Mixed Signals

I am a 25-year-old man and I am not sure about my gay life. I’m a virgin and I am not “out” to any one. I have my profile on a gay networking site, but I usually turn down requests because I don’t want to have sex yet. I just want friendships, plain and simple. A couple of months ago, an elderly man from Delhi hit on me with his beautiful insights on sex from the holy texts. Knowledge is a turn-on. He confirmed that he only wanted friendship with no exchange of photos or desire to meet me. I called him on his phone number a month ago and he’s given me a lot of advice on getting over my anxieties and finding a good partner. That part of the relationship has been great. But for the past one week, he’s been sending sexual text messages and asking if he can see me in Bangalore. I gave him a flat NO, but he can’t accept my refusal. I do not want to lose him, but can’t still imagine a mere bodily relationship with a man. What should I do?
–I Just Want A Friend

I don’t really give a fuck about what you should do. Your elderly friend from Delhi should run as far away from you as possible and find someone else to hook up with, you manipulative mixed-signal-giving dork. You signed up for a gay dating site (let’s drop the “networking” nonsense), you were turned on by this guy’s “beautiful insights” on sex (and probably told him as much), you’ve been talking with him about how to find a good partner, and now you’re all surprised that he wants to take things further? Boo hoo. This might come as a shock to you, but it’s totally possible to have a friendship with someone and simultaneously have a romantic relationship with him, too. It’s not an either/or proposition, kid. If you really don’t want to start something up with this guy, be upfront with him and then end the friendship. You’ve done too much damage already for this to be salvageable.

It Takes Two To Make It Outta Sight

I’m writing this on a problem that my friend is facing. I’m changing her name and the location so that the secrecy is maintained. My friend has been married for the last 10 years and she has two young children. She is now seeking a divorce because her hubby is not interested in her and has another woman. Bu this is the very peculiar thing: my friend’s hubby has developed an interest in sexual entry through the anus because of his addiction to pornography. He and my friend have not had sex in 4 years because of this. He says he does not enjoy biological courting. They tried having sex in this way twice but failed because the pain suffered by my friend was unbearable. Why has his desire changed to unnatural sex after so many years of a normal marriage? Is this something he learned from the Internet websites? Is this because the other woman accommodates him this way? He refuses to leave the other woman, saying that she is the suitable partner and not his legally wedded wife. Is it possible that he have normal sex with medical treatment? He only gets full satisfaction from this anus sex, not even when my friend tried doing oral. There are fights and quarrels every day. They are finally getting a divorce in order to protect the children from their fighting. Will you please help her with some suggestions?
–Friend’s Problem-Solver

Your “friend” is having this problem? Girl, please. Let’s cut the crap and acknowledge that you’re writing about yourself and so that we can move on. Now, you’ve got two problems here: one, that your husband is apparently so hung up on anal sex that he can’t get his rocks off any other way; two, that he’s having an affair and that you two don’t want to stay married. Those two issues may be related, but they’re not the same thing. If your husband is having an affair with someone else and it’s clear that neither of you want to remain married, then obviously getting a divorce is the best course of action to take. As you yourself pointed out, there’s no purpose to exposing your children to all that anger and resentment, and provided you can make the divorce proceedings as amicable as possible, then I say go for it.

But there’s this other issue of anal sex that you’ve brought up that I want to address in more detail, because it’s related to queer rights and discrimination against gay and lesbian people, in its own weird way. Now, I have no idea whether your husband developed his insatiable taste for butt love by watching porn, nor do I particularly care. And granted, he definitely sounds like a jerk if he wasn’t able to take his time, go carefully, and make it pleasurable and painless for you during the two times you tried it. Failing grade for him. However, there is nothing unnatural about anal sex and nothing particularly normal about vaginal sex, either. One of the major arguments in favor of keeping Section 377 as it stands is that anal sex (or any form of non-procreative sex) is “against the order of nature”, and this reasoning has been used to harass and oppress gay, lesbian, and transgender people since the law was enacted since anal sex is a act that has been commonly (and wrongly) associate exclusively with them. So it becomes a vicious, self-justifying cycle: anal sex is bad because it’s what gay people do, and gay people are unnatural because they have anal sex.

But clearly this is not a sexual desire that is restricted to queer people: your husband wants to have anal sex with women. (As far as you know—he might be getting it on with men as well.) Thinking about any sexual act in terms of normal or unnatural is really discriminatory because it closes off the possibility of experiencing and exploring pleasure to all people, and justifies the specific targeting of marginalized communities in the bargain. And that’s, well, crappy. (Yes, pun intended.) There’s no such thing as an unnatural sex act, only an unpleasurable or non-consensual one—and anal sex (like any other sex act) can be intensely pleasurable for both partners. If you can get around your prejudice and your husband can stop being a fool, you might be able to work your way having one last between-the-sheets blowout before you sign the divorce papers. But let me tell you one thing: both of you (or whoever your next partner is) need to make the effort, both to set and respect boundaries and also to explore each others’ sexual desires. Love’s a two-way street, baby.

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.

Navigating The Genders

I am a 23-year-old boy. But even though I am a boy, I feel like a girl inside. I’ve always liked to wear girls’ clothing, like skirts and bras, and I have felt this way from my childhood itself. I feel that I am totally a woman. Can you tell me why this is happening to me? Are there other people in the world like me? Can I really change into a woman, and if so, how do I do this?
–J

I have to apologize to you, J, because I received your letter about a month ago and I put off responding to it because the question you’ve posed is just so dauntingly large. I’m sorry for making you wait so long. To answer your query, it sounds to me that you are a transgender woman (or gender-variant and genderqueer—I’ll be using all these terms interchangeably although there is quite an argument in the community whether it is really accurate to do so). That is to say, you are a person who has been born with the biological characteristics of a man but who identifies yourself as a woman. India has a rich heritage of communities of people who transgress and transcend the blindly accepted gender binary of “male=penis” and “female=vagina”, and who are redefining what gender means on the ground Essentially, the argument of many gender activists and theorists is that one’s gender is not necessarily linked to biological characteristics, that there are more genders under the sun than just “male” and” female”, and that it is necessary as a society to expand our socially accepted definitions in order to reflect the diversity of how gender is lived and experienced in the real world. For example, many people who identify as hijra state openly that they consider themselves women, plain and simple, and yet there are also others who identify as transgender and say that they fall into a third gender category that cannot be defined as either male or female. And that’s all to the good. The beauty of engaging with gender-variance is that it pushes all of us (including transgender individuals) to question our assumptions about gender and sex and to acknowledge the fluidity of such identities. It also allows non-genderqueer individuals to push the boundaries of their own genders: if a butch-presenting lesbian and a very femme transgender individual both identify as women, then they are both challenging assumptions about what womanhood means and expanding the limits of gender identity and embodiedness for us all—gay, bisexual, straight, transgender, and queer. All of this gender theory is my way of telling you that you are not alone. Not by any means. There are many communities of hijras in the north and aravanis in the south that you can tap into as sources of support and guidance. (You may, for example, have seen the recent news reports about the addition of “transgender” as a gender category to official documents and government applications in Tamil Nadu.)

Now, you raised the question of how to “really” change into a woman. In my book, you already are one. But of course, not everyone will see it that way, not among the aravanis and transgender population. In the opinion of many in the transgender community, one cannot truly call themselves male or female until they have undergone the sex-reassignment surgery. (This surgery essentially creates either a new set of genitalia and secondary sex characteristics for the person who elects to go through it and is often preceded and followed by a long-term course of hormone therapy.) However, the surgery is expensive and carries certain health risks, and not everyone chooses to do it. Does that make them less authentically the gender they’ve chosen? In my opinion, no. It’s ultimately your decision to make, and you have to be comfortable with it since you’re the one walking out of that hospital. We’re dealing in profound issues of identity here, and when it comes right down to it, only you can define who you are and set the terms of your own selfhood. Not me and not anyone else. It’s your right, J. So claim it.

Poppin’ Pills And Poppin’ Out The Puppies

I’m a 23-year-old married man. My wife doesn’t want any more kids now that we’ve had two, and it’s became a routine for both of us to quarrel everyday. Is there any pill that can arouse her desire to have sex? And if she should become pregnant, is there any pill to abort the baby so that we can keep at least some gap between the children?
–Need Wife’s Loving

In the words of the late, great Kevin Federline, you bettah check yo self before you wreck yo self, fool. I don’t know what planet you’ve been chilling out on lately that you don’t know this, but there’s a nifty little invention out there called the condom, which if used properly, prevents both sexually transmitted diseases like HIV and (gasp!) pregnancy! You don’t even have to worry aborting any fetuses because condoms prevent sperm from ever fertilizing a woman’s eggs. Genius! I hope know what I’m referring to, otherwise you’re in trouble. (I’d love to insert my usual demonstration of safe and proper condom use here, but I don’t have my medical instruments handy—a rubber, a banana, and a chalkboard. Pity, really.) Kama Sutra, Durex, and Nirodh are all brands of condoms that are available at any local pharmacy—I know, because I’ve bought them. They’re usually between Rs. 50 and Rs. 120 per pack. Check out Planned Parenthood’s website for a full description of what condoms are and how they work. And, you know, go forth and fornicate.

As for a magic cure to arouse your wife’s desire, I’ve heard of a really great one recently: it’s called the “help your partner around the house and with the kids, treat him or her with respect, and generally be a more sensitive person” pill. It apparently works wonders.