Queer lives and media reporting
When I learnt about the suicide of Jothi and Priya from Namakkal, my initial fear was about how Tamil media covered the incident. A friend sent the news article and video by News18Tamil. The headline was obviously problematic, the article was straight forward. The news video was fine too until the anchor followed the script from the news article. But he concluded the news by saying that “homosexuality is a medical mystery” and went on to say “it is possible to cure/rescue people”. This obviously suggested conversion therapy. This is the common occurrence. Every time when we learn about an incident, our efforts are put to deal with the media and not to extend support to those who require. The article and the video by News18Tamil has been removed now. Thanks to Ranjitha and Mu Gunasekaran. I am glad that Mu Gunasekaran publicly acknowledged to look into the reporting.
None of us knew Jothi or Priya. We also do not know if Jothi and Priya were ever aware about the queer discourse that is going on far away. The most important aspect is that we never know if Jothi or Priya identified themselves as lesbian or bisexual. We never know if they were comfortable with the gender assigned to them at birth. The meagre information that we get about them and their relationship from the police, family, and others is what helps us to build a narrative. This does not mean they were cisgender or heterosexual. For me, from what I heard the possibilities of them being queer is high. We would never know how they identified. They both were daily wage labourers who worked in a power loom unit. Narratives of people like Jothi and Priya never makes it to our queer spaces. The rainbow might mean nothing to them.
The larger question is about how do we cover stories where we don’t have clear answers; where we don’t want to misidentify them; where we don’t want to out them posthumously; where we don’t want to put their families at risk by outing them; and at the same time where we don’t erase their identities because of the lack of information.
Sometimes the families hide these information to guard the family ‘honour’. Had Priya and Jothi been from an influential family this news may have not made it to the news room. Which also means that the death and stories of many queer individuals has the possibilities of being covered-up. After I posted the news; all these questions creeped in my mind. I questioned myself if I hastily identified both of them as lesbians because I saw two young cisgender women. Was I irresponsible to do so because I wanted to call out the news channel for their misleading report? But I certainly am not going to assume that they were heterosexual.
Two women die in TN: Stigma around relationship pushed them to suicide?
