That reblog about cultural homophobia in South Asian countries imposed by colonizers really got me going coz I’ve been reading about the history of queer and trans people in my country before the British Empire fucked it up and I remember this part from the Devdutt Pattanaik book where he talks about how when the British came here they were horrified by the fact that transgender people were treated with respect and honour and were in the highest echelons of the king’s durbars and homosexuality was pretty much treated as a part of the circle of life with so many stories of both Muslim and Hindu poets writing about their love affairs with men and so much lesbian poetry was lost to time and destroyed after the East India company started taking over that we were treated as the “savages” and the concerted effort to “simplify” the complexity and variety of Hinduism and its stories to their benefit and impose their cultural homophobia through law ( Sec 377) and their narrow minded shitty philosophy which resonates in the current mindset of many Indians today transgender is a “third gender”, homosexuality is a mental illness . I don’t kid when I say that we are a Victorian society with wifi
I’m bringing this back coz we are hearing the arguments to abolish Section 377 today but also on the content of the argument that is treading too close to trans erasure and transphobia.The effect years of British colonialism continues to have on the Indian transgender community. Even when we are trying to argue to get rid of the laws of that era, the indoctrinated and inherited transphobia in modern Indian culture, society and even legal arguments still festers.
