Ghalti

The general estimate used to estimate the non-heterosexual population of any space is ~10%. That is a guesstimate at best because further studies asking people to self identify as any form of queer / attracted to the same sex falls down to 6%. For those who actually have performed same sex activity the number falls even further down to 3.5%.

This is not a screed against Aurat March. I believe that the organisation is doing incredible work to highlight and aim to cease the myriad, violent problems women face in this country. A hideousness of attacks that our straight men and straight women baked into the patriarchy will go to any lengths to defend even if that means a shoulder shrug at the notion of a woman being raped on a highway.

As a cis gay man, I stand by you. I stand by you all the way.

If you asked me to really look deep inside myself and ask if I would jump the queue on this issue: yes I would.

My only reason for doing so is that increasingly over the past few years, women in positions of power be they in government, opposition, or tertiary influence groups like Aurat March — have gone out of their way to ensure the erasure of gay cis men.

I accuse you. I accuse all of you. For using us as props. For taking advantage of our invisibility. For acting as though the movement extends beyonds Cis Het Women.

It simply does not.

*Are Any Of You Gay*

Personally, I believe it’s rather important for us to know if the leadership of the solitary sexual minority rights movement (straight cis women) explicitly addresses the needs of other sexual minorities.

And, sure, there are some paragraphs in the manifesto that do address it.

Let me ask you again.

Is a single woman up on the stage at the end of an Aurat March an out gay woman? With a partner? Trying to live a fulfilling life?

You’re likely thinking, “what is this insane man on about, women themselves have no rights, how can a homosexual woman even think of living an entirely fulfilled life?

That is where our trust breaks forevermore.

I don’t march with you because I think there’s something in it for me. I march with you because I genuinely believe that a women’s liberation movement is the first achievement essential for further sexual minority liberation.

I actually rather don’t care for protestations on this idea because I know already. Would all of you stand by a movement for the liberation of homosexual men? Certainly 10–15% of you may. Some of you may support the idea in abstract but, marching is a bit much. And some of your far right allies will flat out try to turn us into pillars of salt.

I do not trust you anymore. Nothing that has been expressed over the past few years indicates that you will ever come around to us.

“But when we don’t have rights…” you say.

“At least your very existence isn’t criminalised,” I respond.

*Coming Out*

I can write this because I have the privilege of having parents and a family that can have the patience to listen to me.

That patience is not something that naturally existed. As a gay person, you never ever stop coming out. Every conversation punctuated by either a self-declaration or by someone else. By those best meaning, clumsy attempts to set two people up together simply by dint of their being The Other. By those ill meaning, whispers in corner and arched backs with hyena-like barking laughter.

The truly sad part being these groups can change at the drop of a dime depending on whose friend you are. No matter where you go, no matter who you are, there will always be that one person who will at the very least disapprove of your very existence.

Who will call you a faggot.

Who will call you a pussy bitch.

Who will hate you, simply because you are you.

*It’s Not The Same*

Perhaps some cis heterosexual women will stand up in anger and declare that my arguments are unfair unto them. That they do truly care. It’s just that *this* isn’t the right time.

All I have to say to that is: I don’t care.

My time here, too, is finite. As is that of any other cis gay man alive today who recognises themselves as such.

Have any of you ever heard of an LGBTQ+ community in Pakistan?

If you said yes to yourself, I’d say you need to polygraph your own mind.

Heterosexual women have been part of Pakistan’s body politic since its inception, with Fatima Jinnah being declared the Mother of the Nation and Begum Raana Liaqat Ali Khan having outsize presence during her husband’s reign as the first Prime Minister of this country.

We have elected a woman Prime Minister twice, and would have done so thrice if the greatest political tragedy of this nation had not struck on Benazir Bhutto’s assassination in December 2007.

Pakistan understands heterosexual women exist.

Pakistan can and will make space for heterosexual women.

Pakistan does not think there is any such thing as homosexual men. To the point that even the Sodomy Laws mention the punishment for homosexual love, but not homosexuals.

An erasure so complete it utterly blankets an entire people under the title of “sodomy,” without ever naming them.

You all have a name for us though, don’t you?

“Gaandu.”

Right there’s another one:

“Khassi.”

There’s more if you want me to go on.

But you’ve likely thought a few up in your head already.

I fully agree that any movement for the rights of LGBT people necessarily must follow the granting of full rights to women.

I do not believe the current women’s rights movement even tries to address the invisibility of homosexual men. If anything, that invisibility, that we ourselves maintain because we fear for our lives (quite literally given the capital punishment for acts of ‘unnatural carnal behaviour’) works a grand purpose that I would hope is unknowing and not actively taken advantage of.

We make up numbers at rallies. In the hope that maybe someday we’ll get a dais too. A group of people who will speak for us too. And if not even that will at least acknowledge us as human beings that are participating alongside you.

I’ve sadly come to the conclusion that props are preferred to humans. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I absolutely and fully refuse to be a prop.

The lives of heterosexual women have at the very least been acknowledged since before this country existed what with Mr. Jinnah saying that women must be shoulder to shoulder with men for a nation to advance.

No one’s had anything to say about Gaandus since though.

It’s been 74 years.

We are not the same. Perhaps that’s why, understandably, we’re seen as a political irritant.

Just there. Making up a crowd. Grasping a placard in some insane hope we’ll ever be able to have something like this.

Gay men absolutely should continue to support the women’s liberation movement vociferously. I do not expect reciprocity whatsoever though.

Because, we aren’t the same.

*But What About Gay Men Themselves*

What would you like to know? I genuinely cannot answer this question because no one has ever cared to ask.

What is it like to live your life in Pakistan as an out gay man?

What is it like to live closeted?

Do you identify as gay or bisexual at all?

Will you get married?

But what about her?

Personally — no, I will not be marrying a woman ever. The central reason for coming out to my parents was to end the rishta circus, where I would go and meet some young woman only to come back and tell them it wasn’t quite the right fit.

At some point you realise that it’s gone on too long. Maybe your parents themselves are questioning your orientation.

Notionally, the idea that I could ruin some young woman’s life by marrying her when I had no interest is what drove me to come out to my parents.

Did anyone ever have to come out as straight to their parents? Did you have to tell them you’re a woman? Or was this element at the core of your being already seen and accepted by all?

For those among us who can, we tell. We have no idea how they’re going to react. They’re Muslim, and the Story of Lot’s people rings through their minds. They’re Pakistani, and they know that even if they accept it, their child is now going to have an incredibly difficult life societally.

Deep down parents know. I don’t blame them for their reactions in general because the very idea that their child could be so deviant — and I mean that fully D E V I A N T — never jumps past the fleeting thought stage because it is much too much to contend with.

The truth is, if taken literally, of course being gay is deviant. It varies sharply from the median. It is, on its own, statistically deviant. The scripture enforces the idea that homosexual men are deviant with the meaning now turning towards sin.

You do not conform.

You are deviant.

Deviant is sinful.

You are sin.

Now. Let’s play Pity Olympics again. Have you ever been called a sin? Has your mother ever stared out a window and cursed the Powers at how *she* has to face this nightmare.

Are you at least allowed to be your own *mistake* even?

Our failure to exist within the confines of Pakistani society is treated and seen as a punishment to the parent by the parent themselves. We may have been props for other reasons before (look, my kid has straight A’s) but now we’re a prop for their failure (why did Allah have to do this to me?)

Perhaps the most intimate moment of our lives; telling our parents that we are everything they never wanted is snatched from us. For we belong to them, and thus our existence as sin is their punishment.

Have you ever been a sin?

Not sinful.

A sin. Your very being. Your life. Your breath. The rhythm of your heartbeat. Has that ever been declared a sin unto itself?

Don’t try. It hasn’t.

You will never know how it feels to walk around as an embodiment of the ultimate sin. A daily, consistent reminder somewhere deep down in their minds of how they failed to make you ‘right’? Not behaviourally but at the moment the fertilised egg split into the zygote. We’ve been wrong ever since.

Don’t tell me it’s the same. Don’t tell me you have it worse.

I’m not competing.

I’m just pointing out how we go from son to sin. For sins we must ask forgiveness. Forgiveness means forgetting.

Forgetting means invisibility.

Yet, you have the temerity to go “all men are bad” — which is an entirely Western notion being pushed here now, where a huge chunk of men who are queer are not bad but are forced to be bad by the societal pressures on them.

I could resist it, but I understand why most don’t. Because our parents are terrifying. Your horror is about not being treated as a full human as a woman. Our living nightmare is the knowledge that they would rather we never were.

It is not the same.

And you simply will not ever get it. Because pain has to be a lived experience. And we’ve been living it.

And you, YOU, have not for a single second tried to help.

In toto: I am annoyed at your lack of anger for yourself, it’s always so dheema as to not register.

Past that, you don’t give a single shit about me and people like me. I do give a lot for you. However, I know that you’d easily toss us asunder for another NOC. That’s my worth.

So, kindly revert, when you realise what actual feminism is. And yes, I may be a man, but I also can pick up what is being put down. The ultra defensiveness on display since I tweeted about how I felt Pakistani feminism lets Non Heterosexual Women down is enough for me.

You are blind to your own privilege, and you have not created pressure on the executive.

That is failed feminism. Insular feminism. A picture with Shireen Mazari feminism.

Now ask me again why any gay man should stand by you?