After preparing for a couple days before all the students arrived, the South Asian students presented on their cultures for the international students. You can read more here, and see a few student interviews here, beginning with Olga!
Monica
Mohammad
Rohini
Kultwisiso
Shilpi
Today I saw the dream that I was a male gay person. I became shocked that I am behaving like a female. I have seen changes on me .l wanted to hangout with girls and wanted to have lifestyles of girl. Slowly I saw hated, discrimination by my parents, community, friends and teachers because I am different person than them and I did not have specific identity. There was no space and respect for me so I felt irritated, hated myself. I was upgrading my class and finished my high school. Now I need to join university. When I went they didn’t allow me to give me admission. I got depressed , frustrated and I thought I should not live my life like a hell. Negatives thought came in my mind. I closed my eyes and listen my heart. My heart says don´t be selfish because there are many persons like you. If you die there will be more disrespect for you. I need to move forward a d look for my rights and prove the society that I am transgender I have done this work. I started to research about the rights and existing problems to solve it. Mainly I used social media and I got 25000 followers who gave me more motivation and inspiration .so that I can work more for it.
When I woke up male gay disappear and came in real situation. Though I am not gay, I find encourage myself to do something for them from today´s session. There is my one gay sister when I back to community I will discuss on this issue more and more. So that we together can find solution.
I would like to give more thankful to Aditi sister who made me realized that there are many problems still to solve and made me also realized that to look them and to be in their place are different things. When we look them we didn’t find anything difficulties and when we be in their place we can find many obstacles on our way.
Today the group had the pleasure of learning about the LGBTQ+ community of India. The presentation, by Aditi Rindani, highlighted the many problems and misconceptions that the community faces day to day. It also showed some of the important milestones that were overcome when challenging the laws against gay rights. In addition, the group had the honor of meeting Saesha Kini, a trans man, who has had to preserve in a culturally strict society.
Hearing her story made me think of my own family. How coming out, even to your family, can be so challenging. Especially when the society has been conditioned to believe in something that was not apart of their belief. One of the things that I noticed was that homosexuality was apart of the cultures way before Christ. Then it became taboo after colonial rule. It goes to show the scars left behind after colonization. What was also brought up was the journey taken to secure rights for the people. In particular, Section 377, which made same sex relationships illegal. It became overruled, but then was brought back soon after. Until 2018, the law was changed, making same sex relationships legal. This was a step in the modern direction. Even if there are still problems to fix, this is a start. Maybe someday there will be a more drastic change, but baby steps.
Today was a good day. Today we went to college with school, that it seems like a lot of people attend. Today we discussed about the LGBTQIA+ community, and this is in just the where is discrimination that they face around the world and specifically in India. What I found very interesting today was day one of our early activities we had it in the act a play. Our instructor instructed us to jazz and act whatever you want with the prompts we were given. From the start she discussed that we was gonna be discussing the topic of LGBTQIA+ community and discrimination face for around the world and specifically in (India). They gave us a word and we had to act it out.
What was interesting was that we all chose to include a character from the LGBTQ community in our plays. And even though our teacher never specifically asked us to, we chose to. If this was a different kind of workshop I am sure that I would not have chosen to include somebody from that community. This was an eye-opening experience to my own mindset towards that community, even though I thought I was very supportive, but there’s still work that needs to be done. In my and my partner’s play we also played with the idea of sexuality versus gender, and we made one of our characters a lesbian transgender woman.
We discussed how often there is these preconceived notion‘s that if you are transgender you want the same sex but that’s not always true. Because sexual preferences and gender preferences are two different things. Lastly what I found very interesting was that, the idea behind this community and this community have been in India’s culture since the start of India. It’s in the temples, it’s in the books, it’s in all of their culture, but after British influence there was a sudden hate towards that aspect of their culture. Today many of this community are discriminated against, in the sense of jobs, places they can go, and just walking through parks. The world needs help India make this change.
On another note we got to see an elephant today and that was amazing. Because I’ve never seen an elephant in my whole life with my actual eyes. It was painted many different colors in the man who was riding it or a turban and had a whole bunch of orange on him and he would instruct the elephant to do things. They were just walking down the street with it and that was amazing.
