Post the Navtej Singh Johar and Ors. vs. Union of India case in 2018 which decriminalised homosexuality, visible collectivisation, queer events, and pride parades have seen a surge in urban India. Both digital and physical spaces have become focal points for the community, with platforms to celebrate and express queerness. Digital spaces in particular have emerged as gateways to find community and belonging beyond private Facebook groups; here people can come out, celebrate openly, and make friends. Digital platforms offer freedoms that physical spaces often lack: social stigma is less intense, anonymity is possible, and geographical limitations can be bridged – at least, so it seems.
Twenty-five years since the first Friendship Walk in 1999, with just fifteen people marching in Kolkata, the landscape of queer spaces in India has transformed. Platforms like X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook have become indispensable tools to collectivise, socialise, and to plan queer events. At the touch of a button, people across the country can learn about queer events near them, pride parades, gatherings facilitating connection and participation now more than ever. However, while it has become easier to know about such events, the culture of these events has retained its exclusive characteristics. What does belonging, then, look like in urban India for people from different social, economic and political backgrounds? When is one queer enough to be a part of these events? How are such events planned? Where are they held? How do these factors influence the participation of queer individuals from diverse caste, class, and social backgrounds?
Explanation of the method and methodology
This article is based on the accounts of ten queer individuals whom we interviewed. Six of them were from small towns and moved to metro cities for education, three were born and raised in metro cities and one of them studied in their Tier 2 home city and moved to another metro city for work and better opportunities. They are in the age range of the early to late 20s. Three of the interviews were taken on the phone, four were via voice notes on messaging apps and three were conducted in person. All of these ten individuals were active on social media, had been or had in the past actively engaged in queer events that they got to know of online. All had attended at least one queer event in person. The respondents have varied gender identity, sexuality, caste and class backgrounds and two of them are still figuring out what gender expression – pronoun, labels – works best for them. We have anonymised all the interviews in order to protect their privacy and have redacted any detail that might give their identity away.
Why belonging?
Yuval-Davis in her 2006 article Belonging and the politics of belonging writes, “Belonging is about emotional attachment, about feeling ‘at home’ and, as Michael Ignatieff points out, about feeling ‘safe’”. She further cites Castell’s idea of “network society” which claims that contemporary society has become a ‘network society’ in which effective belonging has moved from the civil societies of nations and states into reconstructed defensive identity communities.
Therefore, belonging, as an act operates on multiple layers such as immediate identity markers of caste, class, gender etc. So, certain bodies can always find belongingness as they can easily fit into socially accepted norms and structures that often strengthen normative roles and traditional values which have been imposed by society. Hence, challenging the normative ideas of belonging, questions the structure that dictates whose bodies, identities and desires are valid and accepted in different social spheres.
“As someone who has been struggling with every element of my existence – from my name to my body to the performance of my gender – online spaces have given me a kind of freedom I never imagined was possible. For the longest time, I was trying to navigate these complex layers of my identity in the offline world, where people already had expectations and assumptions about who I was based on my assigned sex at birth. Online, at least, I’ve been able to choose how I want to be referred to or how I want to show up. It gave me the option to reclaim parts of myself that I couldn’t articulate before in the physical space. Honestly, if I hadn’t made an account on social media and started engaging with content that resonated with me, I don’t think I would have even known how to convey my thoughts and feelings to my friends,” a non-binary person in their early 20s narrated what social media has built for them.
The idea of ‘queering’ belonging in that sense dismantles these normative categorisations that tend to dictate what is accepted in a conformist social structure. Belonging, which seems to be a given aspect at times, is often something that has to be actively constructed, in this case, by queer people. This construction is often a response to the discrimination and humiliation that they face – socially and structurally. It’s a search for spaces where they feel seen, heard and validated.
A genderfluid trans-masc person in their mid 20s, elaborated on their experience and struggles that they often associate with platforms like Instagram,
“I don’t have the exact solution for what I can change on digital spaces but I remember back then I was talking about the untouchability that happens on digital spaces. One of my friends was sharing their experience, and it really made me think about how digital spaces are not as inclusive as we’d like to believe. There’s this kind of gatekeeping that happens based on the way people present themselves, especially through photos and videos on social media apps, Instagram for that matter. You can see this—who gets the likes and who gets the followers…I feel if you’re Dalit and queer, then it’s a different ball game all together, if you don’t have the same aesthetic and access to resources which makes one pass off as upper-caste and privileged person, you’re left on the margins even in digital spaces that are supposed to be for all of us.”
While we talk about belonging as a concept, one site where people find belongingness and community is digital space. It is not to say that online spaces can’t be a site for bullying, discrimination and exclusion. Behind the emergence of social media sites as a resource for finding community there lies a deep divide as many from the queer community remain separated along the lines of caste, class, aesthetics, and accessibility. Therefore, queer belonging as a concept can be built experientially rather than purely theoretically as it is rooted heavily in the lived experiences of everyday realities which are as diverse as the evolving community.
As Bishakha Datta says at Digital Asia Hub, (2021) on the hierarchy of platform aesthetics:
“When we think about the aesthetics of platforms they are often not designed for a particular user and that user is not necessarily rural or tribal or non-native English speaking and I think what we see quite often is that women or girls or queer persons from low-income communities who are very much part of these platforms, especially WhatsApp which is the most widely used platform in India, because of the aesthetics and because of a certain sort of hierarchy, there’s a sense of not belonging to the platform. There is a sense of almost being an interloper and a sense somehow that this platform was not designed for me.” (Digital Asia Hub, 2021)
Datta’s observations highlight the structural exclusion often embedded in the design of platforms where the dominant aesthetics of the upper-class, upper-caste, English speaker often shape the norm, and marginalised users – women, queer people, individuals from rural or lower-income communities feel excluded. This exclusion as Datta points out is not just about functionality but also about how the very design of the platform can create a sense of not belongingness.
The pressure of constant performance
Online or offline, the pressure of performance is very real. The digital demands a constant performance too, which poses challenges for queer people who are navigating societal expectations around gender and sexuality. A non-binary queer individual who works at a think tank, said,
“Social media is all about signalling. There’s this expectation to present a certain kind of queer identity – trendy, well-dressed, visibly ‘out there.’ I struggle with this because I can’t afford to keep up with those aesthetics. It feels like there’s an inner circle of queer folks who fit the mould, and the rest of us are left on the margins.”
Another respondent, an early-career academician, who is doing a PhD, said, “Looking queer has become a trend, and the whole movement has shifted towards appearance, forgetting the deeper roots of the cause,” while emphasising the lack of belongingness that certain kind of people face more than others while feeling othered and alone in such spaces. “To be considered ‘queer enough’, your appearance plays a significant role. If you don’t match that look, you’re often expected to remain silent,” they added.
Therefore, the option for visibility offered by digital platforms is not always liberating and can’t be universalised in positive ways. For some queer people, being seen online comes with anxiety, especially when that visibility exposes them to scrutiny or judgement from both queer and non-queer audiences. The pressure to conform to an “ideal” queer aesthetic on digital platforms is validated by gatekeeping that happens within queer communities themselves. This gatekeeping is often subtle, which manifests in favour of some individuals while not addressing the larger problems and anxieties that exist for people coming from certain class and caste backgrounds.
Digital gatekeeping – the politics of caste and class
Digital platforms reinforce certain discriminatory patterns, often acting as a catalyst in doing so. This happens particularly because firstly, digital platforms are designed by humans who themselves hold certain biases, and secondly, because humans are incapable of dismantling the socio-economic hierarchies which often show up in digital spaces in the same way that they do in offline spaces. However, in offline spaces, there is more space for feedback and course-correction unlike on digital platforms which barely have any way to counter biases. Digital platforms are not geared for such a feedback mechanism. In a country as diverse as India, where caste and class divisions are deeply rooted and often unshakable, digital queer spaces are too prone to exacerbating these inequalities. As one of our respondents, a cis-queer man, who is in his late 20s said,
“Yes, social media makes it possible for people to connect more freely but that’s not always the case. Most of the time, upper-caste people dominate these movements which sidelines people like us, who are at the margins. We remain oppressed, this time digitally. It’s often exclusively benefitting certain kind of people”
A genderfluid, dalit person, in their early 20s, while speaking about harms that social media can inflict adds,
“Social media is more vulnerable to bullying because there’s no identity attached. Public events may bring physical harm, but digital spaces cause frustration which is more like mental harm.” They also added, “It all comes back to your background, ultimately. If you come from a culturally privileged background, you’ll have access to certain aesthetics/content/spaces which will help you connect with like-minded people which is not diverse but just homogenised. It’s like everyone walks the same, talks the same, looks the same. You can’t pinpoint who is who.”
The intersectionality of caste, class, and queer identity is rarely addressed in mainstream queer discourse, leading to a form of exclusion that is both subtle and pervasive. The digital space, while offering anonymity and a sense of community, also perpetuates forms of violence and exclusion that can trigger a sense of alienation and loneliness in digital spaces. What can queer emancipation look like? How can we be something we cannot see?
Imagining queer emancipation?
In big cities, there is a fast emergence of urban queer spaces. These kinds of urban gay spaces are globalised and replicated from the Australasian, European and North American cities around the world (Brown and Borisa, 2021). These spaces are sites for aspiration and desire. The desire to be a part of the imagined global gay community and lifestyle and the aspiration for a form of ‘progressive’ liberal politics with which it is often associated. Queer celebration in India looks like gay prom nights in a bar in SoBo or queer parties in Vasant Kunj in Delhi. Both of these examples show that they only cater to the upper class, upper caste, gay man in most cases. In some cases, sexuality or gender identity, while crucial, does not play a role because all you have to do is pass off as an upper class, upper caste ‘presenting’ queer individual.
In Hannah Arendt’s work on spaces as understood through the reading of Seyla Benhabib’s work on Arendt’s theorisation we rely on the associative public space defined by Arendt to further breakdown our understanding of space. Associative public space is where people act together in concert. For Arendt, public space is a space of liberal dialogue and polity. This is the space where action takes place. This action is political in nature and is around a common thing. This space is characterised by plurality which allows for diverse perspectives and opinions to be expressed and heard. Such a utopia to imagine. The other space is social which is a space of economy and technology. This is where paid work and economic activities take place. Work and labour come under this space. Both of these are not action according to Arendt. Work in the social space is more focussed on individual interests.
Arendt warns against the erosion of the associative public and the dominance of the social. If we contextualise them to our case, these kinds of social queer spaces are exclusionary in nature as they co-opt the idea of queer liberation into the neoliberal framework. Making queer people consumer citizens overlooks and undermines the many battles and rights that queer people have to collectively fight for. There is no space for queer solidarity and these kinds of social spaces do not promise change or solidarity for a better future.
However, there is still hope. There are many interesting ways in which queer associative public spaces are being created are through informal potluck lunches in Lodhi Garden or queer book reading sessions in Cubbon Park or online meetings on how to move forward as a collective. A bunch of queer people together in a public space just being themselves is in itself a political action done together in concert as Arendt defines a public space. Since queer cultures are not simply created through normative publics, (DasGupta and Dasgupta 2018) they necessitate the creation of new spaces that will subvert and question official spaces. Many digital spaces and platforms have been emerging for mapping queer stories, sharing queer journeys, and creating support groups. The bigger question then becomes about how queer individuals can assert their identities both online and offline and create meaningful associations in both these spaces for collective action while continuing the fight towards getting more rights and claiming full citizenship. Is getting full citizenship the only way to belong?
References:
- Benhabib. S (1993) Feminist theory and Hannah Arendt’s concept of public space, Sage Publications
- Brown, G., & Borisa, D. (2021). Making space for queer desire in global urbanism (Version 1). University of Leicester. https://hdl.handle.net/2381/14153093.v1
- DasGupta, D., & Dasgupta, R. K. (2018). Being out of place: Non-belonging and queer racialization in the U.K. Emotion, Space and Society, 27, 31–38. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.emospa.2018.02.008
- Digital Asia Hub. (2021, October 12). Spotlight: Bishakha Datta on hierarchy of platform aesthetics [Video].YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89h1YtwPaJg
- Yuval-Davis, N. (2006). Belonging and the politics of belonging. Patterns of Prejudice, 40(3), 197–214. doi:10.1080/00313220600769331
Cover Image: Illustration by Niv.
