I Want A Family Too!

I am gay and under great pressure to marry. I am starting gather up my courage to tell my parents that I’m gay, but I am very confused whether to marry or not. I want a life partner with whom I can share my thoughts and I want to be a father. Should I marry or not? Isn’t a marriage about things like trust, love, and affection, and not just sex? My parents have dreams of my marriage and they are eager to arrange something for me. Please guide me out through this tough time.

–I Want A Family, Too!
I’ve talked to a lot of my friends who are going through similar issues right now, and the general consensus seems to be this: don’t let your parents arrange a marriage for you. Seriously. Wanting a partner and children isn’t any reason to drag an innocent person into what is, essentially, a dishonest relationship. Sure, marriage (or any kind of emotional partnership) involves trust, affection, and blah, blah, blah—but hell, good sex is important, too. In fact, it’s one of the most important things in a relationship. Let’s just play the scenario you’re proposing out to its logical conclusion: it’s unlikely that the parental units would disclose your sexual orientation to any family they were trying to get you hooked up with. Maybe they’re successful and manage to get you married off. Suddenly your new bride is stuck cleaning house, making meals, and pumping out the puppies for a guy who, nice dude though you may be, will never be attracted to her or truly want her. You’ll probably be having affairs on the side and everyone will feel betrayed and unwanted. Nobody deserves that kind of hoodwink. Unless your folks just happen to know a nice, open-minded family with a lesbian daughter who’s in a similar pickle, and you would both be willing to have an open marriage with her, the whole thing just seems like a recipe for disaster. If you want a life partner, by all means, go out and get one. As the aunties would say, find yourself a nice, hard-working, honest boy with a good job (or a mean, lazy, compulsive liar—whatever floats your boat), set up house, adopt a child, and live happily ever after with two dogs and fabulous interior decorating for your house. It’s legal for men in India to adopt now anyways, so you’re already set on that front. Oh yeah, and screw up your courage to tell your parents that you’re gay but still planning on having a family, just not with a woman.

Abusing Siblings

I am a 23-year-old unmarried boy. My problem is that the more I masturbate the more my desire increases for masturbation. Therefore, to suppress my desire, I go for oral sex with my younger brother. Am I right in doing so? It is the only way I feel satisfied. I am eager to hear from you.
–Brother’s Keeper

You need to stop having sex with your brother. Now. What you are “going for” is not merely oral sex, it’s sexual abuse of your brother. In addition to the fact that you’re committing a crime, your behavior is also completely abhorrent. You have no idea how damaging this is to your sibling; all sexual abuse is traumatic, but incest is particularly so. You may be irreparably ruining your brother’s ability to have a healthy sexual and emotional life as an adult, and you have probably also materially damaged any desire he might have to continue a relationship with you as his brother. I doubt you’re even thinking about this, but I’d bet real money that your brother doesn’t even understand what exactly he’s being asked to do and that he never gave his consent to this sexual contact. In other words, you’re exploiting your age advantage and power over him as an older sibling to make him engage in damaging and traumatic sexual activity. Yes, it’s that serious. Your issues with masturbation are completely irrelevant and do not in any way excuse the abuse.

So, this is what you have to do: first, end all sexual contact with your brother immediately. Second, apologize to him—don’t just pretend that nothing happened. You have to acknowledge to him and to yourself that you’ve done something wrong. And finally, remove yourself from your current living situation and stay away from environments with young children. Don’t make any excuses about work or school making it impossible to move, just make it happen. If your brother needs counseling resources, he can get in touch with Tulir, an organization that does counseling and advocacy for survivors of child sexual abuse. As for you, get into therapy and start examining the reasons why you did this and how to stop—you can start by checking out the website for Stop It Now. I hope your brother and you can get the help you need.

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.

Right-Hand Man

I am an 18 –year-old boy in my second year of college. I am very much addicted to porn and masturbation. I feel an uncontrollable attraction to females. I want to get rid of these habits because they are greatly affecting my academic performance, which is making me frustrated and anxious. Please help me to overcome my addiction.
–A Student

Yo, homeslice. If your self-love is causing you to screw up at school, then something is seriously askew. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with masturbation. Like Woody Allen said, it’s sex with someone you love. There’s no better or safer way to figure what turns you on than to do it yourself, I say. I also don’t think that there’s anything particularly wrong with porn, either, provided everyone involved is a consenting adult. (Many people disagree would disagree with that opinion, but whatever, it’s my column.)

However, nothing as banal as jerking off should be getting in the way of living your ordinary life—studying, going to work, having sex with your partner, etc. That’s like saying video games are ruining your life. It’s definitely possible, but it’s also stupid. If your porno proclivities are interfering with having a functional, day-to-day life, then my advice is to just stop for a while. Give yourself a one-month break from hand-love. See if it makes a difference. After the break is over, limit your porn viewing to once a week and try to be strict about it. Oh, and by the way, if your grades still suck during the one-month break, then you’re clearly doing something else wrong.

Alphabet Soup

No serious question here or anything. I just want to know what the full expansion of “ LGBTQ” is. Thanks!
–Just Curious

Excellent question, my good sir, madam, or whatever. There’s a lot of debate in the LGBTQ community over precisely the use of which term should be used to identify itself, and this is a good opportunity to lay out a little bit of the history of queer identity politics within India and at large. LGBTQ stands for “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer”. It’s an umbrella term for all the people out there with gender identities and sexual orientations there that are not straight, but many individuals who are part of the community have issues with the use of just about all of the words in that acronym (particularly “queer”), since they are all English words and thus the domain of privileged, English-speaking Indians who have access to that kind of politicized self-identity and the luxury of defining themselves through the lens of Western labels. A same-sex desiring man or woman in a rural village (or, not to put too fine a point on it, in Washermanpet) wouldn’t call themselves gay or lesbian because they simply don’t know this exclusionary Western terminology—or so the argument goes. I’ve heard of the acronym being expanded to include kothis (the commonly accepted word for femme-presenting gay men in India), aravanis (the Tamil word for transgender women), hijras (the Hindustani word for transgender women), intersex individuals (people with indeterminate sexual organs), and people who are “questioning” their orientation or gender—LGBTQQHIA. (Quite the mouthful, isn’t it?)

Personally, I think the argument about questions of exclusionary terminology on the basis of language, while valid, doesn’t really go anywhere since most of the Indian terminology is unequally gendered anyway. There are words for men who desire men and for biologically-born men who experience their gender as women, but there are no available Indian-language words for same-sex desiring women or biologically-born women who experience their gender as men. The ability to name, identify, and ultimately define oneself isn’t simply the purview of educated, English-speaking urbanites, but arises out of a practice of unequal power relations that implicates all of us, not just people who are not in the know. The argument about the inequality of identity labels is flawed for precisely that reason—the inequality runs deeper than just the use of language and isn’t predicated solely on sexual orientation, but contains an element of gender inequality as well. My answer to all of this? Call yourself what you want but continue to express solidarity with others who answer to different names. A queer woman shouldn’t hate on a lesbian woman, and vice versa. We’re all in the struggle together.