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the bigger picture on February 26, 1999 CALERI had submitted a memorandum to the Committee on Empowerment of Women: Appraisal of Laws relating to Women (Criminal Laws) and the subject was Repeal of Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code 3 . The intervening years have seen the media become supportive and there are many more queer images in public spaces. In 2008, India saw Pride Parades in four major cities and I was fortunate to be part of two of those. The sense of exhilaration and joy was palpable in the two cities that I was present. The very streets, which can be threatening to people who do not conform to gender identity or desire as defined by society were now being occupied by them legally and the police was safeguarding their interests! It has been a long journey and a fun one. The last ten years has seen me active in an organization working on issues of sexuality and sexual rights and I have facilitated innumerable trainings on these issues across countries, cultures, ages, ethnicities, religion, disability, sexual orientation and race. I have learnt immensely and equally have unlearnt immensely from the work that I have been doing. It’s been challenging too, doing this work. While I can see the palpable differences in the world that I now occupy, I also see the same processes happening yet again for a newer set of people who have to learn afresh. In 1983, I found myself having to explain to people that masturbation was not a sin and was not wrong and in 2009 I find that I still need to say it. I think I will have to repeat until my dying day that homosexuality is not abnormal and that lesbians are not women who have faced violence at the hands of men. The important change is that I won’t be one of a fringe group saying this. There will be many more who will be loudly proclaiming this and many other issues relating to sexuality. As I said earlier, there are innumerable challenges in the work that is being done in this field of sexuality and sexual While I worked with craftspeople, nobody ever asked me whether I was a craftsperson, but suddenly when working on lesbian issues I had become partisan and one of them and therefore militant and so on… rights. One of the discussions that I have had with a friend is about the tenuousness of the binary construct of man and woman. If there was no construct, it would mean that there would be no man or woman and then there would be no identities that we could use to define our desires because then we would just be people who desired other people! What would that do the world of identity politics? If the binary construct did not exist then there would be no differentiation based on gender and then we would once again be set free from labels of any sort. Similarly, our worldview precludes all those who do not have able bodies. A disability activist once named us those of the ‘temporarily abled bodies’. That has really made me reflect on what are the ways in which we address sexuality and disability, and, do we really do so in any meaningful manner? Do we understand the desire for a sexual partner from someone who has a motor nerve disorder, or someone who has spina bifida and is on a wheel chair or someone who is mentally challenged and unable to explain to us what she feels except that she repeatedly says she wants to get married? Do we realize that we may become that disabled body? The world of disability studies or Crip Theory has a lot that we have to learn from. Technology has advanced rapidly and we now have to deal with the fact that people form intimate relationships on the Internet and that chat spaces have proliferated and there are chat rooms for practically every kind of desire and dream. Young adults are able to access information that may or may not be appropriate to their age. Sexual relationships have taken on a new meaning in this landscape and we are not really equipped to deal with the public nature of the Internet. We are also not completely sure about the camera on the mobile phone. There was a safety in public spaces, but now there is no guarantee that someone is not photographing your body while you sit down in a mall. in plainspeak · ISSUE 1 · ‘09 · 32
the bigger picture We are unable to understand the ways in which we allow ourselves to create sexual hierarchies within our worldview and place people and activities within it 4 . Often times we pitch the homosexuals against the heterosexuals and the abled against the disabled. Sexual acts, which result in reproduction, are valued higher than those which do not. Violence and victim narratives are listened to more often than stories of pleasure 5 and identity. Are we able to understand that people have sex or do not have sex for various reasons? That desire and lust are good enough, that people may exchange money for sex, that people may be in multiple relationships, that identities are transient and sexuality fluid? I continue to do the work that I do because although some bits of the world have changed, there is a lot more of the rainbow that I want to grasp and share with people. I want to be able to live in a world where I do not sit in judgment of others; where I can recognize consent and consensual relationships even though they may clash with my world view and I can learn that not everything can be best described as black and white, but also as grey, light grey, dark grey and many other permutations. And I do what I do since I believe that change has happened in my lifetime in the world of sexuality and that I still have to learn and challenge myself and others if I want to move anywhere closer to the ideal that we can create. I think I will have to repeat until my dying day that homosexuality is not abnormal and that lesbians are not women who have faced violence at the hands of men. The important change is that I won’t be one of a fringe group saying this. There will be many more who will be loudly proclaiming this and many other issues relating to sexuality. in plainspeak · ISSUE 1 · ‘09 · 33 References: 1 Fernandez B, Radhakrishnan M, Deb P. 2007 Report on a Lesbian Meeting, National Conference on Women’s Movement in India, Tirupati, 1994, in Nivedita Menon (Ed) Sexualities, New Delhi: Women Unlimited 2 Cited in Lesbian Emergence: Campaign for Lesbian Rights. 1999. A Citizen’s Report, New Delhi 3 Memorandum in Lesbian Emergence: Campaign for Lesbian Rights. 1999. A Citizen’s Report, New Delhi 4 Rubin G. 1984. Thinking Sex: Notes For a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality in Carole S. Vance (Ed) Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul 5 Vance, C. 1984. Pleasure and Danger: Toward a Politics of Sexuality in Carole S. Vance (Ed) Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul Pramada Menon is a queer activist and an independent consultant working on issues of sexuality, sexual rights, gender, violence against women and organizational development and change. She has spent the last two decades of her professional life questioning, challenging, and seeking answers to questions of women’s human rights. She would like to develop new ways of learning and teaching and is currently exploring ways in which humour can be injected into the world of social change through her stand up performance Fat, Feminist and Free. Contact her at pramadam@gmail.com
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Page 3 and 4: table of contents letter from edito
Page 5 and 6: 2008, Issue 2 2007, Issue 3 2007, I
Page 7 and 8: interview geetanjali misra Kimberly
Page 9 and 10: interview reality violence on film.
Page 11 and 12: interview You are probably one of f
Page 13 and 14: issue in focus Challenges in HIV Pr
Page 15 and 16: issue in focus Chaktomuk will perfo
Page 17 and 18: shades of grey Madhu Bhushan, Shaku
Page 19 and 20: shades of grey atomised individual
Page 21 and 22: shades of grey The violence in traf
Page 23 and 24: shades of grey All these reveal tha
Page 25 and 26: art space Transstills from dual cha
Page 27 and 28: in plainspeak · ISSUE 1 · ‘09
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Page 31 and 32: the bigger picture Pramada Menon no
Page 33: the bigger picture sexuality and mo
Page 37 and 38: eel review A review of THE Lightnin
Page 39 and 40: eel review 1971. Another voice reli
Page 41 and 42: eel review woman in the story…mer
Page 43 and 44: hot off the press makes us contesta
Page 45 and 46: policy alert 11 Prevention and trea
Page 47 and 48: ‘I’ column ... on how sexual ri
Page 49 and 50: did you know pregnancy? group calle
Page 51 and 52: T A R S H I The South and Southeast

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