Why it's been a great year for gay, lesbian and transgender rights
Summer, 2015, has to be the summer of love. Gay love is in the air. Ireland legalised gay marriage; across the Atlantic, reality star Bruce Jenner transformed into the ravishing Caitlyn Jenner and appeared on the cover of Vanity Fair; while here, in India, Myntra’s advertisement featuring a lesbian couple went viral, clocking more than two million hits on YouTube. We also had a mother in Mumbai who put out a matrimonial in the papers, soliciting a partner for her gay son.
The Irish vote is significant at many levels. It took place in a majority Catholic country where homosexuality itself was illegal till two decades ago. The voice of the young mattered: the average age of the Irish population is 36. Most importantly, the way Ireland chose to do it was through a referendum – a national vote rather than the usual legal or legislative routes.
One wonders what would happen if such a referendum took place in India. Indian youth are still attached to received family value systems and susceptible to caste loyalties. One fears that a referendum on decriminalising homosexuality might degenerate into comic parochialism with, say, the Bhumihar vote going one way, and the Yadav vote the other. In countries like India, the law can actually precede and shape culture. This happened with child marriage – it didn’t matter that these practices were widely accepted; once the law changed, the wider culture did so too.
Legalisation
While one welcomes the legalisation of gay marriage, one can’t help but notice that the gay rights movement has taken a neo-conservative turn, markedly different from the more rebellious gay pride movement of the 1970s. Ads in favour of gay marriage in America follow a formula: the idea is to convince straight people that gay couples are more regular than the average straight American with wife, dog, gun and fishing rod. One that recently went viral features two gay dads who wake up at 5.30am every morning to comb their daughters’ hair. Gay couples in these ads regularly mow their lawn, take out their trash and are unfailingly polite. It seems that to break a stereotype, one also has to reinforce it. As activist and columnist Emma Tietal writes, “True equality for LGBT people will only come when we can take pride not just in our hard-won same-sex marriages, but in our unkempt lawns and shabby manners.”
The Irish vote might also have an unintentional, ironic outcome. For the Church, gay marriage poses a threat to the institution of marriage. But marriage is not really such a desired goal for heterosexual couples anymore. In Ireland, the number of divorced couples has increased by 150 per cent since 2002. The popular swing towards gay marriage might just end up preserving the institution of marriage rather than destroying it. Human beings are suspicious creatures. We are naturally wary of the "Other" – another caste, another religion, someone with a different sexual orientation. The first two instances are easier to deal with – you can hive off and segregate the "Other". You can pretend it doesn’t exist. But homosexuality lurks within the family, sometimes within one’s own self. Which is why the "normal" find homosexuality so scary.
Significance
This is what reality star Bruce Jenner discovered. After being a man for years, he decided to become a woman. It’s not an easy decision. The writer Jan Morris writes movingly about her sex change operation, the final moment before she went under the knife. She takes a final look in the mirror: “We would never meet again, and I wanted to give that other self a long last look in the eye, and a wink for luck.”
Jenner’s case is loaded with symbolic significance. It upsets the narrative of the sporty and macho all-American male. Jenner is an Olympic medal winner; he became an American hero by winning the decathlon event back from the Soviets at the peak of the Cold War. And then, Jenner decided to become a babe. It does upset the apple cart.
Society
In Mumbai, a mother got tired of waiting for society and laws to change. She felt her gay son had a right to a happy personal life and put out a matrimonial ad on his behalf. But there are signs society might be changing. She was flooded with support on social media. The success of the Myntra ad also points in the same direction. It features a young westernised lesbian couple in a live-in relationship. One is getting ready to meet the other’s parents. Fastrack too toyed with homosexuality in an ad in 2013 but this one is more subtle and realistic, even in the secondary details: the Clockwork Orange poster on the wall, the Mario Puzo on the bookshelf – just like any other young working couple.
The only problem is that glamourous lesbians feed into a stereotypical and voyeuristic straight male fantasy: two women making out. Would viewers accept two men sharing confidences and getting intimate with each other? It simply doesn’t look that pretty on screen. Would Myntra be willing to feature an older female couple? One of the more memorable photographs taken after the Irish referendum featured white-haired senator Katherine Zappone kissing her partner, another senior citizen, outside the Dublin Castle. Still, until the laws change, soft power is crucial in changing attitudes. Imagine if Chetan Bhagat’s next novel featured a gay couple... what would his constituency – conservative young India - make of that?