Congratulations from the Kinky Collective to all those who fought tooth and nail, for decades, to make the Supreme Court victory possible regarding decriminalization of Section 377 IPC! Congratulations to the LGBT community and queer people all around India. Congratulations to everyone who felt like “unconvicted felons”, as advocate Menaka Guruswamy puts it.
We, as kinky people, like LGBTQ people (many of us are both kinky and queer), can actually feel the sentiment of being lonely among friends and family who won’t understand or accept us for who we are. We live with the fear of being looked down upon if we are male and submissive. We struggle against being seen as disempowered if we are female submissive. We also face the stigma of being demonized as abusers if we identify as sadists of any gender. The alienation, from the society and law, is huge. Often it is the silence about our existence that we fight against.
This judgement gives us hope that one day consensual kink, though not illegal in India, will not be stigmatized and that society will give us the space to be who we are and we too, will be able to celebrate our freedom on the streets of India. As some of us in the Kinky Collective say, today, we feel we are in the same position where LGBTQ people were decades ago. We, along with allies, are on our way to changing that and draw inspiration from the LGBTQ struggle.
The Kinky Collective has been working on creating awareness about BDSM, kink and consent for almost a decade now. We believe that Queer is a concept that encompasses everything that challenges ideas of ‘normal’ and ‘natural’. This is why we also believe that Kinky is Queer, because kink too challenges rigid categories of desires and recognizes the inter play of power and desire. We are kinky, we are queer and we are human and believe in equal rights – the same inalienable rights as any other human being, irrespective of sexuality, gender, caste, religion, ability and class.
Our thanks to all the people who made this amazing judgement possible – all the people over decades who have protested on the streets, who have fought daily battles in homes, schools, colleges, workplaces, all those who have organized meetings big and small to build allies, all the lawyers and activists over the years who have kept the legal battle going, and of course, all those who are no longer with us. Thanks to you, and this landmark judgment, we too can see the road ahead. No matter how long and hard the struggle. You give us hope.
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