DISCOVERING THE SAME DIFFERENCES
In a country where homosexuality remains a crime, Gaysi is a colourful space for the community to live, laugh, love and find themselves.
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Sakshi, Founder of Gaysi
In 2008, I came out to the world at large. I came out to my siblings, my family and to a few friends. I suddenly had this intense desire to be around gay people. But I wasn’t aware of any spaces in Mumbai and in other cities where I could have these interactions.
The content available online lacked an Indian context and so wasn’t really relatable. I spoke to a friend of mine and we concluded that there was a desperate need for a forum in India for women who are coming out and questioning their sexuality.
That’s when Gaysi was born.
Designed by Anjali Kamat for Gaysi.
The intention was to create a super gay, fun and interactive platform where we could share as much content as possible, both online and offline.
Our core team comprises four people who handle everything from online content creation to offline events and the yearly magazine, The Gaysi Zine.
For our online work, which consists of a website, short videos, podcasts, photo essays, comics, social media handles, we write stories ourselves and also have a lot of guest contributions from queer allies both in India and abroad. We focus a lot on personal stories because you can never have enough of them. A lot of our contributors have design backgrounds so that helps us put out great sketches.
In India, all conversations around queer sensibilities have started only in the last couple of years. Sometimes we reach out to people with a specific idea or collaboration in mind.
Apart from the website, we also have The Gaysi Zine, a yearly magazine which we started in 2011. We’ve come out with five issues so far. The first four were focused on what queer means and everything that falls under the queer umbrella. Some of the editions were crowd-funded. “Queer graphic anthology” and “Desires in the queer realm” were the themes of the last two issues.
It’s a niche magazine but we feel the content should be accessible to everybody and in a language that everyone understands without being too preachy or too casual. We focus more on visuals, which I believe have their own language and greater impact. Right since inception, we’ve been particular about our visual content, which can be extremely loud, crazy and subtle as and when required.
We have higher readership in the southern cities of Bengaluru and Chennai, with Mumbai and Delhi next in line. We even have readership in Chhattisgarh. Abroad, our magazine goes to Hong Kong, London, Toronto, and Chicago.
Offline, we organise cultural initiatives such as open mic evenings, trivia nights, sporting events such as badminton tournaments, book clubs, theatre pieces, and even bar nights, which are primarily for queer women.
Still from Tape-The King of Drag (in collaboration with The Patchwords Ensemble).
Photograph by Puneet Reddy.
Actor Stephen Fry At Dirty Talk (LGBTQI open mic).
Photograph by Prashansa.
We try to be as creative as possible. A bar night won’t just be a simple party or a dance and drink event – it will be a space where we also talk about what is happening around us and in our personal lives. With the trivia nights and plays, we try to make it fun as well as informative. People from both within the community and outside are welcome. After all, both groups need to be sensitised.
People outside the community need to know what is happening with us, our needs, and how they can help and be supportive. Within the community too, there are many minorities within these minorities and so everybody needs to know each other’s struggles.
Gaysi is something that we support and operate away from our day jobs. We do it because we love it, we are a little crazy, and we are very passionate about the cause.
We’re fortunate enough to come from privileged backgrounds and to have stable day jobs, so we can pull off something like this on the side where money is not a consideration.
We try to ensure that every project and assignment we pick up is self-sustainable. We try and get sponsors for offline events such as open mics, where the expenses are pretty high, and for our magazine, we limit the circulation to 700 copies.
There is hardly any negativity, but we do sometimes experience a little homophobia from within the community, particularly in the Indian queer space.
There are only a handful of queer women out there trying to run a collective and spearhead initiatives. It’s usually the men or the transgender community that are at the forefront.
From The Gaysi Zine Issue 5.
Designed by The Kadak Collective.
A lot has changed over the past decade since we started, especially after the 2013 Supreme Court verdict that made homosexuality a crime again. Things have changed for the better – not in terms of the law – but mainly in terms of society. People around us are changing and more open to listening; they are not ill-informed or ignorant like they were a few years ago. A lot of work still needs to be done, but now there are spaces where there is freedom to do that work. For example, we hold our events at popular commercial spaces and we don’t experience any kind of phobia from the venue management.
Over the past couple of years, a lot of women have found the courage to step out of the closet. It’s doubly difficult for women in India, considering both gender discrimination and sexual discrimination are involved. The same goes for trans persons. A lot of women have reached out to us seeking similar spaces and people.
Their stories of coming out make me very emotional. I feel every story is a source for us to learn, feel and draw courage.
AS TOLD TO MEHA DEDHIA
From the Gaysi Zine Issue 3 Cover Page.
Designed by Karishma Dorai