Happy pride month, everyone! LGBTQIA… So many alphabets. These alphabets are not just letters. They mean so much to so many people. They give an identity to those of us who never belonged, because in this world, what cannot be named, identified and put in a box, has no significance.
When you don’t fit into other people’s idea of normality, you are a sinner. I am proud of all those people who fought against this normality shoved down our throats. But, on the occasion of pride month, I’d like to narrate an incident I experienced, which shows us that we still have a long long way to go.
A few days ago, I went to see this natak (drama or play) in a temple near my house. It was a comedy and got quite some response from the audience. It basically told the story of a guy who dresses up as a girl to convince the mother of the girl he loves, to say “yes” to their wedding.
The mother was opposed to this alliance as the guy was from a “lower” caste. While it was good to see how it gave the message that ‘love conquers all’ by showing how the mother finally realises that love does not see things like class, strata, caste, etc., I couldn’t help but notice how they completely butchered the significance of the LGBTQIA+ slogan ‘love is love’.
How Is Queerphobia Funny?
While it is what they were trying to portray, they completely chose to ignore the fact that there is another categorisation that love does not see—gender. As a result, while trying to convey the message that love does conquers all, the play was filled with homophobic, transphobic insults and slurs, which would make any good person cringe from head to toe.
I realised that this is not a one-time occurrence in the world of creative thoughts. How many times have we seen Indian cinema portray men dressed as women, in keeping with the rich, cultural traditions of the courts of ancient kings and queens?
But then, to “normalise” things, we get a happy ending where everyone realises that Laxmi is actually Laxman, and now, everyone can live happily ever after! It’s not funny… This narrative of ‘us versus them’.
Why do we assume that all the people sitting in front of us as an audience, as well as all the people we know, are automatically straight just because they are our acquaintances? You have jokes like: “we are not like ‘those’ people,” or “this is a ‘normal’ family,” or even ”why are you acting like ‘those’ people?”
There is no us and them. This world consists of humans who are capable of love… Love which is capable of bypassing petty, man-made boundaries.
Does The Buck Stop At Representation?
While nowadays, there are popular films like “Badhaai Do”, “Chandigarh Kare Aashiqui” and many others, which gave a proper voice to queer narratives, we still have a long way to go when it comes to smaller productions and theatre groups, who go amongst the local audience, propagating the aforementioned kind of wrong narratives about queerness.
We need a creative space where the audience, whoever they are, are able to sit without assumptions about one another. As an audience, we all need to feel safe and like we belong. Nobody deserves the hate spewed by popular cinema and pop culture mediums, in the name of humour.
Does the tone of the aforesaid para sound familiar to you? It definitely does! For this is the tone of the so-called pious believers, upholders of religion and bigotry, who will assemble and rant on and on and on, about how someone made a joke about some little clause in their respective religion.
Religion, which is an abstract thing… Religion, which is legal fiction, according to me. Religion, that does not, in the material sense, even exist, is something people care more about, than fellow humans who have been targeted with hate and insults for years.
It’s NOT Funny When You Insult Queer Folk
And yes, that is because LGBTQIA+ people, and everyone allied or associated with them, are not considered human. Religion, more often than not, spreads hate. Yet, we support it more than we support love.
For all the bigots who don’t find jokes on someone’s religious Identity funny, how can you be okay with jokes on someone’s actual Identity? But yes, if bigots weren’t hypocrites, they wouldn’t be bigots.
LGBTQIA+ people, and all the struggles it took for the people who made queer freedom possible, do not deserve to be the butt of your jokes. Because: it is “NOT” funny!
It is not funny when you joke about who I can love.
It is not funny when you joke about who I can be.
It is not funny when you joke about who I am.
To the esteemed Indian audience, I would like to say:
Grow up! Don’t be a hate monger! Love is love!