Hidden reality of sexual governance

That the media’s interest in the question of gayness is nothing more than salacious and homophobic and not linked to the question of justice for the homosexual and homosexual lives becomes more and more evident. This very newspaper, which carries this most progressive page, also carries reports like “Orp­hanage Head indulged in homosexuality” (sic) (Tirunelveli, July 6, 2010, The New Indian Expr­ess). Not only does the story conflate homosexuality and paedophilia which is a usual practice, it also throws in voyeurism and practices some itself, which makes one question the veracity of the report.

Why does the accused’s purported homosexuality feature in the story at all? If he is abusing children of both sexes, why is the homosexuality singled out? What is the claim of ‘homosexuality’ based on? Isn’t ‘indulged in’ (sic) indicative of a behaviour and not an identity? Why is the word ‘homosexuality’ in the title of the article at all?

Another newspaper carried the story of a teenager being killed by men in Mumbai when he intervened in a robbery taking place as a ‘gay teen’. Why was the gayness of the teenager relevant? Would it seem okay to any reader if the article said ‘Heterosexual teen killed’? Clearly, ‘gay’ was added in for the masala, to grab the reader’ attention, to sell more copies.

These two stories indicate that gayness for the media is just another word for sleaze and scandal. There is no sensitivity in the handling of the subject, no real investigation done, no substantiation of any of the claims. This is the gutter press quality of all reporting on issues of sexuality or sexual abuse. We see this in reports on rape or family custody killings as well. There is a bumbling around terminology ( sexually assaulted or criminally assaulted is used instead of rape, ‘honour killings’ is put in scare quotes but used anyway) for a while but a quick resort to the real point of the story which is sleaze and gore, never mind if most of this is speculative and foundationless.

This is part of a larger discourse of complicity and an unwillingness to face the realities of issues like these from society in general, of which the media is only a symptom, albeit a shameless one that is not only complicit with the official discourses on these subjects but also exploits them for money.

What is being avoided not just by these

reports but also by society on these issues? Feminists like Uma Chakravarti and Pratiksha Baxi have argued that the word ‘honour’ should be substituted with ‘custodial’ in these killings. Their argument is that the family as custodian (custodial killings should not be seen as happening only in jails) and as part of what they call the ‘sexual governance’ of women. This sexual governance can be seen to extend to children who are even more vulnerable than women because they are denied all agency. In both cases, the family is the root of the problem. The family refuses to see the adult girl or boy as having agency in the choosing of a life partner and the family refuses to see the child as capable of agency at all. The rhetoric of both of these refusals is that of the protection of the subjects involved: the protection from caste contamination, protection from adults.

Yet what is not acknowledged here is that in both cases the real oppressor is the family. It does not allow the young to make independent choices and it does not allow children to have agency (this is especially dangerous when it is a known fact that most abuse of children happens within the family).

In one case, the family resorts to a terribly obvious violence and kills the young. In the other, it resorts to a more subtle but equally vicious violence of not allowing the child to speak because the child cannot speak, the child cannot have a mind, cannot have agency. In both cases, under the guise of protection, the young are not allowed to articulate what they feel. In one case, the onus is displaced onto the question of cultural honour when the real reason is family control and caste bias. In the other, the onus is shifted onto the empty category of the paedophile when the real reason is family silence on sexuality in general which allows for abuse, most often precisely within the family.

In both cases, any larger, structural critique of the family is barely a possibility. The media does not have the space for voices like Chakravarti’s and Baxi’s on custodial killings. In the other case, any critical voice is deliberately distorted and drummed out as pro-paedophilia and therefore, sick, demonic and whatever else. This is what lets stories like the one I began with flood the media and fulfil every voyeuristic fantasy while the real questions remain unanswered.