“We Don’t Exist”
An exploration of masculinity, sexuality and colonialism
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was a cultural giant of the Romantic era in Germany and a precursor to the gay-rights social fabric of 19th-century Berlin. Dipak Misra was the Chief Justice of India when the Supreme Court repealed Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code to end a colonial law that had once criminalized homosexuality throughout the British Empire. They represent two almost entirely separate pieces of history that have become linked by a single sentence.
“I am what I am, so take me as I am.” — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, quoted by Dipak Misra in the Supreme Court ruling on Section 377 of the IPC
It’s a simple way to mark a major turning point for gay rights in India, but behind those eleven words is a complex history of colonization and a fundamental truth about boyhood masculinity.
With the debate about gay rights in the national media last year, homophobia became the mainstay of school hallways in Mumbai. Ash faced this every day with the unplaceable ache of being a closeted gay Hindu boy. “Even though they’re not talking to me,” he said on the podcast, “I feel what they say.” So each day he sidestepped one-sided debates that drove homophobic language through his skin, and gradually his helplessness translated to anger.
“It was enraging to not be able to stand up for myself. That’s one of the things that got to me the most. Because it would be odd for a straight kid to stand up for gay rights. If you take even a slightly pro-gay stance people are definitely going to start questioning you. I can’t risk that. But I can’t just stand and watch them spew homophobia. So what the hell do I do?” — Ash on the podcast
For Ash, the risk was the implied threat of homophobic violence. I also spoke on the podcast with a young Sikh from India named Lovepreet. For him, the threat wasn’t implied. It was lived.
Love immigrated to Canada as a young man, but during his childhood and young adolescence in Punjab he experienced repeated physical sexual assaults and rape that positioned him as a target for older teenagers engaging in dually misogynistic and homophobic patterns of violence. “Everyone wanted to be that strong masculine guy who’s actually fucking girls around all the time,” he said on the podcast. “And the same thing that was happening to girls was happening to me as well. The root of it is that guys are told they can crush you anytime they want. But they get told don’t cry and don’t regret that.”
“You are a man, so be a man.”
The experiences of Ash and Love run alongside the sexual violence in the elite boys school in Toronto from episode four; Mumbai and rural Punjab carry the same narrative of masculinity as the streets of Baltimore or the school bus in Tennessee. These parallels are an illustration of R. W. Connell’s theory of regional hegemonic masculinity: norms of gender hierarchy and subordination are constructed on a societal level, and change over time.
This is relevant to the history of modern India. As Samanth Subramanian wrote in The New Yorker after the Indian Supreme Court’s ruling, decolonization happens slowly. Section 377 was just one piece of the vast history of cooperation, confluence and resistance that characterized the British occupation of India. Political scientists like Sikata Banerjee and Aakriti Kohli describe the complexity of hegemonic masculinity within the British Empire as both a justification for colonialism and a source of resistance for the oppressed. As Indian nationalism responded to British rule, hegemonic masculinity was incorporated into contemporary gender norms and cultural traditions.
“One of the reasons that it’s so important to India to be a muscular nation is under 400 years of occupation—India became independent in 1947—one of the ways that the British justified their presence was by saying ‘we are masculine, we are rational, we are strong and we are powerful,’ and effeminizing Indian men.” — Sikata Banerjee on the podcast
So Indian society upholds what Banerjee calls masculine Hinduism in Mumbai and what Kohli calls Sikh martial masculinity in Punjab. Meanwhile Ash and Love are caught on the frontlines, the victims of both the unrelenting pressure and cruel manifestation of a masculine narrative long defined by invulnerability and the domination of others.
The irony is that we can follow this thread from modern India to the perceived crisis of masculinity in the British Empire and the consequent rise of muscular Christianity in 19th-century North America. We are inherently part of the construction of boyhood masculinity as it has been for a hundred years.
Which means we are part of its redefinition.
The organization Promundo has been a global leader in engaging with boys and young men on gender equality since it was founded in 1997. In 2006, it piloted an intervention that sought to challenge norms of violence and sexual conquest among young men in Mumbai. One of the key findings of the program was the pivotal influence of boys’ peers in co-constructing healthy masculinities. “The interactions with boys in the groups stunned me initially,” reported one of the participants. “I was all the while thinking that only I thought like this.”
Boys’ peer groups are central to how they identify themselves as masculine. They hold both the disciplining force of the status quo and the tentative generation of new possibilities.
“Boys’ self-categorizations and potent desire for belonging are pivotal in the construction of their sense of masculine identity. Located and shaped within the context of broader gendered discourses, these patterns of desire strengthen and amplify through the competitive social dynamics and power relations of the group.” — Amanda Keddie
This probably isn’t a revelation for anyone who works with youth, but it is a critical element of empowering boys’ agency in rethinking gendered relations of power. In an article published around the same time as the Mumbai program, sociologist Amanda Keddie called on educators to revise their pedagogies in order to engage with boys rather than entrench themselves in opposition to boys’ peer cultures.
Simply put, harmful forms of masculinity are learned in groups. Throughout adolescence, they are maintained and refined through shared experiences of unquestioned essentialism. You are a man, for example, so be a man. The redefinition of boyhood, therefore, belongs to boys themselves. And we—parents, teachers and role models—belong at their sides.
This episode is a wholehearted exploration of colonialism and intersectionality, but it’s also a striking reminder that this ongoing conversation about gender is really about people. There is a real teenager in Mumbai right now struggling with his dad and trying to maintain his self-esteem in the face of systemic homophobia; there is a student in Winnipeg trying his best to make rent while healing from the trauma that he’s carried from age seven.
Boys are what they are, to paraphrase Goethe. So let’s take them as they are. Let’s be with them and listen to them and stand with them as they redefine their boyhood into a culture of gentleness, connection and dignity.
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Featured in the Breaking the Boy Code — Season 1 Medium Series.
Breaking the Boy Code is a feminism-aligned publication on masculinity on Medium, and a podcast on the inner lives of boys on Apple Podcasts, Google Play and Spotify. Follow @boypodcast on Twitter and Facebook for podcast-related updates and masculinity-related news.
