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Queer rep in Indian media

I want to talk about queer representation here. I will start with my introduction to queer media. My first introduction to queer people in India would be the newspaper coverages of Pride marches in big cities. When section 377 was decriminalised in 2018, I had never given thoughts to my sexuality. Being an avid book reader, sometimes books with queer characters would accidently reach my hand. I say accidently because my primary source of books before Covid was my school library. Not a great place to find queer books. I had never liked Bollywood movies because of their blatant sexism, and my love for Bollywood songs  was fading. So when I found myself questioning my sexuality, I had to specifically look up queer media on youtube and chrome. That was in 2020.

In the summer of 2023, I discovered the gold mine/hell-hole of BL webtoons. I don’t remember my first BL webtoon. Was it Hearstopper? Its creator Alice Oseman will say it’s not BL (more on that later). What I do remember is binging on BL webtoons day and night for many days, until I started feeling guilty of consuming mostly BL in the name of queer stories, and that too mostly the ones written by women. So I actively searched for GL webtoons, and found them, but sadly not as many as BLs. And to top it, they storyline in many of them weren’t great either. GLs were lacking a lot in both quantity and quality as compared to BLs. But I didn’t break my resolve and started watching anime for the first time. I watched Bloom Into You, a GL, and Yuri on Ice, a BL. Then I started watching Heaven Official’s Blessing (TGCF), and god knows I still haven’t recovered from it. I read the whole book series in 4 days, and wanted to read more MXTX novels but put off reading them because I knew I would be gone for if her other works were half as interesting as TGCF. A year later I finally gave in and read Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation (MDZS). And then I started watching The Untamed. The boon and bane of my existence right now.

My exams were also going on, which meant added stress. But there were nights I cried myself to sleep after watching youtube shorts of The Untamed. There were so many questions I asked myself while watching those 10-15 second videos. How come the Chinese have censorship, but they get to make and see such a great series with queer characters and the actors are also famous ones? In case anybody mistakes it for jealousy, I want to clarify that what I felt was anger and frustration. Why don’t we have such a series in India? Why don’t we have mainstream actors playing queer characters? Why don’t we have a good queer series or movie? So much heterosexual and sexist garbage gets passed by the Indian film censorship board but no one dares to make what is actually needed. I know there are some movies produced in recent times which don’t depict queer people as a joke, but why are there only a handful of them?

In India we have so many mythological tales relating to queerness, we have queer Gods and Goddesses, we have trans Deities, we have ancient temples dedicated to love depicting non heterosexual relationships, we have queer characters in our great epics Mahabharata and Ramayana. But very few poeople are ready to talk about it.

I hope this changes one day, and one day soon.

I had wanted to talk about many other things but they will have to wait for another day I guess.

P.S. I feel this piece was over a lot of places. I will learn to structure it better if there is a next time.

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I don’t know if I will post this and where I will post this. I just want to rant about deep stuff somewhere. I may be wrong about a lot of facts, and I would love to be corrected by evidence. Similarly, I would like it if you showed your appreciation or agreement.