In one way, he is a relic of the past, like many male entertainers who acted and/or sang female roles in film. In another way, Gopi is a vision of India’s future, namely one that accepts gender queerness and all of its manifestations as an inherent aspect of the country’s incredible wealth of cultural diversity.
Gopi does not openly identify as LGBTQ, though his on-stage performance identity implicitly shares the theme of gender subversion through ambiguity and role reversal. Aware of the confusion this might cause for his audience, Gopi playfully subverts his role as the “female” vocalist in his stage act.
See the original posting on the Fulbright-mtvU website