What it is like to be queer in a casteist society

This essay is part of Stories Within, a campaign* by It’s Ok To Talk and queerbeat that features personal essays from young people about their experiences with queerness and mental health.

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It was 2023. I sat in front of a therapist for the very first time. It wasn’t an easy decision. But after years of struggling with emotional turmoil, I had had enough.

My anxieties had broken free, spilling into my day-to-day life. I could feel shivers down my spine whenever I went out. I was self-harming and not functioning well. So, I had no other choice but to get professional help. 

When I visited the therapist, I wasn’t sure what to say or even if I should speak. I was only concerned about how much it cost me—the fee for the therapist was more than I could easily afford. 

As soon as the therapist got to know that I was queer, he asked me, “Were you sexually harassed as a child?”

I felt his line of questioning stemmed from a common bias: only someone who was sexually abused could turn out this way. Someone who’s not ‘normal.’ Someone who’s queer.

“No,” I said.

“Are you sure?” he repeated. I again told him no. His persistence triggered a memory.

While I denied any experiences of sexual abuse, I could picture the time when I was a kid, lying in a blood-soaked bed. I was terrified, but still I wondered why a man had urinated on me after touching my legs. I remembered worrying that everyone would assume that he had soiled the bed.

It all came back to me. But I didn’t want to tell this to the therapist. At least not yet. He had already assumed a reason that he could blame for my identity: he would call my queerness a result of childhood sexual abuse.

Why can’t a queer person like me just be themselves, without the weight of such flawed assumptions thrust upon them?

After that session, I didn’t visit that therapist again. The fee was too high, and the experience left me shaken. I could feel the prejudice in his tone and responses—like he wasn’t even trying to understand me. Instead of making me feel safe or heard, he made me uncomfortable. I felt like an inanimate thing he was trying to scrutinise.

During the session, sitting in front of him, pain surged back inside my body, as if I was back in that room, back to being that little child in the hands of that man. I felt my whole body hurting.

The cost of therapy

As a caste-marginalised queer person, I have struggled with the stressors imposed both by my caste location and queerness for as long as I can remember. I couldn’t relate to the popular narratives of queerness prevalent online, which are mostly dominated by savarna upper-class bodies.

I felt at odds with both my body and my queerness. Added to my traumatic childhood experiences, I needed help.

But after the shocking therapy session, I decided to give up. My friends prodded me to continue on this path and helped me find another therapist, a queer-affirmative one this time. And, yes, this time, things went differently.

From the first session, the therapist made me feel comfortable by actually listening to me. It was a relief to finally have a space where I could be heard, instead of judged.

My mother, who worked tirelessly in a tea shop near our house for a meagre Rs 400 per day, couldn’t afford my session fee—Rs 2000 for an hour. So, a friend had stepped in to give me financial support and covered the costs of my therapy and medication. 

I could feel that therapy was helping me. The medication also helped me manage my diagnosis of anxiety and depression better. I could finally sleep at night.

But after about six months of therapy, I couldn’t depend on my friend any longer for help. They were going through a crisis in their lives—they had had an accident and couldn’t work or earn.

So, in the absence of any other resources, at last, I had to stop the therapy and medicine. 

Mental health care is a luxury for those of us who come from caste and class marginalisations and do not have the financial or social resources to access these services. Over that, I realised how difficult it was to find a therapist who would understand both my caste and queer realities.

The queer-affirmative therapist I saw was not prejudiced. She was open and kind—a rare thing in my experience. But she also acknowledged that she didn’t understand the double oppressions in my life owing to my queer and caste identity. She didn’t understand how caste forced its way into every other sphere of life.

Bahujan and queer

As a bahujan queer individual, my sexual identity is always intertwined with caste. It is my everyday reality. My skin colour, language, and ways of being all stem from my community. And it’s not hidden from anyone.  

I was also always aware of queerness in me. I couldn’t relate to or abide by gender norms since my childhood. I always felt different from my friends and the people around me. But it was only in my 20s that the queer lexicon became a part of my vocabulary. 

Finally, I had the words—‘gay’ and ‘queer’—to describe how I felt in my body and my desires. I could finally name myself something. It felt freeing at first, as if some confusion in my life had been lifted away. That I had to no longer confine myself to the boundaries of gender and sexuality imposed by society. I thought I would find a group of supportive people who would understand me. Embrace me as one of their own.

But, soon after, I didn’t know what to do with these labels. The dreams they conjured seemed out of reach in my small world—my neighbourhood and community—in Kerala. When I saw people around me struggling to make enough money to survive every day, I wondered: Did anyone really have a chance to be queer here? To talk about it, to let it be a part of our lives.

I also came to realise that these labels might not characterise bodies like mine. Growing up, I was often scrutinised and humiliated because of my caste and the colour of my skin. It continued when I tried dating people, intensifying my sense of shame with my body. I found people who called my skin colour and caste ‘dirty’.

Once, on a dating app, a man sent me a message, saying, “You are not clean.” As someone who bathed twice a day, how could I not be clean? It was my dark skin that he found dirty.

Facing such casteist prejudice made me feel ashamed about my body, my home, and my background. I was obsessed with cleaning my body; I wanted to wash off the stain of ‘impurity’. My father’s work as a waste scavenger further added to my shame.

So, when the casteist world considered my existence to be polluted, how could I accept these labels of ‘queerness’ that seemed to me to belong to the same casteist world? 

How is my body, which is devoid of even a space for private self-pleasure, supposed to display and celebrate sexuality in public? 

Blurring lines between living and survival

On top of or because of the strains caused by my caste and queer identities, I always faced financial problems.

It was around 2016 or 2017. I was doing my undergraduate degree. One day, I was in dire financial need. I urgently needed Rs 1000 for daily survival needs, but I couldn’t ask my family or anyone around me for the money. So, I had to resort to sex work. I solicited a stranger, not out of choice, but out of desperation. After the act, he handed me a crumpled Rs 100 note.

“I need a 1000,” I said.

He laughed. “This is enough for you.”

My body froze. I couldn’t respond. Words stuck to the back of my mouth. I couldn’t look at him. I dared not look at him. I looked at the note instead. A hundred. It seemed even the portrait of Gandhi on the note turned his face away from me. Not enough. It wasn’t enough. 

My body ached. The pain was in my bones, in my flesh, in my veins. One hundred rupees. Was that all I was worth? Less than a book. Less than a single meal.

With many such experiences owing to my caste and class, I knew life was difficult. I couldn’t rely too much on my family for support either. I couldn’t tell them about my queerness.

I’ve thought of coming out to my family numerous times. I felt guilty about it initially. But where would I even begin? What language can I use? They already have their fair share of struggles; I don’t want to add to their burden.

I remember feeling that sense of responsibility to keep my queer life separate when they found me in my most vulnerable state.

In 2021, I was studying in another city and staying at the college hostel. My mental health was at an all-time low. And I tried to die by suicide. Years of feeling shame and isolation due to my lived realities of sexual abuse, caste prejudice, and queer isolation led me down this path.

The university officials informed my parents about what had happened. And they unexpectedly showed up. Waking up and looking at my father in my hostel room felt like a dream. My mother and younger brother were with him. They didn’t say much.

During their visit, I was mostly concerned about hiding my fingers. I had grown my nails out and painted them with a dark blue polish. That moment of that day still lingers in my memory, even when other things have grown fuzzy with time. As soon as I found some space, I removed the polish with the help of a friend.

When I returned home to stay with my family some days later, I talked to my mother about what had happened. I told her about the sexual abuse I experienced in my childhood. She patiently listened to me. To my utter surprise, she said, “I knew everything.”

Despite knowing it all, she couldn’t help me. She was too focused on survival, on making ends meet from one day to the next. There was nothing she could do about my traumas.

Finding community & support

Soon after this challenging time, I found someone new entering my life: a queer, sex worker friend who stood by me. They provided me with financial support, offered me a place to stay, food to eat, and even emotional care. Their kindness was life-changing.

I moved in with them. By then, I was a post-graduate in Malayalam Language and Literature and wanted to pursue research on queerness and sexuality in Malayalam. 

My friend would go out for sex work at night. Meanwhile, I would prepare for my PhD entrance exams, work on my thesis abstract, and study queer theories. In the morning, they’d return home exhausted. And finally, we would both get some rest.

They were the one who helped me seek therapy and bought my medication. They gave me clothes and books, too. Through them, I grew closer to the local trans community in Kozhikode. Their support carried me through.

When I was with my queer friend and the trans community, I felt at peace. I could even participate in community events.

Back at home, events like marriages were extremely gendered. Men were always outside, while women stayed indoors in the kitchen. I preferred sitting inside with the women, but I was often ridiculed. “Aren’t you a boy?” my relatives would tease me.

But when I started participating in events like trans birthdays, anniversaries of gender-affirming surgeries, and cultural gatherings like jalsas to celebrate transitions, I began to feel seen, heard, and accepted. I could dance without hesitation, smile openly, and be myself without fear of judgment. For the first time, I felt like I had found my place. I truly belonged somewhere.

Community over self-love

I am in a better place in my life today, even though I still struggle with my mental health sometimes.

When I go online or talk to people about it, one thing that comes up often is self-love. Some people have indeed suggested that I should practise self-love: Go to the gym, do my skincare, and learn to love my body. 

But when the world has often undermined my very existence, self-love feels like a myth. It often simplifies systemic issues and places the burden of addressing deeply rooted social structures on individuals.

As a dark-skinned person from a historically oppressed community, my feelings of insecurity with my body and my mental health struggles aren’t just inherent. They are rather a consequence of the classist, casteist society I grew up in.

I, therefore, know that simply healing myself individually is not enough. My traumas run deep and are tied to these systems. Self-love is not the answer. Perhaps not even just therapy.

So, I choose to find and seek comfort in communities and people with similar experiences, those who understand what it is like to be on the margins of society. Those who know that you can’t divorce mental health from our social realities. I find comfort, not in their words or advice, but in their presence when I am distressed.

These friends, these community members, provide me the anchor I need to feel rooted in my life. Like my queer friend who supported me for my therapy and medication and saved me when I needed someone to hold me up. They made me feel that I mattered, that I belonged with them.

Through and in these pockets of solace in an otherwise oppressive world, I am finding the strength to live. I am building my hope and resilience. For now, that is enough.

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*Campaigns are non-journalistic projects by queerbeat.