This Pride Month, let all colours of the rainbow shine equally bright
Written by Samata Biswas
On Sunday, one of the most widely circulated Bengali newspapers carried a literary supplement cover dedicated to the many contentions regarding human sexual orientations, penned by a Sahitya Akademi-winning author. Best known for his novel documenting the lives of trans women in Bengal, this article, on the occasion of Pride Month, was, however, riddled with inaccuracies and prejudices, prompting many Bengalis to ask again: What does 'Pride' mean, and whose voices were systematically erased to create human HIStory?
It is, by now, well known that the uprising against governmental persecution and police brutality of sexual minorities in the neighbourhood of New York's Stonewall Inn, on June 28, 1969, is now commemorated across the world as Pride Month. In India, with the recent decriminalisation of sexual 'acts against nature', corporates and institutions have begun to celebrate Pride Month with a vengeance, offering consumer choices as the freedom to choose one's partner. It is also ironic that the United States now both celebrates Pride and undermines the rights of transgender persons, cashing in on the Stonewall uprising led by prominent Black trans women activists like Marsha P Johnson, Sylvia Rivera and many others. Recent US legislation has gone back to claiming that there are only 'two sexes'.
The illustrious author chose to ignore the word queer in his discussion of LGBTQ people, and placed bisexuals in the same category as paedophiles. Paedophilia, childhood trauma and grooming have long been used to discredit marginalised sexual orientations; it was a shock to find similar sentiments repeated in an article purportedly celebrating Pride.
The word queer, with its long history of being a term of shame attributed to people whose sexual orientation was suspect, has been reclaimed by the community for more than 30 years now. It is now the most widely accepted umbrella term to describe a plethora of genders, sexual orientations and identities. The academic field of queer studies recognises diversity while also recovering hidden and submerged voices from before. Think of, for example, the recent book Queer Cambridge, in which Simon Goldhill describes a hidden community of gay men who lived and worked in close proximity to each other (in fact, along the same staircase in Cambridge) in the early 20th century, shaping much of what is today known as British culture. While the contributions of these individuals (including Rupert Brooke, Alan Turing and E M Forster) are well known, Queer Cambridge uncovers the queer connections and community that they forged and strengthened, creating new bonds across generations.
Queer pride should also be, and often is, about uncovering such voices and connections. Mainstream, heteronormative society usually marginalises and hides such stories, histories, loves and events. Trans men are often infantilised, trans women made subjects of violence, lesbians made to hide in the shadow of friendship, while bisexual people are simply not recognised.
For bisexuals, the author reserved his harshest condemnation: bisexual people can love both men and women, they do not care about the gender identity of their partners, and may even be attracted to trans women for a brief period before moving on and ruining their lives. Between Sigmund Freud's invocation of an anatomical or physical component of bisexuality to this author's association of bisexuality with disaster, the bisexual identity is in general maligned or unrecognised. One reason, of course, is the general belief that bisexual people have it easier, 'passing' for straight in a heterosexual world.
Passing is often the only line that saves queer people from violence. Passing as straight, or cisgender (for trans persons), in a homophobic or transphobic atmosphere may potentially keep harm at bay, while also undermining queer and trans expressions of sexuality and gender. The suspicion and distrust of bisexuals encompass the belief that they can summon straight privilege at will, disown their queer identities and partners on a whim, and abandon queer causes. While literature and culture celebrate dazzling bisexual figures like Virginia Woolf, Frida Kahlo and Billie Holiday, and books like Sally Rooney's Conversations with Friends become runaway hits, the bisexual experience continues to be denied legitimacy due to its disavowal of any kind of fixity.
This Pride Month, let all colours of the rainbow — and the ever-evolving Pride flag — shine equally bright, and none at the expense of the others.
The writer teaches English at The Sanskrit College and University
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