Understanding 'sexuality and sexual identity' with the students of Government School

“If my friend says that he is not interested in girls, then I would ask him who he is interested in.”

While many countries in the world are celebrating ‘coming out day’; the conversations on sexuality and LGBTQ remains abysmal in our country. These conservations become imperative especially during puberty, because with the different changes experienced by adolescents they are also building, developing and enquiring their sexual identity. The Indian society is buried deep under binary normative system, there is hardly any representation or discussion about gender and sexual identities; so if a person doesn’t find themselves fitting in the two box system – it could be very confusing, traumatic and troubling experience with fear of stigma and judgment all around.

With this intention to build knowledge on sexuality and different identities we conducted our fifth workshop on ‘boy, girl and beyond’ with the adolescent participants of Government School.

The workshop began with ‘which statement is normal and which is not’. It was not surprising to hear that their views coincide with the majority of the people in our society. In the next part of the session, through presentation we showed them various pictures and invited them to share whether the photo is of man or woman or someone else. The pictures are tricky because most of them don’t fall under the dictated appearance, role or responsibility of the gender like Harmeet Gaur who has growth of facial hairs due to a genetic disease. Through this, they received the message that we would be talking about people who don’t bind themselves in the normative binary system. With each picture, we talked about individual and how they are defying the traditional gender norms which left the participants surprised.

As part of sharing information, we talked about gender and sexual identities in details and why it is important to be aware of them. There are many layers of conversations – beginning with how we as individuals identify ourselves; secondly to make sure that if someone identifies beyond the definition of boy and girl – that it is okay and normal to be who you are irrespective of what is being told to us by people around us – it’s not easy and will be a very difficult journey; thirdly – it is up to you when and how to share your identity (coming out) even with your closed and trusted one, no one can do otherwise. Last and very important point as to if you know, or seen someone who has different identity; then to respect and treat them equally and not judge them for who they are. THEY ARE AS NORMAL, AS NATURAL, AS OKAY AS ME BEING A GIRL OR YOU BEING A BOY.

To gather their understanding, we shared few statements as asked how would they react in following circumstances –

If your friend comes and tells you that he is not attracted to girls like other boys?

‘I will tell him to stay away from girls’

‘I will tell him that it’s okay, he can stick with me and we don’t have to talk about girls’

‘I will ask him who he is interested in? and if he says boys – I will try and help him become friends with them’

You are standing with your friends and a boy passes through the road. Your friends start teasing him and abuses him using words like kinnar and gay

‘I will stop them immediately by saying that it’s not right. You must never use these words’

‘I will beat them’

‘I will make them understand that these words are not supposed to be an abuse, also the other person might feel bad because how you are treating them’

You like a girl so you go to her and tell her that however she doesn’t feel the same way. Few days later you find the girl standing very closely with other girl.

‘Why would I do anything? She rejected me so I would walk away and not bother her’

‘I will ask them to stand far from each other’

‘I will make someone else my friend’

‘I will ask her one more time’

‘I will be sad and might cry too’

You are crossing the road and then you see few children making fun of a kinnar, pulling their saree and troubling her

‘I would go to them and ask them to stop misbehaving’

‘I will tell them not to disrespect them because we must respect others’

‘I will tell them that they have no right to misbehave with them and how difficult it is for them for survive and they have no right to trouble them’

We then screened a short advertisement video of a transgender activist who had adopted a girl.

‘I like the idea, their daughter wants to become the lawyer so that her mother gets equal rights as we have.’