“Legalizing sex” by Chaitanya Lakkimsetti reflects the everyday struggle, difficulties, and discrimination faced by the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Queer Kothi Hijara (LGBTQKHI) Community, on the social, political, and economic level in India. It presents the conservative, discriminative and unwelcoming culture of the LGBTQKHI community in India. Lakkimsetti introduces a new term “LGBTQKHI “instead of the renowned term “LGBTQ” where she includes men who have sex with men, the Kothi, and the hijra (MSMKHI), marginalized sex workers neglected by the government. Lakkimsetti effectively portrays the reality and the constant struggles of the transgender, sex workers, and the gay community in fighting for their rights and class in society.
Lakkimsetti questions the ghettoization of sexual minorities in India. She questions the position of sexual minorities in society by presenting the everyday struggles of the sexual minorities. She collaborates with the LGBTQKHI community, several organizations, and the government to promote equal protection, control the pandemic, and fight for the rights of the marginalized sexual minorities. She reflects on the unsupportive government, its sardonic anti-homophobic laws, and a discriminative society in marginalization and stigmatization of the LGBTQKHI community. Her research and surveys around various parts of India such as New Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, and Chennai gather the data on sexual minorities that reflects the reality of the discrimination in civil, political, social, and economic rights of LTBTQKHI people in India.
She also reflects on the boorish nature of the government and how the pandemic shifted the position of sexual minorities in India. Sexual minorities once discriminated against and marginalized by the Indian government come to attention as “high risk “groups to combat HIV/AIDS to create an effective response in the mid-1980s. This book reflects on how unsupportive government, homophobic laws, and discriminative society have led to several social, political, and economic barriers to sexual minorities. Such barriers have left them with no choice but to fight for social, political, and basic civil and political rights demanded by the state government of India. It reflects the heterosexist perspective of society as demands and protests by the sexual minorities for their right results in shock to the government with how previously stigmatized and marginalized groups could stand up for themself and make demands.
Chaitanya Lakkimsetti is a professor specializing in gender, sexuality, law, and citizenship. She is renowned for her studies in sexual and gender inequalities in a global context using transnational and intersectional approaches. Her expertise in the field of gender inequality has contributed to her book “Legalizing sex” where she successfully addresses the demand for political and legal change by the gender minorities in India. Her wider extended research on the sexual minorities in contemporary India has highlighted the contemporary struggle for social and political justice in relation to the anti-sodomy. She provides a social and political approach to ending the injustice and suppression of sexual minorities legally.
The first chapter reflects on how sexual minorities are drawn into the category of “high-risk group” to develop a strategic approach to control the HIV/ AIDS pandemic. After the first detection of HIV/AIDS on sexual minorities, they are taken into serious consideration as a threat, blamed, hatred, and even punishment. The same marginalized group is later given a leadership position in combating the pandemic by the Indian government. The second chapter – “Challenging bare life” emphasizes abuse and incessant violence especially arbitrary police violence supported by the criminal laws against sexual minorities. It presents the ways in which sexual minorities negotiate for accountability and redirects the government’s attention towards the protection of the rights of marginalized groups.
Chapter 3 “Empowered Criminals” focuses on the mechanism of resistance as a means for negotiations with the Government regarding the HIV/AIDS pandemic. It addresses the success of sexual minorities as they become able to gain the support of several HIV/AIDS organizations and from the federal state ministry of health. This chapter elaborates on legal acts as important implications for the rights of the sexually marginalized group. Lakkimsetti successfully scrutinizes the everyday policing of the non-generated class and emphasizes the struggles of gay groups and transgender/ Hijara focusing on two judgments. Those two judgments include the Indian supreme court, the Koushal that declared section 377 constitutional, and NALSA(National legal services agency) that granted rights to transgender people. The closing chapter “Interconnected rights” presents the need for cooperation and active participation among the sexually marginalized groups for the transformation of goals of sexual minorities with a focus on a welfare discourse. It includes the success of the sexual minorities who have been protesting against section 377 for two decades and finally supreme court of India makes it unconstitutional in September 2018.
One of the greatest strengths of this book is that it successfully presents the reality of the constant struggles and fights for legal change by the sexual minorities in India. Through her experiments, research, interviews, and collaboration with several organizations is able to reflect on several homophobic laws, discrimination, and homophobic society resulting in discrimination, unfairness, and harassment of sexual minorities not only in India but in the entire world. She mostly emphasizes the homophobic laws in chapter two with how Such laws freely consigned sexual minorities to death by depriving resources and made it extremely harder for the sexual minorities to stand up for their right and place. She portrayed that such violence reveals the internal contradictions in the Indian government, the cusp of the juridical and biopower. She not only includes the difficulties and the suffocation of sexual minorities but also points out some success and positive changes that took place after the mid-1980s after the HIV/AIDS pandemic, a global issue. For example, in chapter one, she includes the repeal of section 377 in 2009, which marks a significant history for sexual minorities as a victory in a legal battle for their social, political, and economic rights.
Despite some positive changes and success, she presents the reality of how the homophobic perspective of society remained the same, and they are still marginalized and stigmatized in today’s modern world. Although the author effectively communicates the struggle and reality and their oppression of LGBTQKHI people, it does not provide a fully comprehensive account of minorities such as lesbians and bisexual people. She emphasizes more on the Gay, transgender, hijra leaving behind bisexuals and lesbian community. Such has left a small room with not much understanding of the reality of bisexual and lesbian people and their struggle and class in society. It would be better if she had emphasized including all the sexual minorities in the category of the LGBTQKHI community and not just Gay, transgender, and sex workers.
Overall, its intersectional nature provides the deep root stigma, discrimination, and struggles associated with the marginalized sections. The author does an excellent job as she helps us understand how activism can influence and change the different political discourses and the dominant politics in bringing positive legal change. She emphasizes how active cooperation, active participation, and fighting for a change play a vital role in achieving a goal. The book successfully presents the existence of discriminatory and biased laws against sexual minorities and encourages its views to thrive for a change and fight for rights and equality. I would highly recommend anyone interested in the field of sexuality read this book.
Reference:
Legalizing Sex: Sexual Minorities, AIDS, and Citizenship in India, Chaitanya Lakkimsetti , 2020
This book seems like it packs in a lot of information about sexuality and law in India. I would love to read it, and it looks like it has some connections to the presentation about section 377 that we saw on Monday. Much like how sexuality is often talked about as if it is ahistorical, I think that my experience learning and talking about sexuality has very much been confined to the way it is viewed in the United States, so I would love to learn more about different ways of understanding sexuality in different regions. I also want to learn about how homophobia presents itself in different ways, since it often means activists in other countries may have different goals than those in the United States, and it seems like this book talks about both of those things.
In my book review I also chose a monograph based on Indian society so I was able to feel a strong appreciation for your review. My monograph talked briefly about the LGBTQ community in India but mainly focused on women and marriage. It was super interesting to read this perspective and gather more information in the same realm. It’s always helpful to learn about social dynamics involving sexuality in countries outside of the US, so thank you for bringing light to that. Great work!