sexuality

Many of our campaigns over the years have been centred around issues of control of women’s sexuality by the family, community, social structures and the law. But it is since the late 1990s, that we have actively engaged with wider issues relating to sexuality, namely the rights of the LGBT (Lesbians, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) community. The visible starting point was the furore generated by the screening of the film “Fire” and the protests, primarily of lesbian women, that raged around it. As part of the Campaign for Lesbian Rights (CALERI) in 1999 we have worked with others to visibilise the issue and generate public debates. And since its inception in 2004, we have also been part of Voices Against 377, a coalition of NGOs and progressive groups based in Delhi that also filed a key intervention petition in the case at the Delhi High Court that finally decriminalized adult consensual sexual relations by reading down Sec 377 of the IPC. 

Marching at Delhi Queer Pride events, (2008 & 2009), facing the challenges thrown up by cases of homophobia and lesbian/gay suicides, we understand today more than ever that the struggles of the women’s movement and the queer movement are linked together, so is our liberation. We continue to work towards the day when sex workers’ work will be recognised as work, when dancers will be back in the bars of Mumbai, when hijras and kothis will live a life a dignity, and when killings in the name of honour will cease to happen.