The others

No bisexuals in humans

That, is more or less the crux of a post written by Sukumar which again is inspired by another post by Dumaketu. I appreciate the blogger’s guts to write about such topic (although I didn’t understand his post one bit), but OH MY GOD what a faulty presumption. I can’t even begin to write about it.

I come across young men like Sukumar every now and then and wonder how could one ever bridge this gap between these two worlds…the hetero-normative world being oblivious to the other world which knows no labelling.

There is no such thing as hetero, homo, bi, transgender, transsexual. What we need to learn is we cannot classify human sexuality in any square boxed categories and we cannot and should not label them. The minute you label a behaviour it implies all other behaviour not fitting that label are non existent and therefore unacceptable. Labelling is the first step towards demanding conformity and it gives out a massage that, “thou shall be ostracized if thou don’t conform.”

At different time and place over the history of the world societies have labelled and accorded acceptance to various sexual behaviours. But we have also ostracized those who didn’t ‘fit in’ even at that time and place to that particular behaviour.

Thus, many of us who know about them, have given some kind of acceptance to the traditional prostitutes belonging to the bedia tribes In Madhya Pradesh. But we surely consider it a taboo when we see some one from a different community in prostitution. What is acceptable for bedias for reasons of it being in the tradition is not ok for other caste and community members.

There are many things that makes my life worth-full, one of them is my proud association with Sexuality and Rights Institute which bridged this sad gap for me. That explains why it disturbs me so much to see the hetero-normative youth not having a clue about sex and gender.

I am more troubled than others. Because my friends in SRI were comrades from the civil society working towards the attainment of various human rights including the right to chose one’s own sexuality. They are surrounded by such other comrades all sensitive towards each other’s causes. But I was from a different world altogether. I am some from the capitalist world having mostly worked with multinationals.

I have seen traditional girls and boys who pretend they don’t even know how babies are made. Some of them are  slightly better, with an intellectual bent of mind, they read write and talk about Modi, Cricket, Bush and Oil and show ‘respect’ to ‘homosexuality’ but none of them, NONE have a damn clue about the ‘others’ those who are just like us in all other aspects but don’t conform to what we think is normal and natural.

Just to give a quick rough idea, you see just because I was born with a vagina doesn’t mean I have to be a woman. Again what is a man and woman is disputed. Point is sex is a natural phenomenon while gender is a social construct. They are not the same thing. The reproductive organs do not determine our behaviour, how we talk, walk, think, dream, dress etc. they are determined by what society expects from us and what role and responsibilities it imposes upon.

I will continue to write more on sex and gender, meanwhile interested people, for a start might want to read about Alfred Kinsey’s life and work. He was the first American to do a scientific research on human sexuality and was the founder of The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction. The extremely controversial and tabooed research works were initially funded by The Rockefellar University but later the funds were pulled due to protests from conservative groups.