Hypocrisies of the Indian gay

[Guest guest]

Hypocrisies of the Indian gay man

The Indian gay subject announces himself as having conquered the

homophobia that prevents men in India from taking on the label

`gay,' makes them shun the gay man as a figure of sickness, doomed

to a lonely and painful death (hence the preponderance of gay men

in India marrying women), disallows a comfort in their skins in bed

with another man. However, why is this out and proud subject having

unsafe sex? What does this really say about him?

The Euro-US has spun theories around this in the face of repeated

studies that show that despite the fact HIV/AIDS there, unlike in the

Third World, has been a gay disease and wiped out generations of

gay men, gay men continue to have unsafe sex.

These theories argue that gayness has abjection at its heart, that gay men

internalise the debasement of their lives, the loss of so many lives to HIV/AIDS

and this makes them not care, which is why they have unsafe sex.

Terms like `bug chasers' (HIV negative men who seek sex with HIV positive men to

get infected) and `gift givers' (HIV positive men who seek to infect HIV

negative men) exist in the US where bad epidemiology meets homophobic media

representations and the pathologisation of the gay subject returns.

However, all this presumes well-established ideas of a gay identity and

community. It works within the logics of either an abject identity embracing its

abjection or of a refusal by that identity of the control of it and its sexual

practices.

In India, there is no identity or community as such, or if there

is, it is articulated only as a pious non-sexual identity working on

HIV/AIDS prevention. The focus is on NGO-fangled identities like

`MSM' and `kothi' or at best hijras.

This is because of the politics of funding (no NGO would be funded if they

claimed their base was upperclass, uppercaste men who identify as gay.

They have to produce malformed, unevolved categories like `MSM' and `kothi' for

Third World street cred) as much as hypocrisy of the upperclass, uppercaste gay

Indian man.

Because, in the toilets of clubs and farmhouse parties and bedrooms

in India, gay Indian men are having unsafe sex with each other and

nobody is talking about it. Practically all my gay friends have had

unsafe anal sex, and repeatedly, and when asked why, do not have

clear reasons.

Why is there no study of the practices of upperclass, uppercaste gay men by

NGOs? Why are other groups created, stigmatised, used, marshalled but the gaze

never turns on oneself?

To complicate matters, the Indian gay man is also having sex with

men who do not identify as gay. How many times does it happen that

the Indian man (for whom sex is just a hole to shove his pole into,

whether it is a woman, man or hole in the wall) just spits on it and

is ready to shove it in, in the heat of the moment, as it were and for

whom condoms is a waste of time and a reduction of pleasure?

How many times does the gay Indian man stop this? Why are

`MSM' and `kothis' pathologised and not Indian gay men? Well,

partly because it is these men who run or work for the NGOs and

can not pathologise themselves, but also because it would be uncool

to recognise that these men hate themselves enough to have unsafe

sex or love the thrill of it enough to have it.

The question is: why do these people have unsafe sex? A hijra or

a street-based sex worker does not have control over the identity of

her/his clients or their adherence to safe sex practices.

But what about the upperclass, uppercaste gay man? He does have that control. If

we really think that homosexuality is a serious cause of HIV/AIDS in this

country, why don't we focus on our own sexual practices instead of a behalfism

through which we justify our own existences?

Why don't gay Indian men talk about their own sexual sense of self and

their own sexual practices?

What I fear we will discover, if that is done, is that we have gift

givers and bug chasers among us who do not even have the guts to

own up to it. At the heart of it, are conceptions of self and sex that are in

dire need of change. Gay men in India should concentrate on themselves before

going off to cure `Other' groups, mythical and otherwise, of HIV infection.

Nobody hates us more than we hate ourselves. We do not revel in our abjection;

we merely inhabit it. We talk about safe sex for other people, not for

ourselves.

Instead, we write and celebrate court judgements in which we seek state

survelliance and ask for the right to privacy at the same time.

Surveillance for the others, privacy for ourselves. Hurrah for the hypocritical

Indian gay man.

Tellis is an academic. Feedback to this article can be sent to

failedsubjectivity@...

28/9/2009, http://gaybombay.wordpress.com/2009/08/30/hypocrisiesof-

the-indian-gay-man/

The latest edition of Pukaar (Jan 2010, Issue No 68) the NFI’s quarterly

journal focusing on Asian male sexualities and wellbeing is now available on our

website, Please go to http://www.nfi.net/Jan10Pukaar.pdf to get the online

version.