Scared To Ask

I am a 15-year-old lesbian. I love a girl who is a class senior to me. The girl doesn’t know about me. How do I approach her? I really love her and I think she likes me, but I am dead scared to talk to her about it.
–Scared To Ask

If I were anywhere else in the world, I would tell you to go for it and let her how you feel. Maybe she’ll reciprocate. But this is India, where even lesbian-identified women who are of age can find themselves thrown out of school, placed under house arrest by their families, forced into marriage (possibly to some joker like the guy in the letter above), thrown into jail, or involuntarily committed to psychiatric care for expressing their desire for other women. You’re not legally an adult, so the risks are even greater for you. Now, I have no idea what your family or her family is like. Maybe everyone is loving and supportive or maybe they’re all monsters. Who’s to say? But I’ll tell you this: you do not want to have the full machinery of family pressure, social censure, and state-sanctioned collusion crashing down on your head at this time. You’re too young and vulnerable. Don’t tell this girl about your feelings right now.

Instead, I suggest you get in touch with a good therapist or one of the counselors at an LGBTQ support organization. Sangama, in Bangalore, is a great place to start. Talk through your options with them and start building a support network for yourself. Nothing is ever accomplished by being hasty, so make a plan for finishing your education and becoming financially independent as soon as possible. At least then you’ll have resources you can access when you’re an adult and your parents hit the roof about you being a lesbian. It’s a tough world we live in and you’ve gotta be savvy if you want to get through it reasonably unscathed. Don’t get carried away by your feelings in the moment and start planning for your future as a strong, proud lesbian woman. Good luck!

Electroshock Therapy Is No Good

I am a 28-year-old woman and I think I may be a lesbian. I am very much depressed due to this. I have come to know that I will never be able to marry and have true a life partner. I am destined either to live alone all my life or to marry a man I don’t love or want and be forced to have children. I often weep in bed due to this. Sometime ago, I read somewhere that psychotherapy can convert a homosexual into a heterosexual. In which hospital can I undergo this therapy? What will be the approximate expenditure I will have to incur?
–Want To Be Cured

I have no intention of telling you where you can get conversion therapy or how much it would cost, because conversion therapy doesn’t work. Being lesbian isn’t a disease or a psychological disorder; it’s a state of self. The other things you mentioned—the possibility of not finding a life partner, the pressure to enter a heterosexual marriage and have children—now, those are problems. But being lesbian itself is not the issue and it’s not something you should seek to change. Obviously, I can’t make you feel better about your orientation. You have to find a place of self-acceptance and peace, and I can’t do it for it for you. But I can tell you that conversion therapy is emotionally and psychologically undermining, and it’s not going to change anything anyway.

As for the other issues, I empathize with your anxiety. It’s absolutely true that as a lesbian woman, you will face a tremendous amount of pressure to get married to a man and have children—and stress, fear, and loneliness of trying to submerge your identity and desires in a heterosexual marriage are no joke. You may also have to confront the possibility of not ever finding a life partner (although in all fairness, everyone has that problem). But ultimately, this is the world we live in: a world of injustice that censures and punishes those who, in their desires and identities, challenge unequal social structures. What can we all do but keep fighting for equality? You are a lesbian woman: you have the right to make your own decisions about what kind of life you want to lead, whether you want to be partnered with anyone, and whether you want have children. It’s as simple as that. While those may not be rights that the state protects with any degree of regularity, they are rights that are yours simply by virtue of being alive. That said, what you need now is a solid support and counseling network to help you work through your feelings of fear and sadness. You can contact any of these organizations for help: Sangama in Bangalore, Sahayatrika in Trivandrum, or the Shakti Center in Chennai. We’re all here to help, and we’re all here for you.

Struggling With Being Lesbian and A Parent

I am a 35-year-old lesbian woman living in south India. I have not disclosed my homosexuality to any of my family, friends or relatives. Due to the pressure from my parents, I got married about three years ago. Since it is a compulsion for me to behave as a heterosexual woman, I occasionally have sex with my husband, but I hate the sex and I often try to put him off, and then he gets angry. And now I have a one-year-old son. I am worried about him. Will he become gay because I am a lesbian?
–Mother Of A Son

No, your son will not become gay if you are lesbian. While there is some debate out there about whether being gay is a biological trait, nobody has determined anything regarding the inheritability of being gay so far. And even if your son does turn out to be gay, there’s nothing wrong with that. However, I don’t think this is really the problem you wanted to write to me about.

From all the details you’ve given me, it seems like you’ve got more issues going on than just concern for your son. You are stuck in a sham marriage with someone you don’t want to be with, and what’s worse, you’re being forced to have sex with that person. Gay or straight, it’s a bad situation you’re in. You’re slowly giving away your ability to make any choices about the direction your life taking precisely because you can’t tell anyone about your sexual orientation. It’s true that it’s much more difficult for women than men to resist the pressure of marriage, regardless of whether they’re lesbian or straight. However, the longer you stay closeted and in this marriage, the more unhappy and desperate you’re going to become—and you’re putting yourself at physical risk if your husband starts becoming more abusive when you resist sex. Believe me, it doesn’t get easier over time, and this is not the sort of thing where you can just “adjust”, as the aunties would counsel. My advice? Get out of this marriage and start slowly talking to people about your sexual identity. You do have options, no matter how bleak things look right now. You can contact any of these organizations for help: Sangama in Bangalore, Sahayatrika in Trivandrum, or the Shakti Center in Chennai. You have to get out of this situation, but you don’t have to do it alone. All of these organizations have resources to help you create an action plan and can give you counseling and support while you do it. Good luck and take care, friend.

Advice For Young Lesbians

I am a 15-year-old lesbian. I am feeling very painful. I want to have a successful career. My mom says never to be a lesbian. You must be heterosexual always. The society will ostracize you. I really love girls. My friends also make me feel insulted. Some secret lesbian like stuff is with my friend. How will I let it get burnt? Please suggest. How will I tell someone that I love them? I have fallen in love with a senior class girl. She doesn’t know anything about that. Please tell me how will I tell her.
–Goody Dash

I’m not sure what this purpose of this letter is supposed to be, but I’ve gotten a number of e-mails that kind of look like this, so I’m going to take this as an opportunity to lay out some guidelines for sending in questions.

First off, please make sure you have a clear, comprehensible question in mind when you send your queery (I love puns, obviously) to the column. Secondly, try to provide as much detail as you can. As much as I sympathize with what seems to be the general existential confusion of GD’s missive, there are too many questions and there’s not enough context in her letter for me to respond productively. And finally, I’m sure some of you are wondering about the language barrier. How can someone provide the requisite details and write a cogent question when they’re not too comfortable with their English, you ask? Well, never fear, gentle readers. I’ve recruited people to translate letters in Tamil, Hindi, Marathi, and Telegu, and I’m trying to get friends on board for working with other languages, so please send me your question in whatever language you feel comfortable with. My answer will obviously be published in English, but I’ll try to personally send you back a response in the language you wrote to me. Sound good?

As for GD, like I said, I’m not sure what you’re asking. Are you upset about her mother, your “lesbian like stuff”, or your crush on the senior class girl? So here are some organizations that provide support services for lesbian women if you need people to talk to: Sangama in Bangalore, Sangini Trust and TARSHI in Delhi, LABIA in Mumbai, Sappho for Women and SAATHII in Calcutta, and Sahayatrika in Trivandrum. All of these orgs have websites and helplines, so go ahead and get in touch.

Resources For Lesbian Women

I am very scared and I don’t know what to do. I am a lesbian woman in my late 20’s and I live in Delhi. My parents are in Calcutta. I am not out to them, but many of my friends in Delhi know. This is my problem: my parents are pressuring me to get married! The pressure is very intense. I don’t want to hurt my parents by telling them why I don’t want to get married. We’re close in many other respects and this would destroy them. But I also don’t want to get married and have to keep a secret my whole life. Maybe I should just marry a gay boy as a marriage of convenience! Thoughts?
–Scared in Delhi

Boy howdy. This is not a problem with easy solutions. Your idea of getting married to a gay male friend for convenience’ sake is not half bad since neither one of you will have to pretend to each other. If you’ve got any gay friends (and I’m assuming you do) and your parents don’t mind the idea of a “love” marriage, see if you can get one of ‘em signed on. However, bear in mind that the problems won’t just magically end once you’re married: marriage accelerates other expectations like pressure to start having children, which you may or may not be ready for.

If the whole marriage-of-convenience thing weirds you out (and I understand if does), then as difficult as it will be, be prepared to resist your parents for as long as it takes. Playing away with both your future just to momentarily please your folks will leave you angry and unhappy for a long time—and believe me, your parents will be able to see it. If you need someone to talk to about this, there are resources out there for you: try calling The Naz Foundation or TARSHI in Delhi, or Sappho for Women or the SAATHII LGBT support center in Calcutta. All four organizations have websites with contact information, (get on the Google train!) and they all have counseling services for lesbian women for ongoing support as you grapple with this. Good luck, kiddo