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Chapter 9: The Violence That Dares Not Speak Its Name: Invisibility in the Lives of Lesbian and Bisexual South Asian American Women
- Rutgers University Press
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In embarking upon writing this essay, I feel a great responsibility knowing that mine is the only representation of lesbian and bisexual women’s experiences in an anthology on South Asian American women. Initially, I tried to assuage this pressure of representing my community accurately by soliciting the input and feedback of two other queer South Asian women working in the antiviolence movement.1 The impossibility of incorporating the views and experiences of all queer South Asian women into one chapter soon became apparent, and my collaborators encouraged me to stay with one perspective. As with any sole representation of a minority group in a forum, I do not claim to represent all queer South Asian women, who are as diverse as our subcontinent and the diaspora. I share my own views and experiences , informed by many working to end violence within lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT), immigrant, and people of color communities. I share this in the hope that we can begin recognizing, acknowledging, and responding as a South Asian community to the violence experienced by this segment of our community. Unfortunately, while there is a growing body of literature by and about queer South Asians, there is a scarcity of research specific to this population. Thus, I pull from personal experiences, anecdotes, case studies, and the body of research on violence experienced by the general LGBT population in the United States. While some of the findings may be extrapolated to the South Asian LGBT community, there may also be specificities within this community that cannot be assumed by this body of work. The Violence of Invisibility When I think about the violence experienced by South Asian American lesbian and bisexual women, the most common and pervasive violence, the one underlying all 9 bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb The Violence That Dares Not Speak Its Name Invisibility in the Lives of Lesbian and Bisexual South Asian American Women PRAJNA PARAMITA CHOUDHURY 126 Ch009.qxd 11/3/06 5:09 PM Page 126 the other forms of violence, is also the least easily named and identified. It is the violence that leads to only one article being submitted to this anthology on the experiences of this subgroup of South Asian American women, despite the large numbers of lesbian and bisexual South Asian activists and leaders in the antiviolence movement and despite the efforts to seek out such submissions. It is the violence that made me seriously question whether I should write this article at all, and then whether I should attach my name to it. Although I have worked for LGBT rights and wellness for nearly a decade, I have always attached my “nickname” to articles I have written for South Asian publications. This enigmatic violence against queer South Asian women that I speak of is the silencing and erasing of our existence, so effective that it makes us inflict further violence upon ourselves by silencing and erasing ourselves from our communities of origin. The self-erasing women I speak of are not only the quiet, apolitical, and ashamed, we are also the vibrant, passionate, committed, often “out and proud” women working for equality, peace, and justice on the multiple fronts of race, gender , class, sexual orientation, environment, economics, healthcare, etc. We are also those women unashamed of who we are, living honestly and actively in the world. Yet, I hesitate to sign my proper name in an anthology that will be read in the mainstream South Asian American community. I grew up in a tight-knit Bengali community, proud of my culture and not at all understanding those of my peers who seemed to want so much to “act white” or “just be American.” After relocating to another part of the country to further my education soon after coming out, I very much wanted to connect to the local Bengali community—to once again be part of a community in which I could be myself, speak my language, and celebrate my culture. But in order to be comfortable expressing one part of myself, culturally and ethnically, it became clear that I would have to hide another part of myself—my sexual orientation—in order to become an accepted member of the community. I found myself not returning calls and unconsciously trying not to grow too close to (presumably) straight Bengalis that I met. I gradually stopped attending Bengali cultural events, as one of the first questions I was always asked is whether I was married. I do not...