HEADLINE
Homophobia and discrimination against gays and lesbians still exist in our country and can negatively affect the health and well-being of this community. These negative beliefs and actions will affect the physical and psychological state of gays and lesbians and will lead to rejection by friends and family, discriminatory acts and violence, with negative consequences. This is the rationale why setting out of the closet is such a troublesome issue to try and do for the LGBTQIA+ community. Section 377 is decriminalized but in the minds of people, this community continues to be a criminal for claiming the love of their lives just because they belong to an equivalent gender.
It is no secret, that for the LGBTQIA+ community, representation is rare. I actually have friends who didn’t apprehend what bisexuality is until I told them. I have friends who were schooled to avoid trans individuals because they’re ‘morally wrong’. There’s such a lot of stigma related to the LGBTQIA+ community, even within the contemporary world. With such little representation and knowledge, it’s extraordinarily onerous to figure out and accept your sexuality. To work it all out in one go is close to impossible. Attributable to this sheer aversion that the folks hold up in their hearts against the gays, comes the concept of corrective rape, conjointly referred to as curative or homophobic rape. Eighty-nine of rape and statutory offence cases worldwide go unreported. In seventy-nine countries, it’s ill-gotten to be a lesbian. Unlawful to exist. Corrective rape; a hate crime in which individuals rape gays to metamorphose their sexual orientation or gender identity. What more disparaging is that not solely the strangers or the society takes act upon them, their own kith and kin encourage and execute this hate crime on their daughters and sons simply to rub off their perceived stereotypical biased ideas on them, however sadly, rather much, in India, most of the cases aren’t reported. Many of us don’t seem to be tuned in to this term. The guilty in most cases don’t seem to be penalized and our society is okay with it.
Films portraying this issue are vital to boost awareness. Deepthi Tadanki, a young filmmaker had tried to spotlight the issue of corrective rape with a hard-hitting film on rape being employed to cure lesbians. Satyavati, the film, aspired to let the audience perceive that being lesbian isn’t a malady that must be cured and is as natural as heterosexuality. Through the film, Deepthi desires to focus on the issue of corrective rape and have the audience understand the nuances of love and therefore the repercussions of using rape as a tool to make an individual adapt to societal standards. She wishes to stress that rape isn’t perpetually employed by spurned people seeking revenge, but extensively utilized by parents themselves to bring their own kids to toe the line of descent. The ninety-minute film examines the devastating consequences of this action and how the characters come to terms with life post the trauma. Pretty Boy, is one such another short film that explores this rather obscure topic.
Corrective rape continues to be recommended as a cure for female sex specifically, in several places around the world. It’s a continuum from street insults to recurrent rape and compelled marriages. It’s an enormous issue in countries like South Africa, India, Jamaica, Uganda, United States and Zimbabwe. The reason why there are only a few actual cases rummaging our justice system when it involves corrective rape is that victims are petrified. Unreported organizations pick up on these cases on ground level but many of them aren’t registered. Four reasons sum up this. Firstly, as mentioned just above, individuals are petrified of victimization, they worry if they go to the police and they report these kinds of cases, they’re going to be ridiculed or victimized, that would be the worst. People additionally fear that if they go and register a case and the offender is arrested, then that offender would shortly be freed again and in fact owing to the legal system, we all know that people are released on bail. These perpetrators typically keep within the same space as the victim and therefore the latter worry that they’re going to be victimized again and threatened by their perpetrator. That’s the second reason. Thirdly, and expressed innumerable times above, the family pressurizes the victims of corrective rape to stay silent. In the last instance, these victims feel that whenever they report to an organization, they become their next campaign and that’s the reality because organizations would like real life examples so as to advocate them to lobby for these changes within the society.
As we tend to become a part of the LGBTQIA+ community, we learn more about it– and in the process, we understand that our gender wasn’t what we thought it was. Knowledge is growth. With education, I spotted that gender is a spectrum and thereupon, came the realization that the gender of an individual really doesn’t matter, as long as you got in conjunction with them. Summing up the whole piece in a poem if I were to, I’d use this one written below.
“The headline
Screams the news
Of her love letter to her
The one she wrote
In blue,
To cover
The red of her heart.
The headline
Screams the news
Of her love letter to her;
Where they made promises
Of a forever never to come.
The headline
Screams the news,
Of her love letter to her
Where words bared their souls;
While clothed in desire.
The headline
Screams the news
Of her love letter to her
The one that screams of their love;
Yet is silenced with whispers.
The headline
Screams the news
Of her love letter to her.
The one that will always be white
Like the sheets on their face.
The headline
Screams the news;
Yet does not ask
Why
Everyone else’s love letter
Becomes a story
But theirs
A headline?”
(Poem found on http://gaysifamily.com/ )
