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Society & Culture Around Town Book Excerpts Vigyapanti The Dating Story

More Judiciary Education YourTurn Work With Us Campus Voice

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We live in a post-pronoun world. India’s queer movement needs its Woke 2.0

Corporate India loved its brave 'they/them' workshops, but the queer community is moving past vocabulary to fight for horizontal reservations.

It has been eight years since the Supreme Court ousted the State from queer people’s bedrooms. I lived the ruling on my Samsung Galaxy J2, bursting with joy, but unable to say a word. When visuals of jubilant queers celebrating the verdict came up on TV, I wore a mask of careful indifference, as though I was watching the IPL.

At the time, the next step was supposed to be marriage equality. When I went to university a year later, I learned that horizontal reservations and stronger protections for trans people were kind of a priority, though they had been made the younger siblings on the queer community’s list of demands.

With the unfortunate marriage equality verdict of 2023 came disappointment and calls from lawyers (once hailed as Indian homosexuals’ biggest hope) to build movements from the ground up. Where are those movements now? Three years and one Trans Amendment Act later, what we have are nine petitions challenging the lethal legislation, and two others seeking civil union-adjacent rights for same-sex couples.

“It’s a need-based system. A lot of people put in the labour, but there’s no organic resistance,” said content creator and activist Katyayini Saksham.

The long march to queer liberation must necessarily reach Parliament, but it is yet to leave the courtroom. Meanwhile, the cultural tide has turned against........

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