Making their space

All this,however,fails to dampen the enthusiasm of a group of around 10 youngsters as they talk about their coming out experiences at the first public meeting of QueerCampus India held recently. A students’ collective,QueerCampus,wants to extend informal support to queer youth in colleges and schools who find it difficult to find support among friends and family.

It was two months ago that Rahul,a student at TERI,Ananya,an engineering student,Renny,a PhD student at JNU,Tushar,an engineering student,Shruti,a graduate student at Georgetown University,Sumiran,a post-graduate student at Manchester University, came together in a virtual forum named QueerCampus India on Facebook.

Rahul says when he first came to Delhi from Bangalore last August 2009,he noticed that there were few spaces in the city where queer youth could socialise,apart from private parties or gay pubs. “The gay parties are out of reach for students because they are held late at night and have exorbitant entry fees. We wanted to create an alternative space for socialising,sharing experiences of coming out and ideas about queer identity,” he says.

The members,however,want to steer clear of imposing an ideology on its members. “There are debates around marriage,queer politics within LGBT groups; we don’t want to force members to think in a certain way,” Rahul adds.

At the first meeting,several members speak about homophobia in college and university campuses even after the reading down of Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code in July last year. An undergraduate student from DU recalls how reactions to her being openly gay ranged from hostility to flippancy. “Some of my juniors in college refused to believe that I was gay as didn’t quite fit into the stereotype,” says Tushar. He came up with the idea of a queer cell in every college to counsel LGBT students and fight discrimination against queer students.

“The challenge,at present,is to create awareness about LGBT issues in spaces where it’s not there,” says Ananya. Even organised queer spaces sometimes tend to be dominated by men. “There’s hardly any counselling available for women who have to face social stigma while coming out,” she adds.

The group intends to hold regular meetings every alternate Saturday.

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