TW: Mention of identity-based slurs, description of sexual coercion
Sitting at a desk in the Women Leadership Training Center, I found myself thinking about something my recent partner said: “I don’t know how you’ll react. We never talked about this before, and this behavior isn’t acceptable. I think you’re being dramatic.”
That statement made me question my relationships—and what love really means to me. Before this moment of strife, this person was all about how good, cuddly, and understanding I am. That was until one of those days arrived when I was feeling insecure about my body, mind, and the journey of having sex with a person without a connection. It happened when we were drinking rum and chatting. Initially, his comments about my tattoo felt flattering; however, they soon turned irritating. I remember that while I was on a call, he rubbed his fingers on my neck and said: “Umm nice tattoo.” Appalled, I replied, “Please do not touch me.” While I did have some feelings for the person, I was not sure about it, and did not want to jump to any conclusions and hurt myself with my own indecisiveness. Similar instances have occurred before, such as when he moved my laptop bag after work, despite my discomfort, and gave me incessant hugs. Is sharing one’s need an act of love, or does revealing one’s vulnerability signal weakness? I wonder if love is shaped by the personal histories we carry and share.
During times of emotional clarity, I can embrace the idea of love and connection; still, the fear of vulnerability looms large. This fear is compounded by past experiences, particularly when I am opening my wounds for the other person to see. Since then, I make sure that I talk about my needs and listen to the other person’s. I prioritize talking about trauma, past experiences, and related experiences. I want to ensure that my potential partners are aware of where I am coming from to foster understanding. However, my approach feels daunting to many who treat relationships of any kind too casually, focusing on physical intimacy and not aftercare. Ironically, when I decide to talk about my triggers, even if it is not related to the other person, I’ve noticed that many react defensively when I express my feelings. What a paradox!
Also read:Sense and Sensuality
Understanding Situationships
According to an article published on Women’s Health, situationships are like romantic relationships, but without any commitment to norms or even shared expectations. After being single for 4 years and still being on the lookout for people to date, I have recently come into contact with a lot of unaware narcissistic people. Some of those dates became friends and others left scars so deep that I started blaming myself for my reaction to their disrespect.
Early last year, I was dating someone with whom the conversations felt so enriching and the romance we shared felt too good to be true. I dated him for a few months, and whenever there was any strife between us, he would come to my house at 2 am. During those early days of dating, he used to get flowers, visit my locality to convince me or ask me out on a date, and it was so flattering and sweet to me. I was on cloud 9, only to realize that clouds usually drift. As months passed, issues surfaced, mostly regarding time management and his casual sexual relationships with others. However, when I tried to do the same thing to get back at him, he reacted by saying things like, “Whores do that. I am a top, so it does not affect my character, but good bottoms should stay with one partner.” The day I ended the situationship, he came to my house, and love-bombed me. Believing in him again, I cried like a baby and we had sex—then he left me, blocked me everywhere and was nowhere to be found after.
Following those daunting statements, I wonder, if being a top or sexually assertive is equated to being a man, and being sexually passive or a bottom in bed is to be a woman? Is it just accepted that cis men, gay or otherwise, can propagate ideas of gender binaries in dating apps by slut shaming and enforcing a moral conduct?
Also read: Will Coronavirus Change the ‘Top or Bottom’ Mindset of Indian Gay Men?
The ‘Top’, ‘Bottom’ and ‘Vers’ Dilemma
An article on Teen Vogue explains that in sexual connotations, a top is a giver, a bottom is a receiver, and a vers, also known as versatile, is someone who can do both. Apart from labeling someone’s role and preference, top and bottom also signifies a power dynamic between the people involved. Most of the time when I am on any dating site, the question of top and bottom is rampant. Most of the people who identify as tops have asked me questions like, “How many people have fucked you or when was the last time you had sex?” Such questions are hardly thrown at tops by bottoms or vers people. Also, looks come into play—stereotypes such as having body hair, being muscular and strong are often indicative of being a top, while bottoms are expected to be clean, hairless and with big assets for the tops to enjoy.
In one of my recent conversations with a guy who asked me if I can satisfy him, he said, “I do not kiss or make out, I love being sucked and I fuck, do you think you can take it?” I giggled and responded, “In a world that is so fast and needs are constantly emerging, I do not know how to answer that.” The immediate response of the guy sounded like blame: “You sound like a librandu, I hate such woke fake shit. Here on dating sites, finding people is about having sex, and then they should be thrown in the corner.” I paused to think if my reply aggravated his anger, only to realize that according to most tops, bottoms are not expected to have opinions. Like in heterosexual relationships defined by patriarchy, women are not supposed to be loud, ambitious, knowledgeable, and vocal because it shakes up the fragile ego of patriarchy. This makes me ponder if binaries like that have also corrupted the queer world. Such incidents are countless and now a part of my daily struggle of talking to cis men on dating apps.
Navigating Relationship Red Flags
Just before this year began, I was feeling quite uncertain about my past experiences and my life, even as I was navigating my own non-binary body. I started wondering if benching is the new trend. As noted in The Knot article, benching is to casually date a partner without committing, essentially keeping them as an “option”. This resonates with my own encounters, where my partner oscillates between affection and emotional distance, leaving me feeling more like an option than a choice.
Reflecting on the person I was seeing, who lives a few minutes from my house, I realized that whenever we met, I made sure to converse more than him. Once when I asked, “Hey, what do you feel about me?”, he simply replied, “I do not know.” I decided to give him time to understand things, but was confused when on other occasions the same person would be touching me without consent, flirting with me, and touching the tattoo on my neck. While I once stated, “I think, you not knowing what you feel for me, and what you are making me feel are two different things, so if you want to just be friends, let’s do that.” To that, “I do not know,” was his reply again! When I confronted my partner about their swinging between affection and a lack of commitment, I could not help but wonder if these were ‘red flags’, an alarming sign in relationships, or whether I was being ‘love-bombed’, a strategy used to intensify feelings through excessive flattery.
A lot of my gay friends are cushioning—flirting with other people and “keeping their options open” while remaining in a committed relationship—and glorifying it. I wonder if I could do the same, as the idea of cushioning is not my forte, at least not yet. The situationships that I have been having for the last four years made me question if I even know the feeling of being loved anymore. To my surprise, love is still love, but is love also mixed with various attributes like personality, open conversation, boundaries, and the art of resolving conflict? If conflicts can be resolved, in some cases, is leaving the scenario also a part of resolving them? Depends on the person, the situation, and the partners involved, doesn’t it?
Also read: Queerphobic Slurs and How They Slow Our Fight for Equality in the Eyes of Law and Society
The Impact of Trauma on Love
After 4 years of navigating life on my own, opening my heart feels somewhat daunting. After happily being connected with my ex-partners in just the ‘Hi and Hello’ way, I do not feel hate towards them. Since that last episode and based on my reflection, it seems all the cis men I dated were mostly situationships that pandered to their egos. Those 4 years of dating these cis men made me equate love with pain, anger, joy, sorrow, and conflict. I wonder if having conversations about all of those emotions could also be called ‘love’?
While I was reading ‘All About Love: New Visions’ by Bell Hooks, I came across something profound; children who lose their parents, be it one or both, or have abusive parents, carry scars that impact their choices and coping mechanisms. I happen to have experienced both scenarios. I grew up in an abusive North Indian Bihari family until I lost my father when I was fifteen years old. As I was born in Assam, where most of the times my Bihari Identity has been invisibilized, a lot of times, people from the Assamese speaking community would be shocked when I revealed that I am Bihari, and would often respond by saying things like, “You do not look like a Bihari at all.” This pushed me to wonder if they expected my skin to be a certain colour, my accent to be different, or change the way I look and carry myself. Coming from a lower middle class family and being queer, I have often been the butt of jokes and amusement, but never honour. Most of the time, my friends have used tones like, “Aye Bihari,” more like a taunt than of respect. Their common understanding according to my belief is still about Biharis being of a certain skin colour and less educated.
Apart from my mother and my older brother, all the other people that I have considered my own, used slurs like maiki (womanly), hizra, chamiya, etc. I grew up with cousins who had sexual friction with me during my teenage days, and broke off as soon as they got a woman in their life, leaving me to wonder if my male body was the reason they could not stay with me. That feeling of being an “option” may have surfaced from that. There were instances of school teachers molesting me, stripping me naked in a class of 30 other students as punishment; each time I raised my voice, I was beaten so badly that my 28-year-old body still has scars.
As a way to cope with the pain that lingers after all these years, and in the face of my daily schedule, I often feel the need to escape or freeze completely so as to not feel anything. Incidents of the past have made me reactive to situations where I feel my dignity is being threatened and I act out to save myself, leading me back to my past experiences where I am conditioned to believe that ‘Love Conquers All’, but at what cost?
Conversations as Connections
Conversation is an art, and each artist has a different approach. Personally, I would not trust a person who has written more than what could be said. Most of the time, when I speak about my body, my sexuality is overlooked—not just by many cisgender men and a few cis women, but also by some Trans and LGBTQIA+ communities. They often ignore how my body and mind respond to desire, just as they do with others who live at the intersections of multiple marginalizations.
I was born into a North Indian Bihari family in Assam, in a body labeled male—simply because doctors saw a penis and decided that was enough to define me. But my identity is so much more than a label. I am still on the journey of exploration. Sometimes I accept my body with pride, and some days I feel disconnected from it. In observing those who fit society’s standards of beauty—perfect abs, flawless skin, and hair—I have come to realize that many of us are searching for something in our relationships that goes beyond these physical attributes. I crave connections with individuals who value intellect and spirit over external appearance.
Also read: A Non-binary Journey: Experiences of Visibility, Violence, and Silence
Talking about love and linking it to one’s own body is important, I feel. As a non-binary person, I often find myself marginalised and misunderstood. Despite identifying outside of the traditional gender spectrum, my experience has not always been acknowledged – even by those within the LGBTQIA+ community. My attempts to seek assistance have sometimes been met with rejection, leaving me to think about the biases we hold about ourselves and others, and how they might have developed. Once, an activist who works for transgender welfare in Assam suggested to me: “If you are nonbinary, why don’t you remove the hair on your hands and chest? Come over someday, I will shave it and wax it for you. You would look so good in a wig.” At that very moment, I could not figure out if that was care or mockery of my genes and the binaries that were being projected upon me. As individuals, I believe we are all partly biased, and I think that very bias should bind us together. But would that discard the institutional and public rejection that I have faced?
Such reflections led me to question the very nature of our social services. Are these entities truly a sanctuary of support, love, care, and inclusivity or just some employment avenues laced with bureaucratic complexity? Either way, treading through love has left scars. I have learnt to embrace my identity and complexities, as I learn with each passing experience to navigate ‘red flags’ and prioritise self love and courage to at least be able to talk about it without being shamed. As I grow through each day, I look forward to connections that can foster conversations, connections that improve my confidence in myself, and not discard the personal history that we all hold close to ourselves until shared.
