A Conversation with Jeet, from Yes, We Exist
Queerious #2 : An interview series with queer community leaders
…and we rear our heads again as Pride month swished by - hello!
Just in case you forgot who we are - and we don’t blame you - we’re Queering About, a queer newsletter. We curate the most important queer news from the web for you.
Last year (yeah, it’s been THAT long) we started off with Queerious - a series of interviews in which we talk to community leaders about their work! For the first in the series, we have this lovely interview with Singapore-based journalist Ellis Ng.
Today’s leader is Jeet, a social worker based in India. Just a note: this interview took place at the beginning of this year and Yes, We Exist has gone on to cover lots of things since then! To stay updated with their work, follow them here or here.
Jeet is an LGBTQ+ social worker and founder of Yes, We Exist, an alternate media project that highlights issues faced by queer people in India. Aside from queer activism, Jeet routinely pursues cases against communal hatred and misinformation promoted by TV news channels. His efforts led to the release of ‘Media Guidelines for reporting on LGBTQ+ issues’ by NBDSA, a TV and digital news regulatory body.
For the second edition of this series, we caught up with him over WhatsApp. Responses have been edited for length and clarity.
QA: Tell us a little about how Yes, We Exist came to be. Was it always supposed to be social-media based?
J: ‘Yes, We Exist’ started in 2018 when the Supreme Court was hearing petitions seeking the reading down of Section 377. The purpose was to make our community understand what was happening in the Court using simple language and regular updates. Despite it being such an important case, mainstream news either under-reported it, while those who did, used a lot of legal jargon that made it difficult for people to understand.
It was named ‘Yes, We Exist’ in response to the Supreme Court’s remarks about the LGBTQIA+ community being a tiny minority. It is an assertion that even if they may not see us, because most of us were closeted since we were criminals in the eyes of the law, that does not mean we were an insignificant group – we exist and our rights matter, regardless of our numbers.
It was always supposed to be social media-based due to the wide reach and zero monetary investment, but now the scope of our work has increased beyond what we set out to achieve.
Having gone through many of the struggles that most young queer people in our country have to face, I felt strongly about the injustice from a very young age, and was determined to do something about it.
QA: What sort of projects is Yes, We Exist working on? Do you see yourself as a journalistic outlet, or more as an outlet that amplifies the voices of the community?
J: We are working on (amongst others)** two issues: one is about the disproportionate cyber abuse faced by queer people in India on Instagram, and the second one is about the appointment of cisgender women on the National Council for Transgender Persons.
We have collected over 500 instances of violating queerphobic abusive comments that Instagram has refused to delete. We are organising the data and plan to engage with other organisations that feel strongly about the issue, and then eventually engaging with Meta along with those organisations.
The appointment of cisgender women on the Trans Council is concerning but not surprising, given the government’s role in diluting institutions meant to represent and protect the voices and rights of marginalised groups. We are in the process of finalising our strategy to tackle this.
Yes, We Exist may appear as a platform that primarily works on amplifying issues concerning our community through social media, and that is what we initially set out to do. Now however, most of our time and effort goes into being first responders to people in crisis, understanding and documenting their situations, and connecting them to the relevant local organisations.
It was not a part of our mission to play this role, but when people reach out to us for help, we cannot and do not turn a blind eye.
While they don’t even go as far as to make new progressive laws, quite often we see ourselves struggling, unsuccessfully, to prevent the brining in of new laws that harm or exclude us.
QA: How big of a part did your own identity play in your part in Yes, We Exist?
J: It played a huge role. I wouldn’t have been working on this had I not been queer myself, but more than that, it’s my way of leveraging my skills, privilege and contacts of trusted community members to educate, and support the community.
Having gone through many of the struggles that most young queer people in our country have to face, I felt strongly about the injustice from a very young age, and was determined to do something about it.
QA: Could you tell us a bit about some of the main issues currently confronting the LGBTQIA+ community in India, and how you think they can be tackled?
J: The issues are endless, but to list the top 3 in my books, the first is natal family violence, the second is discrimination, and the third being the lack of support from lawmakers. Broadly speaking, that extends into the dwindling status of democracy in India which disproportionately impacts historically oppressed communities, including ours.
A short term method - not really a solution - to address natal family violence is to open more shelter homes, maybe one in every district, so that people have a safe space to re-start their lives.
I am unfortunately not optimistic for the future for our community - making any attempts to influence lawmakers and law enforcement often feels like speaking to a wall, and while there are exceptions, they are rare. While they don’t even go as far as to make new progressive laws, quite often we see ourselves struggling, unsuccessfully, to prevent the brining in of new laws that harm or exclude us.
My only ray of hope is that there are several queer collectives, CBOs and NGOs coming up, in different states, with more people volunteering to support the community. We need more such initiatives, so that we can continue to help one another, more effectively, in the absence of state initiatives.
** - parenthesis ours
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Queer Quote of the Day
No pride in genocide.
— organisers across the globe involved in calling a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war to save civilian lives.
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