Lameeya came out to her parents soon after meeting Naina. The relationship with Naina was important to her and she wanted her parents to know. However, coming out was a very hurtful experience. Her mother said many hurtful things and insinuated that perhaps Naina had a role to play in making her daughter gay. ‘I came out to my parents after I got into a relationship with Naina. Bad decision. I feel like maybe I should have come out before. Because I feel like they somehow got it into their head that it was because of her. Oh, it was bad. I did this almost immediately, by the way. I felt like it was so important to me, the relationship. And I didn’t want to hide it at all.’ Unfortunately, scapegoating the partner is a common response that parents tend to have where they blame the child’s partner for ‘influencing’ their child into becoming queer. Often, this accusation may be hurled at the butch or masculine partner…
Lameeya sat her parents down and told them she was gay. They had no idea what it meant. When she told them she was attracted to women there was shock and horror. Angry, hurtful words and much yelling accompanied the coming-out news. ‘They are fine now in the sense that they don’t say anything but they are not enthusiastic about it. They come live with us from time to time… they acknowledge her [Naina]. It is not that they are mean or anything but it is the small, everyday things.’
Naina’s parents have accepted Naina and her partner Lameeya. They have introduced Lameeya to their extended family. ‘They are very cool about the whole sexuality thing. They really accept me as Naina’s partner. We are invited to all family events. The thing is that I feel like they’ve had a lot of time and in general, I think they are a little bit more accepting of homosexuality. There was an event at her aunt’s place. Naina’s cousins, friends and we were sitting in a room. I was just sitting close to her [Naina] and her aunt came in and she said, “There’s a chair you can sit on.” And added, “Oh unless you want to sit closer to Naina.” It was so nice, so nice to be treated/teased like a couple.’ Despite this overt acceptance, the equation with Naina’s parents remains a complicated one. Naina’s parents seem to operate from cis-het understandings of how families are and how daughters-in-law in the family should be. This has led to a different set of fights between them. Ironically, families may accept queer sexuality but not use that to change their ideas about heterosexual ways of doing relationships. In a study done by Tata Institute of Social Sciences on parental acceptance in 2013, some parents were able to use the understandings of their child’s sexuality and gender to reflect and question social arrangements of intimacies. However, those parents are a minority. Most parents, while appearing to be comfortable with homosexuality, wanted caste/class/religion factors to match. The child’s partner should be ‘as much like us’ is usually the demand.
I wondered if being an inter-faith couple had posed any difficulties from either set of parents? ‘My sister told them she wants to marry a guy from a different faith. Now inter-faith marriage in our family is a huge issue but they agreed to it. And that made me wonder, it takes you eight years to be a bit normal about my relationship but you can accept hers [sister] because it is with a guy.’ Lameeya and Naina are also from different faiths and the question about faith came up once. Lameeya’s father tried to ask Lameeya how it would work out when they were from different faiths. Lameeya promptly shut it down and told him she did not care much for all that. ‘Anyway, it was six years into the relationship. It has never been a point of contention and it was just one conversation.’
Lameeya and Naina had planned their commitment ceremony in February 2024. The venue was booked, everything was planned, invites had been sent out. ‘I was calling my parents and asking, are you guys going to come? Like, are you coming or not? And they were just like, let’s see. My mom kept saying, yeah, let’s see, I don’t know, let’s see, let’s see. So I got very upset about it and told them if you’re going to come and you’re going to keep making some faces about it, then don’t come. I don’t want to see it. If you can’t be happy, then don’t come. So I didn’t call them for like 10 days or so. And they didn’t call me for like 10 days or so. And then after 10 days, I called them and then my mom said she isn’t feeling so well.’ Lameeya accompanied her to the doctor. Unfortunately, the news was a very difficult one. Lameeya’s mother was diagnosed with stage four cancer. The commitment ceremony was postponed and the couple took on care-giving duties. Lameeya’s mother is currently living with them for her treatment.
Publisher: Yoda Press
Pages: 202
Price: 499
This excerpt has not been edited by queerbeat.