Pride Month 2022: Reading from an Indian glossary of LGBTQIA terms

Kothi: We are kothis. We are often labelled as effeminate men or gay boys. But our social, cultural, and sexual expression is like women. We live within the mainstream society, with our birth families, friends, and partner(s). But we embrace our true selves as women with our fellow kothis.

Some notes are also accompanied with an example of how a particular gender experience may look like. Sample this: trans feminine gender experience, again taken verbatim from the webpage: “I love wearing summer dresses, but I also enjoy typically ‘boyish’ things like video games – I am a huge DOTA nerd and Team Secret all the way! – and science fiction. I also like to role-play masculine roles with my sexual partners. Nonetheless, I feel dysphoric when people call me a ‘tomboy’ or joke about me feeling penis-envy. I am very comfortable with my anatomy and femininity, but feel the idea of womanhood imposed on me.”

Why was the glossary created, and what next

Aahana Dhar, director, communications at Tinder India, Anushka Jadhav and Tejaswi Subramanian are the authors of this glossary.

Tinder was interested in creating “an accessible space to talk about gender identities and expressions,” says Dhar. “We reached out to Gaysi to develop a language that’s more Indian in context by collating community experiences and stories,” she says. “At no point, however, we’re saying that that’s it! We’re inviting people to participate and grow this glossary. It’s a living document. It may look entirely different in its next iteration.” She concludes by saying that it’s not a “straight person’s guide to be an ally. It’s a platform where we aim to actively collect feedback from the community and grow this glossary continuously.”

For Anushka Jadhav, creative director at Gaysi, one of the things was to “not gatekeep any of the identities we were writing about.” She says, “Gender is an evolving idea. We learn more about ourselves constantly. We wanted to be able to put out what we’re saying is the ‘starting point’.”

But what makes this glossary different? “Most glossaries distinguish a particular identity from others. But gender identities are not necessarily watertight compartments. They flow into each other and are very personal,” Anushka submits. The “tricky” thing, however, was to “make it simple and keep it more interactive, and not to make people feel that there’s only one way in which you can experience and express a particular gender identity.”

Journalist, researcher, and editor at Gaysi, Tejaswi Subramanian notes that “several conversations around gender happen during intimate conversations and relationships.” People often ask “so, what does it mean? Why are these your pronouns?” during such discussions. “Several people also demand education on gender,” they further add.

Tejaswi, who has been “editing stories by genderqueer people on Gaysi for more than one and half years now”, says that “several rich narratives about a variety of gender exist, we just have to socialise them. And it’s been four years that Section 377 was read down. Also, the pandemic allowed people to get to know more about themselves, so this education about these experiences is the natural next step in this regard.”

According to them, this glossary is “a two-way conversation. We’re inviting people to share their experiences. Also, we had several contributors from within the community. For example, Heer and Sumira helped collate the Hijra and Kothi identities notes. These terms are used as slurs. We want to claim them. We want to bring in lived experience, which is why we have them and BRC, a Dalit nonbinary neurodivergent person, onboard and write for us. Priya Dali helped in the art direction and brought in rich design sensibilities for this project.”