Latest / Love Matters With Leeza Mangaldas / Being a Bisexual Woman in India ft. Saumyaa Vohra

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Being a Bisexual Woman in India ft. Saumyaa Vohra · Love Matters With Leeza Mangaldas

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I'm Lisa Mangeldas, and this is Love Matters. What is it like to
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be a bisexual Indian woman? What are the misconceptions and stereotypes that persist around
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bisexuality, and what are the unique challenges and joys of coming out as by
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That's what we're going to be talking about today on this episode with our guests
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Somyo Gora. Somya has had an illustrious career as a fashion and lifestyle journalist.
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She's also recently written a book called One Night Only, which is one
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of the few Indian novels with a bisexual protagonist. Samyo was so excited to
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have you here. Thank you for joining us, Thank you for having me.
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I want to start with asking for you to share how you like to
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define bisexuality. Oh, that's one I think. Of course, there is
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that textbook definition of a person who is into both SIS men and SIS women,
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But I think bisexuality is essentially like for me. I think it just
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was at some point in my life realizing that I wasn't straight, and that
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I had been straight passing for long enough that I hadn't really thought about it.
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And I think that in the more conversations I had with other people who
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are bisexual by way of doing stories about it and just trying to collect more
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information and curiosity. I found that it was fairly common for most by people
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India to discover this about themselves incredibly late, because you sort of lean into
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the heteronomative part of yourself and you have that luxury unlike a lot of other
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queer people to be able to lean into the heteronomativity and just kind of ignore
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a certain part of yourself. But I think to me, being bisexual essentially
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means a coach just sort of comes to mind. I know that it was
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used for the phrase for the term pansexual, but I remember Shit's Creak had
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this moment where the character David picks up a bottle of wine and says,
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I don't really look at the label. I just like the wine. And
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I think that that kind of encompasses a lot of bisexuality and fan sexuality to
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me, which is that you free yourself of subscribing to that label. I
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love that it reminds me of br quote she wrote that you know, why
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would I choose between men and women's choosing between cake and ice cream, You'd
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be daft to choose. Plus true love is basically complete acceptance, which is
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so rare that when it happens, why would you care what's between someone's legs.
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It really spoke to me. It really spoke to me because I do
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think sexuality, if we're honest and really able to think about it deeply,
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because most of us just sort of plod along with a script that's been fed
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to us. We don't have the sort of ability even to question. It's
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too destabilizing for the reality that we expected to lead. You know, I
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think of my own sexuality also as an ongoing and infinite process of discovery.
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I feel like I'm really beginning to question my own heterosexuality as well. So
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thing it's important we talk about this stuff. But I imagine despite all of
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this, it is quite difficult to figure out how you want to let the
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people around you know, right, especially when you come out in later in
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life. I guess it's kind of expectations already created around who you are and
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you have to disrupt those. So was it difficult coming out both to straight
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and queer friends. I'm curious. The strange thing is it is a very
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privileged answer to be able to say no, it wasn't that hard because I
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realized how what a luxury that is. To know that to a certain degree,
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at least you're going to be family is always a different cattlefish, but
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to be in social spaces where you know that you're likely to find acceptance,
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and having been an editor in fashion and lifestyle for a long time, it's
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a space that is strangely enough to the outside world not terribly accepting, but
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within it has been surprisingly accepting of different kinds of people who come from different
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kinds of spaces and have different sexualities. So I think that for me,
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just the idea of coming out was staggered. I think the first thing that
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happened was that it took me ages to just be able to come out to
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myself. Over time, I've also realized that's the only coming out that matters,
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because, as somebody who's also worked in journalism for a long time,
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a lot of queer stories are centered around coming out. I myself have done
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several pieces about coming out stories, and over time I've realized that that there
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shouldn't be coming out stories, that coming out is a very personal and deeply
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private process that isn't for everyone, and for some people you're never going to
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want to talk about it on a public forum like a podcast, and that's
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absolutely okay. And for a lot of people, you're going to use that
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public forum to be able to make other people more comfortable about talking about it.
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And I think the fact that there's space for both those things is,
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or that there should be space for both those things, is what's incredibly important,
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because for me, I had the luxury of knowing that I could come
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out to family, to a partner, to friends and be met with a
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degree of acceptance. You know, of course, there's always that initial hm
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and then because like you said, you're disrupting a certain perspective that people have
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of you. But the fact that I had the luxury to know that I
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would walk into a certain degree of acceptance is one that a lot of people
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don't. So I think that for me, one of the key things about
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coming out is or the question or the conversation around coming out, is that
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people understand that it's just as okay to not it's just as okay to say
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that a lot of people I know, for example, will only come out
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in spaces where they feel incredibly comfortable. It has nothing to do with friends
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and family, So they will find like minded people and come out to those
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people because they know that there is acceptance here. And I think that the
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only thing that truly matters is feeling safe enough to be able to do it,
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if at all. Yeah, I mean in an ideal world, I
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wish that it was so safe and so much of a non issue that you
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didn't even have, Like heterosexuals don't come out as heterosexual, right, Yeah,
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but we assume that to be the default that in order to be read
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way you want to be read, or to be able to express affection the
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way you want to coming out just as a practical you know, as an
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aspect of like leading the life you want to lead. I wish we didn't
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even have to do that, right, where sexuality was understood its expansive instead
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of rigidly just one way. Yeah. I think around bisexuality particularly, there
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are certain prevalent stereotypes and misconceptions, right, and sometimes it can feel like
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you're neither straight enough nor queer enough. There's a lot that's been written about
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by erasure and biphobia. Like, say, for example, a lot of
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people have asked me that what happens when you choose a man when you're dating
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a man and you're monogamous, say, for example, you're not by anymore.
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So it's really interesting because there's a lot of conversation around if you do
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choose a partner of the opposite sex, then you're technically head to normative in
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your relationship. That's something that's always been ticky in terms of navigating both queer
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and straight spaces because you don't stop being by because you have a partner particular
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sex gender. I mean, you could be single, right and I think,
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yeah, you don't have to prove your sexuality to anyone, even though
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it can feel like that's the only way to validate your claims about your sexuality,
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right, Yeah, which is unfortunate. I wish that again, that
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we didn't that there was no pressure, yeah, you know, to come
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out or not to come out, to have relationships with x ys, that
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people to show that you can form or not. I wish not of it
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mattered, but we're still still getting there. Do you think that there was
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a difference in how men and women reacted to or tend to react in general
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to bisexual women, Like, yeah, absolutely, and it's exactly what you
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think exactly. I think for me, what was really interesting was that I
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had a certain perceived fear of how weirdly, I had a perceived fear of
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how women would react. Because for me, I've always had a very women's
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centric life in terms of just and this is not not even from a sexuality
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or only from a sexuality point of view. My strong was what network has
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always been women. So for me, the big fair was not telling the
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men in my life, friends or colleagues or whatever that I was bisexual,
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because I expected a certain reaction and it came often enough. But it was
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about women, and I didn't know how certain women would react, like friends
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who had, say, for example, gotten ready with me and stripped in
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front of me and been naked with me, and it had been completely non
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sexual. But I wondered now that would that be tainted? Would they be
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thinking about things from the perspective or should I not have done that because she's
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by And that bothered me deeply. The idea of that bothered me deeply.
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And luckily I encountered a lot less of that than I thought I would,
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because with my closest friends there was that sense of okay, you know.
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There were a couple of friends who wondered if I'd been attracted to them.
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There were a couple of friends who wondered whether they were my physical type.
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These questions propped up, and I think that for me it didn't really respond
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very badly to it because I felt like it was just curiosity and it was
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okay. And I feel like if we get angry and offended by curiosity,
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people will be afraid to ask questions, are afraid to challenge, and sort
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of have conversations with themselves. So none of that really offended me. But
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with men, yes, I do think that there is a degree of fetishization
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that happens. I believe pornography. Phornography is great, it is made from
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a respectful lens, which it often isn't. But I think that what tends
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to happen is that because of that fetishization by women are not taken quite as
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seriously by a lot of men, especially men that will date them or men
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that will be in relationships with them, because women don't go out and that
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becomes a scary place to be because it invalidates your sexuality in a way.
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So I think that for me, I dealt with a lot more of that
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from men than I did from women, but with women, I felt like
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there was a lot more quick kindness and understanding and acceptance. Women always deliver
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no passion. And what about the experience of dating women, I wonder.
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I feel like I'm myself very by curious. I'm still some ways to go,
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I suppose, but I sometimes think about how like, oh, my
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goodness, I'm going to have to learn a bit from you know, it'll
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be like dating for the first time all over again, because you're so familiar
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with what to do in a heterosexual situation. In the courtship sort of like
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landscape, whereas it can be kind of new right to figure out how to
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even though it's so familiar as you and your body and everything as well as
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a woman. But like courting a woman is intimidating to me because it's just
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new, you know, even I kind of want to do it. Was
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there like a learning car. Oh for me, You're going to be very
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disappointed to learn that I haven't actually ever dated a woman. I've been with
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women, but I've never dated a woman because I'm terrified. I'm terrified of
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with men. Somehow, the idea of rejection is not nearly scary. I
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don't know why. Perhaps it's because women's opinions matter so much more, But
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I think that the idea of making a woman uncomfortable with an advance really frightens
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me. So for me, if I've ever been with a woman, it's
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happened because the woman has made the advance. I've known that there is okay,
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this is I'm interested in this person and they're interested in me, so
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everything works out. But there are many a time I've been interested in someone
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from Afar and not done anything about it because I've just been terrified at the
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idea of going up to someone that is straight or will be made uncomfortable by
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the idea and broaching the subject. And I think that what tends to happen
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is that people tend to assume that it's probably a lot easier for women because
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we're already incredibly physical with each other. Women are warm and comfortable and kind.
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I think of the restroom syndrome a lot right, Like when you walk
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into a women's room at a bar or restaurant, women will just be incredibly
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comfortable with each other. They will fix each other's hair, and they will
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lend each other make up, and they will tell each other how incredible they
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look and while as a person, as a woman, I think that that's
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fantastic in terms of what it does for our ability to be intimate and to
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emmote with each other as a by moment. It's tricky because you have absolutely
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no idea what the boundaries are. So I think for me, I are
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on the side of caution. I'm very careful and that's resulted in me practically
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dating a woman because I'm so terrified of the idea of making someone uncomfortable.
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I guess it's also just a process, right, Yeah, I feel like
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dating men seemed terrifying when I was like sixteen thirty three. It seems,
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you know, like I know what I'm doing, so maybe I don't know.
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I mean, I imagine it'll get more familiar. Yeah, yeah,
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one day to old ladies and we'll talk about all the wonderful women. We'll
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do it, I know. Okay. I want to talk to you about
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your book. Yes, it's called One Night Only. You guys should get
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it, and I'd love for you to just give a little summary of the
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of you know, your vision behind it and what it's about for people who
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haven't yet read it. So funnily, enough. I think one of the
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interesting things about One Night Only in the context of our conversation about bisexuality was
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when we were talking about the idea of coming out what I wrote One Night
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Only. I was thirty. I wrote it in the Pandemic, and I
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didn't quite realize that I had started writing my protagonist as bisexual without even thinking
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about it. And it was the first time that I realized that I did
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want to have a conversation about it that was outside of my safe space and
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my people. And it was the first time that I realized that not only
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did I want to have a conversation about it, I wanted a conversation about
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it that was incredibly real without just I mean, it would always be sort
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of like colored by the lens of my privilege. And I've been quite open
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about that. I've talked about the fact that this is not the experience of
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the Indian bisexual woman who is from a village in rojasthan it isn't, but
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that's also not my story to tell. I'm a firm believer in the idea
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of people being able to tell their own stories and being able to hand over
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the mic to people so that they can do that in a real authentic way.
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But the thing is that at this point in time, even the story
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of an Indian bisexual woman who came from a certain degree privilege hadn't been told.
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There was really no conversation around bisexuality at all. Bisexuality had often been
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reduced to a trope. It was always a side character. It was always
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a very specific trope that kept to the stereotypes around it and didn't really push
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back or deviate because it worked. It worked as a character, especially from
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a male gaze perspective. And I think that the reason that I wrote that
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character as bisexual without even thinking about it was because clearly there were things that
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I wanted to address, and I felt like perhaps I was already addressing them
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in conversations I was having in my spaces, but I wanted to start those
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conversations outside of my spaces. So I think that's what happened with One Night
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only in terms of writing a bisexual protagonist. It wasn't by design, it
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happened and I realized that I wanted to keep her bisexual because she had something
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to say, and I think for me, the rest of the book kind
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of built around that and the other characters that I built are definitely much more
15:07
likable. I like them a lot better. Why do you dislike her?
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Sorry to intervene, I dislike I think I dislike her, and most people
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who read it will dislike her the most because the other three are just much
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more likable people. They seem much more sorted in terms of their perspectives on
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things. They're less judgmental, they're less caught up in themselves and their ideas
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of the world. And I think the reason I wrote Rubani, who is
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my protagonist, as a little bit unlikable, is because I believe that we
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tend to see ourselves much more in unlikable characters, and that makes us uncomfortable,
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and I wanted that. I wanted people to be able to identify with
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the problems and the flaws that Rabani had. I wanted also to be a
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little braver with the way I wrote this character, because I feel like most
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people tend to write queer characters from a with the safety on a gun,
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essentially like they're very careful because they don't want to be perceived as bigoted.
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They don't want to be perceived as problematic, so they will either I mean,
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back in the day, you wrote queer characters just terribly because you could,
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and now you write qu characters very carefully, very guardedly, because you're
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afraid of something being misinterpreted. You want to come off on the right side
16:15
of things, so you're not brave in terms of writing flawed quer characters,
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queer characters that are problematic and are judgmental. There is so much judgment within
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the queer space, within different spectrums of queerness, and that's really not talked
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about it mainstream media at all because most people even writing content about queer people
16:36
as straight and they're too afraid to take that leap. So I think when
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I was writing this particular character, I made her unlikable because there are lots
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of unlikable bisexual people, there are lots of unlikable queer people. There are
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lots of unlikable people and that still may have something incredibly interesting to offer,
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but they're not going to be instantly lovable just because they're queer. So I
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wanted to write her as a real person, a person who was but also
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a person. And I think what I enjoyed the most through the book was
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that a lot of her own ideas of herself, of relationships of sex,
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which is one of the big things that the book talks about. Her perspective
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on just having sex and always doing it within the construct of a relationship and
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never giving herself the agency to look outside of that and even figure out whether
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she wants to have casual sex or not, whether she likes the idea of
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it or not, whether she's had conversations with herself about her body, what
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she likes, what she wants. I think that one of the things that
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I really just wanted to do with this character was was have those conversations in
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a way that makes you a little uncomfortable at first, but at the same
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time you're kind of just learning a little bit with this character as the book
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goes on, and she doesn't come out of it a changed woman and now
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she's had an epiphany, but she's just come away thinking about things and having
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conversations and starting conversations. And that's really the main thing that I wanted the
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book to do, which is that I wanted people to read it and start
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thinking about the things and questioning the things that they hadn't questioned about themselves in
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a lot of time. I love that. I also like that you pointed
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out that the burden of perfection should not be placed on marginalized groups, you
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know, I mean even I think there's this unfortunate pressure that we put on
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ourselves also to constantly overcompen sy. There's so few seats at the table and
18:21
so little representation that like, if you're a woman, you dare not say
18:23
anything stupid or problematic, or you're not allowed to be flawed because you have
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to be the perfect ambassadors and this group, right, And I think that
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happens with the ways in which we write or see represented. Rather we are
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characters, female characters and things like that, And I think it is so
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important. We're all human, right, Why didn't you deny humanity to people
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of whom you expect perfection one hundred percent of the time. Yeah, so
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thanks for pointing that out. I was really intrigued by that. And I
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think likability also is overrated, Like why must we all be likable? You
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know, why must the marginalized be likable to have on this spot exactly?
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And this is in general, I mean, I'm sorry I digress, but
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like this is in general a problem that I've had with the writing of women
19:11
in fiction and the writing of women in pop culture and media for the longest
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time, which is that for a very long time, unless the story was
19:18
specifically about a female character or a woman character rather, she was not fleshed
19:23
out. She was again a trope of some kind and fit into that trope
19:30
to supplement the story of a man. And over time, because Hollywood has
19:34
had to be apologetic about that, and in general pop culture and media,
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even Indian cinema has had to be more apologetic about that women, there's been
19:42
a turn and now women are being written as these superhuman we can do it
19:48
all, we can have it all creatures. And it's awful because you're still
19:52
not writing women as people. You're not writing women as people who are strong,
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but not in as people who are capable of making mistakes and learning from
20:03
them or not learning from them, capable of being great people in some respects
20:07
and terrible people in some respects, and capable of being judgmental and still kind.
20:11
So I think, exactly, Yeah, it bothers me that it's still
20:15
at the end of the day, or I feel like a lot of popular
20:18
media is trying to overcompensate for the shallow way in which women were written for
20:22
ages by now writing women as these superhuman creatures, and it's equally problematic because
20:30
it's just still not creating a space where women I mean, like, for
20:34
example, most recently the Barbie movie made that point terribly, but I think
20:41
that, you know, I mean, despite the very obvious narrative, I
20:45
think that it had an interesting point in its heart, which is that women
20:48
need to see themselves on screen. Women need to read themselves in books,
20:53
and the way that they're going to do that is to, like, at
20:56
least for me, when I read female character, look for imperfections because it
21:02
makes me comfortable to read imperfections in a character. I have never responded to
21:07
characters who are either inherently good or inherently bad, sometimes even more inherently bad.
21:11
You might respond more to somebody that's inherently bad because you want to see
21:15
the darker sides of yourself reflected in things. You want to see mistakes being
21:21
made. You want because it gives you comfort, the same way that Madonna
21:25
was a queer icon because she was bald and brave and more bullet brass by
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Gautier and change the narrative. You want to see characters that can help change
21:34
the narrative for you, because the more you normalize that, and the more
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you normalize real flawed women in pop culture and media, the more comfortable you're
21:44
going to be about feeling or being flawed and feeling imperfect. I love that,
21:49
Thank you so much. I want to also ask a little bit about
21:52
the joys are quenas I think that so often, since we're talking about media
21:56
representation, the focus is on the struggle, how it is, how hard
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it is to come out awful, advice you got bullied, you know,
22:03
like we always we see these victim narratives in most pop cultural representations, and
22:07
there's also so much joy, right yes, yeah, Instead of me going
22:11
on and on, you tell me about the experience of both of writing the
22:14
character but also personally, because it felt like the pandemic was a time of
22:18
reflection from what we've talked of before writing this book was also personally very fulfilling
22:22
for you and clarifying for you. Right, yeah, No, absolutely,
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And I think that that's I'm actually really happy that you asked that question because
22:30
it's something that I hope comes up so that I can accel good about it.
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I think that you're right because at the end of the day. I
22:37
feel like what tends to happen with queer stories is it feels like if you
22:41
don't talk about the struggle, it's not validated enough. And I think that
22:45
the queer community in general is quite tired of it. And I think in
22:48
general people are quite tired of hearing that narrative. And it's not like that
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narrative needs to die, but it needs to become part of the discourse rather
22:56
than the entire discourse itself. And I think that what doesn't necessarily happen enough
23:02
is queer joy and also just queer normalcy, you know, like going into
23:07
the mundanity of being queer, which in some ways is so similar to the
23:11
mondanity you're being straight, Going into smaller experiences, going into the self doubt
23:17
that you have that is not necessarily even about being queer. What also tends
23:21
to happen is that when you see a lot of queer characters on screen or
23:25
you read about them in literature, that queerness is their entire identity. And
23:29
for me, that was something that I was very conscious to avoid, which
23:32
is that in my head, being bisexual is part of who I am,
23:34
it's not who I am at all, And it's never been who I am,
23:38
and it had nothing to do with the fact that save ten years ago,
23:41
I hadn't come out to myself because being straight is not somebody's entire identity
23:45
either, so why should being queer be your entire identity. So I think
23:49
that one thing that I do see happening a little bit more now is just
23:53
queer romance, quaer joy, questioning of queer identity that is largest and that
24:00
isn't limited to just whittling a person down to their sexuality, and I'm glad
24:07
that it started to happen. I see it in like there's a graphic novel
24:10
called heart Stopper, which became a Netflix series, and I think that that
24:14
was so interesting to me because it looked at queerness from the lens of young
24:18
love. There's a character that is by and there's a character that's gay,
24:22
and they're both just such sweet kids, and you're seeing these kids also just
24:27
being kids in England, dealing with the various other factions of their life,
24:30
and the queerness is at the heart of the story, but it's not the
24:33
story on its own. It's not these characters on their own. And I
24:37
think that to me again, it loops back to the same principle of writing
24:41
women as people, it's about writing queer people as people, as people who
24:47
are just as capable of Like, I want to see queer joy, but
24:51
I want to see very much, But I also really want to see queer
24:52
normalcy. I want to see queer couples being able to get married but also
24:57
be able to get divorced, because that's what being normal truly is, when
25:02
you're afforded all the luxuries of the straight person. I'd love to see more
25:06
of that in writing in just everyday life. That would be lovely, butoquere
25:10
people to be afforded the same sense of normalcy as the state person. Yeah,
25:15
I love that. I hope that, like, you know, more
25:18
radically. One step further, I feel like all straightness should be queered,
25:22
you know, like why get married at all? Why does anyone get married?
25:25
Part of me wishes that we could like abolish the institution as opposed to
25:29
having to fight for the right, you know. Yeah, but that's very
25:32
idealistic. Well, we should all have the right before, at the very
25:36
least right. It would be nice if we didn't, if marriage wasn't even
25:38
the platform, but which the theomeative rights were being bequeathed or you know,
25:44
various other like the heteronormative bar is so low. Actually we have to fight
25:48
for those to just have that. Whereas I wish we could like radically shift
25:52
the way we look at things altogether, but perhaps that's very idealistic. But
25:57
as we rap O, I wonder whether there's any sort of insights or learnings
26:03
you hold very precious that perhaps other viewers who are on similar stages of their
26:08
own journey as I am, as well to some extent, just sort of
26:11
figuring it out when you're questioning your sexuality and maybe you think that what you've
26:17
thus far held as who you are might in fact not be all of what
26:22
there is to know. And it's a process of discovery, right, Yeah,
26:25
Do you have any insights or even advice you want to leave people with
26:27
in terms of just how you thinking about sexuality and who you are sexually?
26:32
I think what you said at the beginning of the podcast is really interesting,
26:34
which is that you're currently in dialogue with yourself about you know, what your
26:38
straightness even means, and that you've always been by curious and you're still thinking
26:44
about and you're considering it, and I think that to me, that that's
26:47
really it, which is that you know, at the end of the day,
26:49
the only thing that really matters is that you have open dialogue with yourself
26:53
because I think this even like, for example, I'm bisexual and this is
26:59
what I know about myself at this particular point in time. And I think
27:02
that as long as we acknowledge that that this is what you know about yourself
27:04
at this point in time, I have been straight thus far. You may
27:07
be straight for the rest of your life. That's absolutely fine. You might
27:11
find that you're not. But if you have a perceived notion of who you
27:15
are and you're terrified at the idea of how things will disassemble, if you
27:22
question that or push against that, then you're very unlikely to discover. Like
27:26
I mean, you're somebody who talks about the orgasm in such great detail and
27:30
how there are so many layers to it and how you know finding it and
27:33
finding it in different versions and ways can bring you so much joy. And
27:37
the idea is simply, at the end of the day, it all comes
27:40
from freeing yourself up. It comes from freeing yourself up of the pressure of
27:45
things having to work a certain way or function a certain way, and I
27:48
think that to me, it perhaps two very different things, but it loops
27:52
back to the same thing, which is that when you have an idea of
27:56
how something ought to work or what something ought to be, and then you
28:00
will function with affirmation bias. You will find reasons to allow yourself to continue
28:06
believing what you've always believed. And the minute you tell yourself that you don't
28:11
know and that you'll figure it out, then the chances that you will figure
28:15
out the things that make you happy. And this is yes, it's of
28:18
course it's about sexuality. It is just, but it's also just about who
28:22
you are as a person in relationships. Like one thing that I know we
28:26
haven't talked about today, but one thing that I feel very strongly about also
28:29
is relationship constructs. Like we were just talking about marriage, and to me,
28:33
marriage is something that is so deep rooted in monogamy. And again,
28:37
monogamy is something just like straightness and heteronomativity, that we're conditioned with, and
28:41
very few of us will question the idea of monogamy. Very few of us
28:45
will go, oh, there's something outside of the structure that could work for
28:48
me. I can find companionship in multiple forms or not. I can find
28:52
different measures of companionships that function together. I can have phases in my life
28:57
where a certain structure works from point day to point B, and then I
29:02
feel like a certain structure will work better for me. Lator. I can
29:04
be open now and changed to monogamy. Lator, I can be monogamous now
29:08
and change to being open or polyamorous later. So I think that one thing
29:12
that I feel is at the root of all of it is asking yourself how
29:17
much of who you are is determined by what you've been taught and what you've
29:21
been asked or rather perhaps even in some cases push to believe, and how
29:26
much of it is what you're choosing, because you might find that after a
29:29
lot of questioning, you're still choosing to be straight, You're still choosing to
29:32
be monogamous for now. But as long as you have that conversation and you
29:36
have that dialogue with yourself, I think that that's honestly like the healthiest thing
29:40
just and I hope that conversation happens with yourself and with people around you,
29:45
because sometimes what other people need to have the conversation with themselves is to have
29:49
that conversation with you, how do you think the experience of bisexuality or navigating
29:55
by sexuality differs within straight spaces versus queer spaces. I think the thing that's
30:00
at the center of both is that there is a degree of other ring that
30:03
makes it very tricky to feel like you really belong in either space. And
30:07
I think that one thing that tends to happen is that you tend to,
30:11
perhaps at least in the conversations that I've had and sometimes in my own experience
30:18
as well. I'm not proud of it, but what you tend to do
30:19
is you tend to play up a certain aspect when you're around a certain space
30:25
because you feel that desire to belong more so, I will perhaps talk about
30:30
it, talk about being by significantly less in a group of straight people if
30:34
I don't feel comfortable, if I feel like it is a space that isn't
30:38
necessarily going to be as accepting or as kind as I would hope. There
30:42
is that ability to do straight pass and to simply not really bring it up
30:48
or not make it part of the conversation. But the other side of that
30:52
is feeling like you need to lean into your sexuality a lot more when you're
30:56
in quaer spaces, because otherwise you won't necessary be taken seriously isn't the right
31:02
word, but be quite as accepted or treated as somebody that belongs in that
31:07
space. And so in that desire to feel queer enough, you tend to
31:11
perhaps play up your quarerness because you feel the need to find a space that
31:17
belongs and you know in your head that it's never fully going to be a
31:21
hedonomeative space. So it's interesting and double edged because you find that you need
31:27
to pull it different strings to be able to fit into different spaces, and
31:33
yet you never fully kind of fit into either. What are the similarities and
31:37
the difference is in what intimacy can feel like with men versus women. Ooh,
31:45
that's a really interesting question. I think that what's really interesting is the
31:49
similarities. I think is that intimacy then is just intimacy, because you know,
31:56
if you're truly comfortable and close to someone then in that moment, and
32:00
they don't really they're a whine not a label. But I think the differences
32:05
are interesting because at least for me, I felt that, you know,
32:08
I mean, just women are just so much soft in their approach and I
32:14
feel like it's a lot of I'm not trying to trivialize it or play into
32:17
the stereotype, but and it's not to say that every single woman is going
32:22
to fit this PROD spectrum definition or every single man is going to fit that
32:25
PROD spectrum definition. But I think that women have a sense of how they
32:30
want to be touched, and that then translates into how they touch you.
32:35
There's also more thoughtfulness because I think that women in general can be more careful
32:40
creatures. We're careful with our bodies, We're careful with the way we sort
32:45
of behave and the way we function, and I feel like that translates a
32:47
lot into I think the word I'm looking for is deliberate, Like women are
32:52
more deliberate in terms of there is a thoughtfulness. And I'm not trying to
32:57
say that it can't be wild and intense and incredibly physical. Absolutely can,
33:02
but it's not. It will never be reckless, it will never be disrespectful,
33:08
I suppose, And I think that that's a very very comforting and interesting
33:14
place to be when you have that sense of there is a much higher likelihood
33:19
that a woman is likely to be more deliberate in the way they you're together
33:23
than a man will be, but not always, not always to say what
33:27
is live? I like that. I like that. I think that as
33:31
someone who's by curious myself, I often sort of tried with intrepidation around disclosing
33:37
that to people, because there's also something to be as many conveniences I stand
33:42
to lose also, right, as we mentioned, destabilizing to the sort of
33:46
status quo, especially if you're in a relationship with a man you know and
33:52
his family and your family. It is hard to tell families most families or
33:58
come out as queer to your family, absolutely, especially if you've been the
34:01
good straight girl as far so, how did you sort of navigate that?
34:07
What I'm curious about the process of going from straight to by curious to bisexual
34:10
and conveying that out loud. What was the journey like for you? I
34:14
think the journey still ongoing. What's interesting is that even though I had the
34:17
dialogue with myself six or seven years ago, I told my partner almost immediately,
34:22
but I told friends a little bit later. A lot of people found
34:28
out when I did a piece about being bisexual, when closer to when my
34:30
book was commissioned, and then of course when my book came out, it
34:35
was everywhere. But there were some conversations I chose to have in person,
34:38
and like I remember very distinctly telling my mother, and my mother was very
34:43
kind about it, and she was very open about it, and in general,
34:45
she's always raised me to be very open about these conversations, so I
34:50
wasn't a surprise that that was her reaction. So it was important for me
34:52
to tell her. But there were some family members that I didn't feel like
34:55
it was that important to have the conversation with because I wasn't sure that it
34:59
would be my with the same kindness and acceptance. And there was some conversations
35:02
that was just scared of, like my nanny, you know, And I
35:05
was like, I don't know how to have this conversation with my nanny.
35:07
So she found out that my book launch, you dedicate your book to her.
35:12
I dedicated my book and her and my daddy, who passed when I
35:15
was much younger. But I think that for me, it was something that
35:21
I didn't really know how to sit down and address with her, and I
35:24
just chose to let it unfold at the book launch, and and that was
35:28
that it was just and then we never really talked about it, and I
35:30
was like, that's okay too. You know, it's fine if it's not
35:34
something you have questions about or you want to go into. I think that
35:37
telling families and navigating it with families can be very, very tricky, which
35:40
is why that needs to become something where you have to ask yourself, do
35:44
I even want to do this in the first place, Like, I mean,
35:46
this is not my story in particular, but there's a non binary friend
35:51
of mine and they basically chose never to tell their family because they were like,
35:54
they're not going to understand. There is really no point. I know
35:58
exactly what they're like and they will not get it, and I do not
36:01
want the stress and the toll it will take on my mental health of having
36:06
to navigate with it with them constantly. So to the world, they will
36:09
be who they are, They're very comfortable who they are, but to their
36:14
family it's he So it's something that's so deeply personal, and I think that
36:17
nobody else has the right to comment on it. And I think that if
36:21
you, for example, are in that process of discovery and you're not ready
36:25
to disclose that process of discovery to anyone, that's absolutely fine. I think
36:30
the only tricky thing that happens is when you put the burden of that process
36:35
of discovery on people who are we I once had an incident where I was
36:39
with someone who was a straight girl and the next morning basically said, you
36:45
know, this is so much fun and I've always thought about having a threesome
36:47
and blah blah blah, but you know, I mean, you should just
36:51
know that I'm straight. And I was like, that's fine. But one
36:53
thing that became very clear to me was that I had had my own journey
36:58
with sexuality and I did not want to be somebody else's guinea pig. And
37:01
I was okay about this, But I know a lot of other people who
37:05
haven't been who've had their hearts broken by straight people who were just dabbling in
37:08
something. But I think that the process of discovery should also bear in mind
37:14
the feelings of the queer people that you might be meeting and that you might
37:17
be with in the process of your discovery. So I think that as long
37:22
as it's an ongoing dialogue with yourself where you have the ability to be respectful
37:25
of other people's feelings and your own. It's a great thing to do,
37:30
like be by curious, but as long as you want come back to being
37:32
straight later if you find that all it was was curiosity and you find that
37:37
you're happier in who you've always been, or you might find that you're not
37:42
happier at who you've always been, and basically just giving yourself that leeway to
37:45
figure it out as time goes on and then keep reassessing. I think one
37:50
thing that also happens is that a lot of people think that they've found their
37:53
label and now they can't deviate from that label. That's not true. You
37:57
might find that you might find that something is part of who you are right
38:01
now, and you might find that something is no longer about. You may
38:04
have been straight all your life and not really questioned it, and then you
38:07
might find over the years that's changing. Maybe it's always been there, maybe
38:09
it hasn't. You have no idea, but you will know until you find
38:13
out. Indeed, thanks so much, Samya, it's been such a pleasure
38:15
talking to you. Thanks so so so much for joining us on Love Matters,
38:20
and thank you for tuning in. I hope that you enjoyed this episode
38:23
Love Matters is produced by Indian Express and DW, Germany's international broadcaster. If
38:29
you have a question or insight you'd like to share, please write to us
38:31
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Please rate it wherever you're listening or watching. Till next time. This is
38:39
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