Six years ago, I remember discussing a pitch with a reporter. It was an LGBTQAI+ centred story that we were considering doing to commemorate Pride Month, in June. When it came in, she insisted that one of the people be referred to as “they”. Annoyed at the grammar challenge, I had shot back: “Tell them they (emphasising the word for sarcasm) need to decide to be one or the other.” I was woke enough, I believed. The reporter, discomfited perhaps at my tone and at the gender-identifying words, removed all pronouns. Today, I hope I am a better listener, not just to reporters, but also to people who have lived experiences different from mine.
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A few months ago, I sat among a crowd of college-goers around the age of my son, at a day-long session by the collective Queer Chennai Chronicles and the media organisation The News Minute, supported by Google News Initiative, to understand how LGBTQAI+ people would like to see themselves represented in the media. There were a few things that really stood out: that this is not a single community but many communities; that in a formal setting, people who do not fall into the she-he ‘classification’ can be addressed as Mx. (pronounced mux); that clothes are now gender-neural.
In sentences, this is how these three would look: “The Pride parade is a gathering of LGBTQAI+ communities…”; “Mx. Krishna spoke about his work in astrophysics,” because we must quote professionals who are from these communities on subjects and identities other than their gender or sexual orientation, and not just in June; “Suhail wore a saree to the concert” and not “Suhail wore women’s clothes to the concert.”
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Bias is barely encountered by those who choose the path of convention, or those who are part of the majority. It is the people who live on the periphery of society, the many minorities, who have stories to tell — stories laden with grief, pain, shame, guilt, longing, fear. These are the stories that journalists look for, but we don’t often have the vocabulary to tell them, and prejudice sometimes gets in the way.
How do we best represent minorities, their thoughts and ideas? Any people, whether from the LGBTQAI+ communities, immigrants, or even those disabled in some way? First, by seeking them out. The powerful have PR; the under-represented have powerful voices that are often muzzled or simply ignored. Second, by ensuring, in both news and features, that LGBTQAI+ people are part of different narratives. Whether by speaking to these communities during a flood, or by tapping into their identities as, say, parents or professionals, we draw them into the mainstream, we help create safe spaces along the highways, so no one is forced to crouch in the alleys. The more we see and hear of ‘them’, the more ‘they’ become ‘us’, and isn’t that what we want? To be surrounded by People Like Us?
Women wearing trousers in small-town India was a rarity even in the 1990s until more women got into pants and walked down roads. People stopped coming out to look at them – they were no longer oddities, but just women wearing some clothes. The more we see and read, the more ‘normal’ things seem, until they just become regular, boring even.
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Why is it important for legacy brands like The Hindu to make an effort with representation from the LGBTQAI+ communities? A school teacher in Delhi gave me the answer. She had started a campaign that soon evolved into a club called Breaking Barriers. The attempt was to “highlight the prejudice against the members of this community through years of stereotyping and social conditioning by society”. She had approached several other schools to explore the possibility of helping them start similar clubs. No one had been interested, until we spoke about it in our newspaper. Then, the calls began coming.
The wonderful thing about journalism is the learning, especially the learning that I can never be woke enough.
sunalini.mathew@thehindu.co.in