What's in a name?

[Guest guest]

From: Naz Foundation International, Shivananda Khan

All Partner Projects and friends

Dear Colleagues,

In response to a recent posting which appeared in lgbt-India, a

critique was made in regard to the statement: " MSM sexual health

projects " that was used in the NFI posting. The respondent felt that

the use of the acronym MSM in this context led to a sense of MSM

being an identity term, when it is not.

We believe that there may well be some validity to this argument.

We are therefore asking you all as to what would be the most

appropriate term we as a network and a part of ARMAN should use.

Here are the points to think about.

1. While we as a sexual health network focus on the most

vulnerable MSM, those who are economically disadvantaged, those who

are gendered, and those who are stigmatised and socially excluded,

i.e kothi-identified MSM and their partners, during the recent TOT

programme in Lucknow we discussed broadening this to include other

frameworks of MSM behaviours, whether such males have a self-sexual

identity label or not.

Perhaps we should have been calling our projects `kothi sexual health

projects'?

2. MSM – males who have sex with males, or men who have sex

with men (your choice) – is a behavioural term, and our sexual health

work needs to look at behaviour as much as the range of identity

labels that some males choose to give themselves. This includes the kothi

labels, panthis (many of whom identify with the term man rather than with a

sexual orientation/identity), dublis/do-parathas, etc.

3. In a sense we are developing sexual health services that

address male-to-male sexual behaviours.

4. A further comment made by the respondent is that we should

talk of " sexual health projects targeted at MSM " .

I am not sure, but I find the word `targeted' problematic based on

the nature of how we as individual projects work and speak of

empowerment and enabling environments.

Maybe we should say:

Working with MSM collectivities, or

Working with MSM sexualities, or

Working with MSM, or

Working with male-to-male sexualities (MMS)

What do you think?

Send your responses as soon as possible to our office. We will then

produce a brief report on this discussion with our recommendations

and send that around.

Shivananda Khan

Naz Foundation International,

E-mail: <lucknow@...>

_______________________________