By Aloka Wijesinghe

“There will not be a magic day when we wake up and it’s now okay to express ourselves publicly. We make that day by doing things publicly until it’s simply the way things are” is a famous quote from the first openly gay U.S Senator, Tammy Baldwin.

Many of us are globally connected through Social networking, and through this we see many people that keeps talking and posting about how it is to be queer in a homophobic country, or in a world and yet hold on despite all the pain a queer woman goes through. First however, if you are wondering, what the word “Queer” means and what it has to do with women, you could type it up on Google, which offers a selection of terms like: “Strange, Odd, and Different”. But “Aren’t we all filled with a little bit of Strange, a little bit of odd and a little bit of different in our own way which makes us all stand out? Does been a little bit of different, a little bit of beautiful in our own little ways make us different just as any of you?” As such, being queer has nothing to do with being wrong or unacceptable.

Despite any painful, traumatic incidents we all go through in this journey of life we all find “Love” as our comfort zone. Maybe it’s the closeted lesbian in a patriarchal family who has fallen in love with a girl that made her stop in her tracks or maybe both are in love but are too scared to come out. Perhaps it is the Bisexual girl who wants to feel accepted and not misgendered because of her sexual identity, or that girl walking in the streets at night, filled with henna patterns and makeup who finally feels comfortable with herself. As the quote above mentions there will be no magical day where a fairy godmother would bless and inform you that it’s time and is now okay to express and finally start accepting yourself. It is the magic within you struggling to come out from behind society’s iron bars and once you embrace yourself and let the magic flow through, the world becomes a much brighter place;

Coming out as a queer woman in Sri Lanka is like entering into a death trap, or so this is what many of us think. If we love and believe in ourselves and what we do, hate comments and harassers and all their ways to put us down fades away, because we are too powerful to be bothered about such things. People tend to think of queer women or those who identify as a lesbian, as sexual objects that many watch as porn. As a result even when two girls are holding hands, or sharing cheek kisses people try to separate them away saying “Aren’t you ashamed?” as if loving someone is a crime. But though all this harassment ways and all these painful and traumatic incidents we face, we still try our best to express ourselves the way we want to, not only when we are with our partners, but also when we present ourselves to the society. This is despite the name calling  – for example calling her Malli because she hasn’t pierced her ears, has short hair or is dressed in jeans and shirts and still identifies herself as a girl. She is shoving away the uncomfortableness created by the senseless societal norm that articles of clothing have a gender attached to it.  Frankly, it does not.

I used to have this mindset thinking that people will accept me if I am straight, if I dressed more according to the gender that they assume of me, If I didn’t run around the playground like a guy, if I didn’t ask for what I want. Slowly I realized it’s never a good decision to have a mindset like that at all. It always confused me when my best friends always gossiped about guys in our grade and I only talked about a girl with specs and a smile that grew sunflowers and they always seem to realize what I was before I did, which made me loose a couple of friends.  Now when I look back I’m quite happy that I lost a couple of friends because now I’ve gained more friends who are more accepting, and who are still trying their best to understand the concept that “Lesbians” are not a type of “Sex objects or for ones source of pleasure” because my girlfriend and I still laugh when people ask about wanting to have sex
with us, because the mere concept of lesbians are sexual relationships determined by the media which are supposed to cater for the pleasure of men The whole idea that two women falling in love and  making a family that lasts a lifetime, a monogamous relationship that goes as deep as a straight family would is alien to them. You can only pity their ignorance.

The love we share is nothing you can view in HD. It is when the love of your life is cooking, and you take their hand and start to slow dance while the kettle stops.  It is when you’re struggling with an exam and you decide to give up and they start to motivate you and make sure you score your best.  It is when after a small conflict we decide to start painting and then cuddle up after. It is when you both decide to cook because you cannot feed yourself with gender roles. It is when you become their professional photographer even when they feel that they’re not worthy, they aren’t beautiful enough like those girls in magazines. It is when you write prose about their beauty or create small memorable things or buy roses or daisies when they are feeling down, so you can witness their smile rising, just like the sunrise from behind a sky full of dark clouds.

The Office for National Statistics in 2013 found that 93.5% of people identify as “heterosexual” or “straight”, meaning that a mere few years ago, “coming out” was still extremely rare and extremely brave. When you are a teen who is active on sites like Tumblr or Instagram etc., you run into words like “Pride, LGBT, Queer etc. Thus if you are a person who loves to learn and explore and that some people love their same genders, some people love makeup so much they have their own makeup tutorials uploaded in Youtube, it’s easy to understand that what we call “Lesbians, Trans women, Bisexual Girls” are just normal as the next door aunty having a happy and a healthy relationship with their family.

Tori Green, 27, who is a graduate student in Massachusetts, US wrote about how as she talked to a friend and admitted that she could see herself marrying a woman, she paused and burst out laughing and that made her feel instantly free.  We see in stories of hope and joy that many parents are open minded and are trying their best to understand their children and support them even by coming to pride parades with them.

Unfortunately, among this are also parents who drags their children into conversion therapies where research suggests the treatment can worsen feelings or self-hatred and anxiety, because it encourages people to fight or hate a sexual orientation that can’t be changed. We also know of parents who mentally abuse their children because of their sexual orientation and even physically torturing them because the child has suddenly decided to love and accept themselves. We hear horrifying examples of  lesbian identifying young women who are raped by their father, uncle and/or friend to ‘make her straight’. In one such story covered by PINKNEWS.CO.UK, the victim mentions that her father told her “My child I hate what you’re doing and today I’m going to prove to you that you’re a woman, you’re not a man, you’re a woman so you need to act like one”. We return to stress of hope however remembering that there are parents who are open minded and welcoming. Sophia Clarke, 28, who is a technology entrepreneur in London, UK  was 14 when she firstly realized that she wasn’t straight. She talks about how  it was an uncomfortable topic to discuss with parents regardless of sexuality but once she came out, her parents told her given “Whoever you love, I’m sure we’ll love too”. One of the reasons people hate something foreign to them is because they are less aware and educated about that certain thing so if they were given right awareness programs and is educated in workshops or at schools, people will slowly understand that being a Queer woman is just as equal to being a beautiful and a bold woman.

In Sri Lankan culture many view Homosexuality as a mental illness, a phase, a sin you’ve brought along from your past birth  Many traditional families consider it as a huge ink blot or in other words a huge shame to their family, so in such cases kids who are LBTQ+ are forced into arranged marriages, which will lead them to have unhealthy marriages, which then will give them depression and other sort of mental illnesses which will turn them into abusive parents and the cycle will go on.

But being a Lesbian, a Bisexual girl, a Trans woman, a Queer woman doesn’t mean that all of who are LBTQ+ are people who’ve brought sins along from their past births, the society shows that only us queer women sin but what about the other worse sins people commit? What about mentally and verbally abusing a child because of who she is? Isn’t that a sin? Who wrote these rules of who are good and who are bad?  We are just humans, and many queer women who raise kids have happy and contented family lives;

The famous phase “People will accept you if you’re straight, if you’re not a freak” is just as outdated as homophobia. Don’t wait until people will accept you, accepting yourself is a hard process but once you step out, people and their homophobia becomes minute. Some people get built differently, but instead of judging us for who we are, be more open minded and educated about certain things before shadowing hate on it, understand that people like us came from the same mothers as people like you, we are just like you with hearts full of love and hope, to be loved and understood, wanting our rights just like you already have yours. As a straight person you know that you won’t lose the love of your life or your best friend, or your parents the next day. You know that you won’t be mocked at for who you love or harassed for or you know that you will never lose your rights to love another person or you simply don’t have to fear every single day for your existence, or for that fact that people will abuse you just because you love someone. You have the right as a human to love one another but when we try we are officially criminals? This needs to change. Start today.