What Do They Call Us? Two years ago this month "Dostana" was released and made big news. The community was clearly divided in its reaction; some loved it and some absolutely hated it. Some said it caricatured being gay, and used all the stereotypes. I loved the movie. I thought it was ground breaking in many ways. Dostana was the first big budget mainstream movie that dealt with homosexuality, it had the first gay kiss between two mainstream Bollywood actors. It reached thousands and helped us bring the topic up for discussion in living rooms and coffee shops across the country. (Let's hope Dostana - 2 goes further than Dostana. I am disappointed though to learn Priyanka is replaced by Katrina! ) A few months after its release, I bought the DVD of the movie, mainly to show it to my parents. They knew the theme and I was very excited that they had agreed to watch it with me. They understand Hindi to some extent (we are Tamilians) but not well enough to follow every word of a 3-hour movie, so I turned on the subtitles. Within minutes, came the shock of my life! It was the scene where Abishek and John munch hot dogs and talk about their plan to pretend to be gay to rent the apartment. "Namma rendu perum Alinu aunty kitta sollidalaam" ( நம்ம ெரண்டு ேபரும் அலினு ஆண்டி கிட்ட ெசால்லிடலாம் ) Translation : Let's tell Aunty that we are Chakkas! Yes! The word "Gay" was translated to "Ali" ( "Chakka" in Hindi). "Ali" is a tasteless, crude term to refer transgenders in Tamil. Not that I was offended they referred gay men as transgenders, but the term is so hurtful and derogatory that even the Hijra community from Tamil Nadu is moving away from it. My parents were shocked too, they were extremely uncomfortable
every time the word appeared in the sub-titles. I did explain to them, the term is wrong and whoever did the subtitles were complete idiots and had no clue about gay people or for that matter transgenders. Through Vikram doc from GB, we reached out to Tarun Mansukhani, the director of the movie. He promptly apologized for the mistake. It was too late to correct, but he assured us that Dharma productions will be more careful in the future and make sure correct terminology is used in all languages. This incident triggered discussions in the Chennai LGBT community and we realized that there is actually not enough terminology in Tamil for the LGBT community. No wonder the translators of the film used "Ali", the only term they knew. We started brainstorming and after months of effort from everyone in the community, we agreed on what we believe to be the appropriate terms. Our Chief Minister Mr. M. KarunaNidhi, who is a pioneer in transgender rights, coined a new term for Transgender women, "Thiru Nangai" (திருநங்ைக) which means "Respectable woman". ( I have to point out here, "KarunaNidhi" is his first name and it is one word, I hate when the English/Hindi media refers to him as "Karuna" thinking "Karuna"is his first name and "Nidhi" is the last name ) We used KarunaNidhi's idea of re-purposing existing Tamil words, as an inspiration and came up with the terms. Lesbian - Nangai (நங்ைக) Gay - Nambi (நம்பி) Bisexual - Eerar (ஈர ) Transgender (both FTM, MTF) - Thirunar (திருந ) MTF - ThiruNangai (திருநங்ைக) FTM - ThiruNambi (திருநம்பி)
Homosexuality - ஒருபாl ப்பு You can find a detailed list here - http://orinam.net/terms/ We then updated Wikipedia and posted the terminology on several Internet groups and websites. Activists from Chennai also conducted workshops for the media and educated them the importance of referring the queer community using appropriate terms. All this makes me wonder, how about other Indian languages? Do they have adequate and appropriate terms to refer our community? Are they widely used? I would love to hear from fellow Gaysis.