving-women," and "women with same-sex attractions" to cover a whole range of existences, from those who call themselves "lesbians," to those who’ve still never heard of the word. There are women who maintain relationships, women who suppress their orientations and get married, and women who live in isolation from others like who are like them. There are women who commit suicide, and there are women who survive.

My own involvement with Sahayatrika was rooted in my experiences as a sexuality minority in another country, and in my consciousness of friends in Kerala who were struggling. And maybe Kerala itself was ripe for another social experiment. Newspaper stories about lesbian suicides had been reported in press for several years, and a handful of people sought to draw attention to this. Some renegade feminists and social activists were also, controversially, supporting marginalized sexuality issues like sex workers rights and committed to assisting any emerging sexuality minority movements. Moreover, all over India, especially in the urban centres, there was increased activism and visibility by queer groups, who sought for the recognition of sexuality minority rights as legitimate social issues.

The cynical might say that the publicity that Sahayatrika has received has also been propelled by the commodification and hyper-sexualization of lesbian identity, especially as its been constructed by tabloid papers, internet porn, blue films, and other aspects of popular culture and media. And this is also true. Actually any sexuality minority group (or individual) in Kerala will be subjected to a certain type of sexualization and harassment upon entry into the public sphere— and in the case of women-loving-women this tends to collude with already existing gender dynamics of violence and control. As I suggested earlier, I hope in this paper to explore how those of us trying to develop a lesbian politics or sexuality minority politics can negotiate these tensions, as we strive to become social, political, and sexual subjects and defy our own objectification.

II. Paradoxes of visibility and identity

The major goals of Sahayatrika were (1) to create a support network for women with same-sex attractions and to ensure that counselling and advocacy were available to them, (2) to document the marginalization of lesbian/bisexual women in Kerala, through incidence of suicide and other human rights abuses, and (3) to raise public awareness about the issues faced by women-loving-women and other sexuality minorities, through talks, workshops, and media publicity. We offered support services to women who contacted us through letter writing, email and a telephone helpline; and we are conducting a series of fact-findings based on reports of lesbian suicide that have been appearing in local newspapers for the past few years.

The experience of working for Sahayatrika in Kerala has been very different from that of lesbian groups in the urban centres of India. Sahayatrika isn’t a lesbian group in its own right, unlike some groups in other cities; instead it is a helping organization that tries to facilitate the development of a loose network of women. But we have contact with a diversity of women which may differ from the largely urban, middle class/ upper class make up of lesbian groups in other parts. Our Sahayatrikas come from Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Dalit and Adivasi communities, in occupations ranging from school teachers to rubber tappers, from business women to house wives. Our core support team is comprised of women claiming different orientations and identities; and we have a broader base of support from different activists and organisations who try to help us in different ways.

Our work has required a constant negotiation between the greater awareness and recognition that can be achieved through the public sphere, and the need for safety and privacy, both for the women we work for and for ourselves. The social conditions of living and working for sexuality rights in Kerala in fact create a series of paradoxes with regards to visibility and identity. Thus we have a publicly recognized organisation with no visible spokesperson; and a dependency on and engagement with the same media which creates more dangers for us. And in our attempts to create greater understanding we must negotiate with a popular culture which simultaneously obsesses with lesbian identity and at time same time tries to deny its existence.

Our efforts to create supportive spaces for women to communicate demonstrate some of the advantages and disadvantages of visibility. Positive media coverage has so far been the most effective way to let women know about Sahayatrika; the majority of women approach us after reading about us, or being refered by someone else who has. To date, over 80 women have contacted our organisation through telephone, letters, email, and word of mouth; and we have done follow-up or support work with at least 25 women, through telephone or personal meetings. But for every one genuine letter or phone call we receive from a woman, we receive three or four contacts from men. While a small portion of these contacts are from gay/bisexual men (whom we support in solidarity) or from genuine well-wishers, a majority are sexual harassment calls, writers or callers sharing obscenities or sexual fantasies, or trying to use our service to arrange for sex or to meet a genuine "lesbian."

The invisibility of women-loving-women in daily life is countered by constructions of the "lesbian" in the popular imagination; and a proportion of our callers seem to understand a lesbian to be, not a woman with same-sex attractions but instead a woman who’ll have sex with anyone. And our efforts to create safe, women-centred spaces are at risk of being overwhelmed by male sexual harassment/ desire. So we don’t give out our office space address or real names to initial contacts, and we take measures to protect the confidentiality of the women who approach us.

There are lesbian and bisexual women in Kerala who don’t need a Sahayatrika, who prefer to be silent supporters, or approach this organisation with wariness. Some women feel that to associate with us openly might jeopardize a relationship, job, or position in family/ society. There is also an argument that increased lesbian visibility takes away safe spaces from women, placing public suspicion on both hidden lesbian relationships and close friendships between women. And yet the women who contact us speak of their relief in knowing they’re not alone, and tell stories of isolation, family violence, gender confusions, suicide attempts…

The women who contact Sahayatrika are located in cities and villages throughout Kerala, and more often than not they are living with families or husbands, and contacting us secretly.

Because of the limitations to mobility that they face, as women who must answer to families, and sometimes because of a reluctance to become visible, most are unable to contact our office or attend a meeting. So Sahayatrika workers go to their locations and meet them when possible, and maintain contact through letters and phone. Recently we have also been making connections with women-loving-women who less willing or able to hide, and who strive to live independently or with their partners. But this has posed a different set of problems, which I’ll speak about later.

If political mobilization is linked to people coming together in a group, especially around a shared identity, then we cannot say that there is a self-identified lesbian/ bisexual women’s movement in Kerala yet. For the time being, both the logistics of meeting as a collectivity and the dangers of visibility work against this. Even a group like Vaathil, which works for all sexuality minority rights, is not an identity-based group but open to everyone; as such, it gives space for queer people to choose when, where and if we "come out."

But sometimes seeing is believing. In the absence of visible lesbian bodies there has been the tendency to negate lesbian existence. Thus when we first tried to raise lesbian suicides as a political issue, a common response was to denial: many people insisted these reports were another media sensationalism, and that these deaths must be due to poverty, sex rackets, anything but same-sex love. And now as both positive and negative representations of lesbians begin proliferate in the public sphere, there is a constant demand for us to produce these lesbian bodies, either as political spokeswomen who are willing to place their sexual identities before the tribunal of Kerala public opinion, or as the objects of research, journalism, activism. The time may be coming when more women-loving-women in Kerala choose to be visible. But in the present situation it is as likely, as the recent media furor indicates, that the women involved won’t have a choice about it.

III. Bearing Witness: Voices from the Margins

Working for Sahayatrika, we have been privileged to receive a great many written testimonies of women-loving-women in Kerala, who survive in the margins, defying a heteronormative and patriarchal social order. The stories I share here come from the women who write to us, though all names have been changed and quotes are paraphrased from the original letters. These narratives bear witness to some of the challenges and ordeals faced by a resisting but invisible population.

The letters don’t speak only of sexual victimization and marginalization; sometimes they are also an assertion and celebration of lesbian existence. I still remember the first letter we got from a woman in our post box, with a green kathakali face drawn on its front page and the words "Express yourself" [English] written across the top. Or the young lesbian couple from working class backgrounds who wrote us asking to help them to live together; across the bottom of their letter they wrote "Love is great!" [English] in big letters, an affirmation of their same sex love. Or the woman-loving-woman in her forties, married with children, who write to assure us that "love has no age limits." Some women letter-writers wanted to help in the organisation, offering money or assistance, and sometimes they sent us news clippings about lesbian issues. A student writing for the first time told us she had talked about Sahayatrika in her classes, as well as lesbianism. There are other women-loving-women in her classes, she wrote, who don’t dare to contact us.

All of the women who’ve written us must contend with the institution of marriage and compulsory heterosexuality. A small proportion of our letters come from older women, up to their mid-forties, who are often married and still trying to create space for their same-sex desires. Some women manage to maintain same-sex relationships after marriage or even to negotiate an understanding with their husbands; but others are less satisfied. For example one woman who was married from a young age writes that she "hates family life"; she wants to live with a woman companion. Her family did not take into consideration her resistance to marriage; and now she feels trapped in a partnership in which she is unable to have sex with her husband.

The majority of our letters from women have come from a younger generation, in their early twenties or late teens, who often express an awareness that they would be pressured to marry in upcoming years. These women struggle with issues of depression and isolation. One 24 year old who writes "one of greatest tragedies in life is to be married," says that her parents are forcing her. She is afraid of the male species, and furthermore in love with a girl. Another computer science student writes that she thinks she’s homosexual and dislikes sex with men; but all her friends are straight so she can’t disclose her desires to them. She finds it "difficult to endure a single day," and can’t concentrate on her studies.

Many women who are having same-sex relationships yearn for the social legitimacy and acceptance that is given to heterosexual marriage. For example, a young woman whose family and community know about her five year relationship with a woman her age, asks if its possible for two women to be legally married. She writes that the couple "doesn’t want to elope or run away" but instead "want to live in our own place with respect without people gazing gluttonously at us." However for the time being she and her partner are ostracized in the community, as "Society doesn’t understand us, nor the depth of our love."

Often women who attempt to live together will have to choose between their partners and their families/ communities. For example, "Sunitha" tells the story of she and her partner, who left Kerala for another state in order to be together. Their relationship started while they were students and although in the following years Sunitha tried to change her "homosex nature" she couldn’t; she discovered that she needed her friend to love her fully. When her partner’s family came to know about their relationship and tried to police the young women’s phone calls and letters, the pair found work in a neighbouring state and ran away.

However Sunitha remains torn between having to choose between her lover and her family. She describes her family as worried about where she had gone, and sad that she had such a relationship. At one point the couple decided that they had given enough problems to their families, so they would consciously separate; but they were unable to stay apart. So the women continue to live together, but Sunitha agonizes about the ways in which her decision effects her family. Who’ll help her in her own age, she questions, and how will society view her? And how will her sister’s children view her, or her other siblings?

Women who are unable to find partners face different sort of problems. We have several women calling us regularly, for example, who are grieving for the loss of a partner who was forced to marry. Others face the difficulties of finding reciprocal love with a woman in a hetero-patriarchal society. One student writes about how after sending a love letter to her friend, the girl mocked her, and showed the letter to others. Another expresses the frustrations of being woman-loving in an apparently straight world: "I sometimes feels discomfort when my friends come close. I want to say words of love to them, but know that they won’t reciprocate."

At the extreme, women wrote of suicide attempts, self-harm, desire for sex-change operation or the desire to change their orientation. A 23 year old wrote to us that, in the past two years, she has understood that she has the "disease" known as homosexuality. She has always felt close to women and while studying, was painfully attached to female friends. After a sexual relationship with a female schoolmate who later rejected her, "Reshme" tried to commit suicide twice but still can’t forget her friend. Now she struggles with the knowledge that her father is trying to arrange her marriage, and asks to meet other women like her.

Another young woman from northern Kerala expresses similar feelings of depression and isolation. "Ayesha" says she understood her "nature" from the age of 7; "in the beginning I thought that everyone was like me, but afterwards I believed I was the only person like this." Her parents, having great expectations for their daughter, tried unsuccessfully to "cure" her by sending her to a psychiatrist. She reports that she’s spent the past three years barely eating, in the hope that "a hungry stomach might numb my desires." "Today I am a constant pain for everybody," she writes, adding that she lives every moment hating herself.

Sometimes issues of gender and gender identification are mixed with issues of sexual orientation. For example "Priya" cites a newspaper article about a woman has a sex change in order to stay with her female lover and writes, "when I see a beautiful girl… something happens in my mind similar to what happens with a man." This student gives many reasons for wanting a sex change operation, from social and legal acceptance—she argues that changing one’s biolgical sex might give some legal enforceability to marriage to another women— to wanting a body which matches her self-concept. "Most of my mental workings are similar to that of a man, I think of myself as a man, and have to convince myself I’m a woman," she writes, adding that she has the organs of woman, but the mannerisms of man. Some of her reasons may also be grounded in misinformation; for instance, she asks, unless she gets such an operation, "how will I be able to satisfy a woman sexually?"

Another 19 year old writes desparately about her desire to change her sexual orientation, in order to conform to the social norms. "Sheena" says that she understood that she was a lesbian from 10^th standard and started collecting information about it. She had always felt physical attraction to girls, and had enjoyed it in her dreams; but in life, she tried to restrict her "character" when such situations arose. She’s also observed the sorts of social censure other same-sex couples in her hostel and classroom have received from school authorities and families, which she says has influenced her a lot.

Sheena writes that within five years her marriage will take place, and she knows she cannot get out of it; moreover she fears the disrespect of her friends and the loss of her family reputation if others come to know of her situation. She is physically and mentally suffering due to this tension, complains of sleeplessness, pain, disinterest in food, and loss of all energy. The young woman writes that she "just wants to be an ordinary girl" and asks if a psychiatrist will be able to change her orientation. "Is there no other remedy for this?" she asks.

Just a sampling of the letters Sahayatrika has received suggests many different aspects of emotional and institutional marginalization that lesbian and bisexual women in Kerala face. Emotionally, these women are grappling with great internal difficulties which may manifest themselves in depression, self-hatred and self-harming behaviours, or physical symptoms. Socially and economically, they are constrained by the institutions of family and marriage. Some women opt to leave the family system in response, while others try to find space within family, community or even marriage for a same-sex relationship. Some women crave for societal change, such as the writer who seeks legal rights and community respect for her companion and herself. Others desire to change themselves, to change their sexual orientations through means such as self-restraint or psychiatry, or to cope with the non-conformation to gender norms by seeking sex-reassignment surgery.

Suicide may be the ultimate response to these dilemmas of difference. Many writers and callers have talked about histories of suicide attempts, or consider taking their lives as a way to end their difficulties. Moreover, although we are maintaining suppportive relationships with an increasing number of women, many of those who contact us call or write once or twice, never to be heard from again. Frustratingly, we have no idea how these women are coping with the struggles they have shared.

This privatized and invisible suffering is paralleled by news stories of same-sex companions that appear with increasing frequency in the public sphere. Newspaper reports of double suicides among women companions who were unwilling to be separated are probably the most visible indicator of the difficulties endured by women-loving-women in Kerala. Other news stories have also appeared in the mainstream press, of women asking the courts for permission to live together, or students being evicted from schools or hostels for having lesbian relationships.

Lesbian suicides were an important starting point, in the workings of Sahayatrika, for bringing up lesbian/ sexuality minority rights as a political issue in Kerala. We had compiled a list of newspaper reports of suicides, most occurring within the past 8 years, which cited a same-sex relationship or had strong indications of it as the cause for death. At present the suicides of 24 women (and 4 men) are on this list, but it is far from being complete. Many more double suicides have been brought to our attention, through newspaper reports or word of mouth, but we haven’t had the capacity to investigate all of them. Furthermore, we have only been able to gather information about suicides of people in relationships that have received media attention and become public knowledge. Excluded from such a list are single suicides committed by individuals due to their sexual marginalization, as well as any suicides which have been concealed from the public eye.

When we first started talking about lesbian suicides, social activists and others raised a number of objections and doubts. First of all, as mentioned earlier, was the tendency to deny lesbian existence and question whether these suicides were actually committed by "lesbians." A related tendency was to insubstantiate lesbian suffering, to suggest that the numbers we were presenting were insignificant compared to overall suicide rates in Kerala. The majoritarian notion that the importance of a social justice issue can be measured in terms of the number of people who are effected is in itself problematic. And in this case, newspaper reports of lesbian suicides must be viewed against the backdrop of a probably larger number of unreported suicides, as well as the broader spectrum of experiences and struggles that women with same-sex attractions have described.

It should also be noted that there are ambiguities involved in identifying and defining a "lesbian" suicide, as it is often not so clear where a close friendship ends and "lesbian relationship" begins. In many of the factfindings we’ve done, community members or confidants have described the women involved as having a love [premum] relationship. However in other investigations, such as a case where two women jumped in a quarry after tying their bodies together with a dupatta, although the women were described as "so close that… they couldn’t bear to be separated," no one would articulate the romantic possibilities of their friendship. Social stigma and ignorance may contribute to this lack of articulation, and the women involved are no longer available to speak for themselves. But there is also the question of how one defines a "lesbian" relationship: is it defined in terms of sexual intimacy, or in terms of same-sex love?

Another objection that was raised to our factfinding investigations relates to the overrepresentation of women from marginalized backgrounds in lesbian suicides as reported in the media. A majority of the cases we have found involve women from marginalized communites (Dalit, Adivasi, OBC, and Muslim women) and/or women working in low-income occupations— such as factory work, tailoring, or daily wage agricultural labour.

Arguments were raised that sexuality and sexuality minority issues are not relevant for communities dealing with issues of extreme poverty and daily survival. Implicit in such objections is the assumption of a dichotomy: that sexuality is a middle class and/or theoretical domain, and that you can’t work on sexuality issues with grass-roots rural women.

These objections were raised most clearly around our first proposed factfinding, of the suicide of two young Adivasi women. It was a serious issue for ourselves as well, since it occured at the same time Adivasis were occupying Secretariat for their land rights, and we wanted to support their struggle. We decided, after consulting with some supportive feminists, to write a larger report investigating many lesbian suicides; we didn’t want to focus on barriers for sexuality minorities within a single community, especially within the most marginalized of communities in Kerala. As it happened, media had already been interviewing community members and local people were themselves talking about the apparently romantic relationship between the two girls. And it was widely believed that the main reason for the suicide was the threat of their being separated.

Sometimes factfindings have given us the opportunity to open up discussions about sexuality issues in different communities. In the case described above, we were able to talk about our efforts with the community people who seemed open to it, and we were invited to speak more about it to their kudumbamshree and other groups. However, it is a difficult and sensitive issue, and while in some factfindings interviewees have found it therapeutic to talk about the loss of a loved one, in other cases we’ve had to stop our investigations because it was clearly traumatic or dangerous to those involved. In any case, the substantiating evidence for lesbian suicides in marginalized communities found in many of our inquiries demonstrate the absurdity of the argument that sexuality rights are only relevant for people in privileged positions. Such assumptions view sexuality as a luxury rather than as an integral part of life. But a question which remains unanswered is how to take discussions of sexuality beyond the realm of theoretical discourse and integrate them with community-based activism.

Another question that should be addressed is why there is this overrepresentation of women from marginalized groups in the suicide reports? We know that, in contrast, the women who contact us through letters, email or telephone are coming from all backgrounds, urban and rural, well-off and poor. One possibility is that women-loving-woman from middle-class backgrounds have more resources and choices available, and may be committing suicide less. We can see the role that class and other differences play in our crisis interventions as well: women with financial assets, education or employable skills have a better chance of leaving the family system and living independently, and women who can speak languages other than Malayalam have more of an option to leave Kerala. But we also need to recognize that middle and upper class communities have more power to invisibilize the suicides of their daughters, and to protect from media scandals, as well. As one doctor we spoke to noted, girls from well-to-do families who attempt suicide are often taken to private hospitals, so outside people don’t know.

In another well-known case involving the suicide of a Dalit woman student at a Kerala university, issues of caste, marginalized sexuality, and also gender difference come into play. Here there was a history of harassment of the student by her hostel warden, which culminated in the warden accusing the student of being a lesbian, which the student denied. The student then ran away with a female companion, but later both returned to their hostel. A day later, the student killed herself. Student activists argued that this was a case of harassment of a Dalit student by a high-caste school official, who had falsely accused the young woman of being a lesbian. But the interesting point for us here is that the public accusation of being a lesbian could carry so much stigma as to drive a woman to suicide. Caste marginalization and sexual marginalization also intersect in different ways. For example, after the student and her companion returned to the school after running away, they were immediately taken to the police. The student’s family argued that, had they belonged to a different community, school authorities would have returned the girls to their families and thus spared them the public humiliation.

In this case, gender non-conformity was also a source of antagonism. The student’s "masculine" appearance and behaviour caused some isolation among students, was a further reason for harassment by authorities, and fed into the assumption she was lesbian. One student says the student’s behaviours "was like that of a boy towards other girls" and for this reason the hostel inmates disliked her. This sort of visible difference is an issue for many of the women we’ve done crisis intervention with as well. Women who look and dress like men or do not conform to other gender stereotypes face harassment on this basis and have difficulty in obtaining housing or employment; this is especially difficult for lesbians who are already economically disadvantaged. A lesbian couple also becomes more publicly identifiable if one partner is perceived as "male,"-- although some women we know have managed to live with their same-sex partners because the community believes them to be a heterosexual couple.

Many of the women who contact us, like the letter-writer who wants a sex change operation, also grapple with gender non-conformation and transgender identity issues. The concerns of biological women who identify as men and sometimes seek to physically change their bodies to conform with this self-concept are too complex to be discussed in detail here. Such a discussion would have to take in account both the fact that gender norms are socially constructed (and disrupted) as well as the experiences of transgendered and transsexual individuals, who argue for the right to choose gender identity and/or to transform the body. At the same time, the pressures a lesbian couple might experience to become socially and legally recognized as heterosexual might also be a motivation for sex-reassignment surgery. A national magazine reported that a hospital in Fort Kochi has given twelve women sex change surgery so that they could live with their female partners. One wonders, given the misconceptions and prejudices which currently prevail in Kerala about sexual and gender identity, about the degree of consciousness and responsibility with which this hospital is dispensing such operations.

Another issue which has appeared with some frequency in the media is that of two women appearing before the local courts and fighting for the right to live together. Typically the women have been brought before the court on a missing persons charge, and if the pair are both over 18 years of age, the court sets them at liberty to live as they please. Decisions were made to this effect by a Paravur Magistrate in October 2000, and a Trissur Magistrate in November 2002. However, the apparently legal right of two adult women to cohabitate may be subverted by popular prejudices and misunderstandings at various levels of society, from the judiciary to police to family and community. Thus in similar case that was reported in newspapers in February 2001, two women from Kilamanoor who had run away together were brought before the local court, but forced to separate against their wishes and sent home with their respective families. Or in a case that we were involved with in July 2003, two women were granted the liberty to live together, but only after the public prosecutor unsuccessfully tried to argue that they were having an unnatural relationship under IPC 377. Women trying to live autonomously as a couple may also face institutional and civil violence before ever reaching the courts; thus in the recently publicized case, the police tried to force a 24 year old woman to return to her family in spite of her stated wish to stay with her companion. And in another recent incident we have been involved with, local people and family members of two women who had been cohabitating for several years burned down their place of residence, forcing the women to leave the locality.

Some other cases also show the way that lack of understanding in social institutions can work to deny lesbian and bisexual women other basic rights such as the right to education or the right to privacy. One common experience seems to be the expulsion of women-loving-women from educational institutions like schools or student hostels, to protect other students from the infection of lesbianism. In a famous case in 1992, several school girls were evicted from a Trivandrum secondary school for forming the "Martina Navratilova" club, a lesbian group; and in 2002 two female students were kicked out of their school for play-acting a Hindu marriage and exchanging talis. We’ve also received word of mouth information about student hostels where plans were being made to expel students for their lesbian tendencies. There seems to be no concept that students with different sexual orientations might have rights as individuals and deserve the opportunity to be able to continue their education. Also, in a factfinding we did about a student suicide, we discovered that the student’s surviving companion was forced to drop out of university due to the resulting trauma. It seems that Kerala universities and other institutions of learning are a long ways away from providing support to students in such traumatic situations, which might allow them to continue their studies.

Privacy is another basic right that seems to be easily violated when it comes to the situations of women-loving-women. For example, in the recent incident where two women’s allegedly lesbian relationship was covered in the tabloid press, this information was leaked from a supposedly supportive transition house where one of the women was staying. And in general media and popular attitudes seem to regard lesbians as some subhuman category with no claim to personal space; all personal concerns of women-loving-women are considered to be potentially public knowledge.

V. Strategies for Resistance: Sahayatrika and Sexuality

The newspaper stories and personal cases discussed here, from lesbian suicides to experiences with psychiatry and sex reassignment surgery, from women seeking to live with their partners to women getting expelled from their schools, demonstrate different areas of marginalization. One strategy to raise awareness about such issues, widely used in LGBT activism across India, is to frame these marginalizations in terms of human rights that sexuality minorities, in this case women-loving-women in Kerala, are being denied. The right to life, right to autonomy and self-determination, right to fair medical treatment, rights to education and privacy all come into question in the situations narrated above.

It should be noted that this language of rights has itself been criticized, both within and outside of sexuality minority movements, on a number of levels: as a discourse with its roots in the European Enlightenment which presumes universal rather than culturally/ contextually specific values and is bound to legal or institutional interventions[1]; or as an individualistic approach which masks structural/ systemic inequalities. But as one possible political language among many, it has been effective for raising awareness in the Kerala context as well, simply because it draws attention to notions of "humanness" and personhood that are popularly, politically and legally denied to lesbians and other sexuality minorities.

Another strategy that we in Sahayatrika have employed to raise awareness is to locate societal violence against lesbians upon a broader continuum of violence against women. Again, this approach has been attempted in other parts of India —for example, a recent flyer protesting lesbian suicides, signed by an array of Mumbai and New Dehli based social justice groups, reads:

Apart from rape, sexual harassment, and bride burning, violence against women happens everytime a woman is married against her will. It happens every time a woman feels guilty for wanting to be happy and every time that a woman must die because she is unacceptable to society. Lesbian suicides are a result of society’s attempt to restrict women’s choices and control their lives.[2]

For me, such a statement represents something of a conceptual victory, first of all because it situates lesbian suicides not just as a sexual minority issue but as a feminist issue, and second, because it is endorsed by organisations engaged in a broad range of feminist, human rights, media, health, and sexuality minority activisms.

In the past two or three years since Sahayatrika was formed, there has been increased discussion and awareness around lesbian and sexuality minority issues among women’s groups and other social organisations in Kerala. We would like to think that Sahayatrika has played a part in deconstructing notions of the lesbian as radically "other," and in arguing for the integration of lesbian/ sexuality minority issues into feminist and human rights discourses. But it must be acknowledged that, just as lesbian and sexuality minority movements are themselves in a nascent stage in Kerala, political support for such movements and issues is itself only developing. The support which we’ve received so far from other social movements has tended to be private rather than public, and at the level of individuals rather than organisations.

In this section I want to talk about some of the barriers that Sahayatrika has faced in its activism, particularly as it relates to social and political dynamics relating to sexuality in Kerala. Specifically, I want to look at legal and social barriers which prevent other organisations and activists from supporting us, and I will attempt to draw out some of the implications that our activism has for sexuality politics in Kerala. I would like to note here that theorization about the social, historical and political constructions of sexuality in Kerala is in many ways a newly emerging area. My own remarks here are thus somewhat tentative, and based in the working experience of Sahayatrika.

It is not just sexuality minorities themselves but also the organisations which seek to assist them which undergo legal, social and political marginalization. Legally there is the threat of state persecution: like other organisations in India doing queer activism, Sahayatrika has worked with the fear of being charged under IPC 377 for promoting "unnatural sexual acts," and the knowledge that in recent years all over India, organisations doing HIV prevention work with sexuality minorities and sex workers’ movements have been arrested. Moreover in Kerala, there has been a public preoccupation with "sex rackets," a term which is used indiscriminately to signify both the brutal violence of forced sexual trafficking and almost any configuration of sexual activities, be it real or imagined. Because we offer letter-writing and telephone support for women, and try to develop a peer support network, we run the risk of being accused of running a "sex racket," and need to document our work and correspondence as much as possible for our own protection.

There is in fact a constant conflation of sex work, sex rackets and lesbianism in the popular consciousness in Kerala that needs to be disentangled. I would like to suggest that the notion of a "sex racket" in itself needs to be problematized, that the tensions between forced sexual trafficking vs. sex work, or between sexual exploitation vs. consensual sexuality that are at play within this signification need to be articulated. Morever, perhaps because both the "lesbian" and the "sex worker" occupy the far end of the continuum of who is a "bad woman" in Kerala, we have found in our work in Sahayatrika a repeated confusion between these identities. Thus in our factfinding investigations of lesbian suicides, in several cases local people believed the deceased women to be either willingly engaged in sex work or forced into sex rackets, although we found no corroborating evidence for any of these charges. Such beliefs seemed to be informed both by constructions of women from marginalized groups as being sexually available, and a popular confusion that women’s sexuality, when not conforming to hegemonic structures, must be read as either prostitution or sexual exploitation. The constant mistaking of our own organisation as a "sex club," is yet another example of this conflation.

The stigmatisation and threat of violence implied in being labelled as a "lesbian" or "sex worker" in Kerala society in fact functions as a means of controlling the social, emotional and sexual autonomy of any woman, in a way which erases the struggles and rights of those who actually belong to these categories. The societal impact of being identified as a lesbian and all the connotations that go with it is, as already noted, a major deterrent for the visibility of women loving women in the society. Yellow newspapers such as "Fire," which regularly carry stories about lesbians, illicit love affairs and sex rackets, also use the discrediting power of media as a form of retaliation. Thus, when the two women I spoke about at the beginning of this article fought back against their negative media coverage by holding a press conference and threatening a lawsuit, the tabloid newspaper responded by increasing their defamatory and falsified coverage, issue after issue, both of the young women and the activists who advocated on their behalf.

The perils of "moral infection" not only limit the actions of individuals but also of social organizations. Perhaps the situation is changing—but sometimes even supportive organisations and activists have feared being tainted by the same social stigmas which are used to invisibilize and silence sexuality minorities, leading to a sort of isolation and ghettoization among social movements. Thus, when we first started raising lesbian suicides as an issue among social organisations, there was a tendency to push us to work with those activists already engaged in controversial sexuality issues, especially sex workers’ movement. And while the alliance between sexuality minority groups and sex workers’ movements is important and powerful, based on a common experience of sexual "othering," it can sometimes lead to a compounding of marginalizations. For example, Sahayatrika has needed to share office spaces with other organisations for reasons of safety; but the only spaces that were initially available to us were with our allies in the sex worker’s movement. Sex worker’s projects are frequently evicted from their building spaces and therefore change locations frequently, as neighbours come to (mis)understand and oppose such projects’ functionings. Sahayatrika’s own efforts were thus effected by this structural instability, as we also lost our office space with each subsequent eviction. However, it is possible that efforts to rent space by a self-standing sexuality minority or lesbian rights organisation would also be subject to this same cycle of evictions in Kerala.

The fear of visibility and social stigma by association has also resulted in a reluctance `for even sympathetic organisations and movements to publicly support lesbian/ sexuality minority rights. Again, this situation may be changing; and it is effected by invisible status of sexuality minorities themselves. For example, last year when two teenage girls who pretended to marry were kicked out of their secondary school, we wrote a complaint to the Kerala Human Rights Commission; encouragingly, many local activists endorsed our petition. But in this case we took care not to label the incident a "lesbian" issue for fear of stigmatizing the girls involved; and it remains unclear whether a petition about an openly "lesbian" issue would have had the same support. Similarly, in the recent case of the two women who want to live together but denied having a lesbian relationship, this denial itself became the focal point for some media and public. In such cases, it is sometimes easier even for supporters to focus upon the damage of a supposedly false accusation of lesbianism, rather than articulate the implications of the marginalization of lesbians themselves.

Among women’s groups, although there has been increasing receptiveness towards lesbian and sexuality minority issues, at least conceptually, some argue that feminists, already designated as "bad women" in the society and burdened with charges of "breaking up the family," are not ready to publicly support more controversial issues like lesbian rights. However, it is important to recognize the ambivalences that some feminists (and other progressive activists) have towards sexuality rights are not only rooted in "morality" or the fear of moral contagion but also in a very real situation of social and sexual violence towards women. The tendency, as evidenced by public campaigns against sexual harassment, rape, and forced sexual trafficking, is to locate the politics of sexuality primarily in a paradigm of sexual violence or exploitation.

Sahayatrika itself, as already mentioned, has also tried to raise awareness by locating issues such as lesbian suicides within a violence against women framework. Both the human rights approach and the prevailing feminist practice in fact tend to emphasize violations of rights or experiences of violence. But the legitimacy gained through articulating lesbian issues through paradigms of violence or victimization leaves unaddressed perhaps more challenging and disruptive notions of sexual and personal as well as socioeconomical autonomy for women. Can we work for a lesbian politics that articulates the implications of giving choice to women about the types of relationships, families and economies they might form? And can we move beyond presenting lesbian existence as a site of violence and conceive of a lesbian (or a feminist) politics that is based on the right to desire?

Sex workers disrupt the sexual exploitation framework when they start to argue for their sexual services as a form of labour/ work; and lesbians and sexuality minorities disrupt this framework when we start to argue for sexual rights in terms of the right to desire, or the right to have fulfilling relationships, regardless of gender identity. Regrettably, there is probably more of an openness among women’s groups, at this point in time, to engage with the challenges presented by lesbian/ sexuality minority movements than those presented by sex workers’ movements. But I think that desire as a political issue for women still presents great practical and theoretical challenges, especially if we want to locate sexual autonomy not simply in a liberal feminist framework but also in an understanding that simultaneously recognizes the intersectionalities of different relationships of power, violence or exploitation in the society.

In some ways the experience of Sahayatrika testifies to these multiplicities. For even the small spaces that we’ve tried to create for positive sexual activism-- through our helpline, in building connections and networks, or in trying to find places for women-loving-women to meet, work and live—are constantly being intruded upon by the threats of violence and objectification. And yet the sorts of spaces we aim to create seem to be vitally important—and not just for lesbians and other sexuality minorities. Even the overwhelming response of men to our helpline, be it in the form of sexually harassing or obscene phone calls, doubts about negotiating sexuality, or experiences of abuse (as victims or perpetrators), as well as calls from men with different sexual or gender identities, indicates a tremendous amount of anxiety and often dysfunctionality surrounding male sexuality. Although this is beyond the scope of Sahayatrika, there is a need for discussion and engagement with the problems of sexuality, heterosexuality and constructions of masculinity as experienced by men of all orientations.

The very fact that women contact our helpline, intended only for women, with less frequency than men gives some indication of different senses of entitlement and difficulties coming forward that women experience with regards to such a service. Moreover, although some women in Kerala may be able resist the patriarchal ordering of their bodies and find spaces to explore their sexualities and desires, be it same-sex or opposite, others speak about an absence of such locations. For example, when we were originally approaching women to be involved with Sahayatrika, we discovered a section of women who said that they themselves did not know what their own sexual orientations were, based on the experiences they had. And one of the biggest challenges that we’ve faced, working as a sexual rights project for lesbians, was that we were working in a sort of political vacuum, since there was not any equivalent program focussing on sexuality rights for all women. For this reason, we would give counselling and support to any woman who called us. Many of the women supporting Sahayatrika also did not identify primarily as lesbians or women-loving-women, but were drawn to the potential of a political and social space where one could articulate issues and experiences of women’s sexuality more freely. In this way I think that Sahayatrika captured the imagination of many women-- and men--not because they viewed it as an organisation working exclusively for lesbian rights but rather because they perceived it as a site for resistance and creating new possibilities against the confines of a constraining, patriarchal and heteronormative sexual morality in Kerala.

VI. Towards a Politics of Desire? An Unfolding of Queer Politics in Kerala

I started this paper as an attempt to reflect upon the experiences of Sahayatrika. But as I try to construct some concluding remarks for these examinations, I wonder if the "lessons" of Sahayatrika are not answers but instead more questions. This seems especially so because the activism upon which I am reflecting, an activism for Kerala women-loving-women in particular, and sexuality minorities in general, is very much in a period of change and transformation, with new events unfolding every day. My "conclusions" here cannot be finite in any sense, but are very much the product of an engagement with an ongoing endeavour.

In the two or three months since I started writing this paper, a great deal of cultural and intellectual productions concerning lesbian and sexuality minority issues have emerged or are emerging into the public sphere. In this time period alone, a film festival on queer sexualities, a collection of theoretical and political writings on sexuality minority issues in Malayalam, and a book and a documentary film on lesbian suicides in Kerala have appeared. A feature film on a lesbian relationship in Malayalam is in production, and numerous articles continue to be published in the print media. It seems that we are on the brink of a still increasing public debate on sexuality, and sexual and gender identity, in Kerala.

More important developments are happening still, from the standpoint of women-loving-women in this state. When I began writing this article I said that women with same-sex attractions in Kerala were not able to meet in collectivity or to develop political formations. For a long time as well, the public intrigue and media fascination with lesbian issues/ Sahayatrika was developing much faster than our efforts to develop a network or women’s community. But even this situation is changing. Small groups in Kerala have been meeting, and although some of the women’s understandings of their sexualities and their relationships may defy and push the boundaries of "lesbian" identity, these women are finding a sense of solidarity and community with each other. Some of these women have different visions for supporting and working for others who are like them. Whether they continue to work through organisations like Sahayatrika, or to invent new configurations, new possibilities for resistance, it is a promising development.

Throughout the last year, other sexuality minorities, especially gay and bisexual men, have also been increasingly meeting and networking in different spaces, from Vaathil to the internet, to more informal and local places. It is significant to note that at this point in time our core support as Sahayatrika activists has often come from other sexuality minorities or queer activists, more than women’s movements or other social movements.

Visibility continues to be both empowering and disempowering for sexuality minority movements, and we all must grapple with its contradictions. On the one hand, when we make interventions and engage with discourses in the public sphere, we have the opportunity to create awareness and make our own positions and criticisms available. Such discourses and such activisms also help to create new spaces for people. For example, the increasing meetings and connections between women loving women in Kerala in recent months is directly related to increased media visibility. The two women who were widely slandered in the media fought back, holding their own press conference and giving other interviews. Although there was backlash against the women, they also inspired many sympathisizers; and new women approached Sahayatrika as a result of this incident and other media coverage.

And yet, for individuals who come under media scrutiny, there is also tremendous cost. The women who held the press conference face considerable disadvantages in obtaining work or housing beyond the marginalizations that other same-sex couples are experiencing, if they stay in Kerala; and the very fact of their visibility prevents some people from helping them. That is to say, even sympathsizers are sometimes reluctant to help very visibly stigmatized people because of the repurcussions they themselves might face from landlords, family, employers, community members…

Sexuality minorities engaged with an emerging queer movement are not the first social movement activists to face the dilemma of political actions in the public sphere vs. repurcussions in private life. But because our marginalizations are based in our sexualities and therefore vulnerable to a type of extreme objectification, because many sexuality minorities in Kerala have found safe spaces to live and survive in the private realm, and because not everyone feels the imperative to attach their sexual practices to a political identity, the issue of "coming out" into the public sphere may be different. So some of us still question if there are alternatives to the politics of visibility.

It seems we need to adopt a multiplicity of strategies; we need to create both spaces of safety and privacy, and continue to make interventions in the public sphere. Media and cultural productions, public debate, and other forms of awareness building can also help to create greater conditions of safety for everyone. As an organisation that made statements in the public sphere without visible spokespeople, Sahayatrika tried to negotiate these tensions between visibility and safety by a sort of compromise-- others who become activists may choose to be more visible, or less. But perhaps those who feel that the requisite for a sexuality minority political movement is visible faces and visible bodies, should consider the question: will you also help these spokespeople to find work or housing, or provide emotional support, when the backlash against them, which is inevitable, comes?

There are two fundamentally important, but opposing impulses involved in strategizing for a sexuality minority politics. One is the impulse towards sameness, towards commonality. When we argue for integration into feminist or human rights discourses, for the inclusion of "lesbians" into the categories of "woman" or "human," when we fight for legal rights and protections, we are appealing on some level to a sense of commonality that we share with other people regardless of our sexual or gender identitites. When we choose to be visible, in the best-case scenario, we also appeal to the public’s sense of commonality, of empathy or self-recognition—of being fellow humans living with courage and struggling, with experiences sometimes similar and sometimes different from those who see and hear us.

In the worst case, visibility makes us "other," makes us the object of ridicule, exoticism, sensationalism, violence. But the impulse towards difference, towards radical rupture, is a powerful political impulse too. For a sexuality minority politics (like a gender politics or a sexual politics) has the potential, as our critics charge, to deeply challenge prevailing notions of interpersonal relationships, gender hierarchy, community formation, property rights and family. Yet this destabilizing impulse carries within it profoundly transformative possibilities, to rethink and relive these relations in ways that are perhaps less repressive, perhaps more egalitarian…

It is here that the notion of a "queer" politics becomes useful, especially if we think of queerness in its broadest sense, as transcending a narrow identity politics to "signify [any] practices which question the heterosexual norm, i.e. that the only valid way of sexually relating to one another is within the framework of marriage and procreation." [3] Such a politics can be embraced by anyone, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity, who questions or subverts the emotional, sexual, and socioeconomical marginalizations which occur when only the dominant modes of expressing sexuality, performing gender, forming relationships or creating families are given legitimacy.

One commentator has suggested that "In India though the word queer is not commonly used, the realities of the queer experience, i.e. lives and ways of living which contest the embedded nature of heterosexism in law, culture and society, have traditionally existed and continue to exist in the contemporary context."[4] Kerala society also encompasses a diversity of different sexualities and gendered existences, although very often there have been no names and identities for these queer lives. Indeed, the cultural specificities of queer life in Kerala, what sorts of sexual/gender identities (or lack of identities) may have been here or continue here is probably a rich area of inquiry. For our purposes we can begin by recognizing the historical relativity of the co

Dieser Beitrag gehört zum Schwerpunkt: Queer South Asia .