The problem? It’s prejudice. Those deep-rooted preconceived notions make even a person’s loved ones unable to see the truth.

Pride and Prejudice

“It’s a renowned novel and a movie,” I hear you saying. Yes. I know. Actually, I haven’t had the opportunity to read the book or watch the movie, so whatever I am writing here is not in the context of those pieces of material. I am just kind of taking the title for the stuff I have to say.

So, it’s June, and the month itself starts a whole bunch of conversations about the LGBTQIA+ community, the basis of which is the concept of sexual orientation. In which we all are encouraged to take pride in, no matter what it is in the vast spectrum of gender. That’s it. End of the conversation. Right? I wish life were that simple.

The problem? It’s prejudice. Those deep-rooted preconceived notions make even a person's loved ones unable to see the truth. Let alone the opinion of the people we call neighbors and relatives.

Why is it that way? Well, let’s take baby steps. The main culprit of the problem is that we live in a country of 1.4 billion people where almost no one does have sex. I’m sure it was not hard to sense the sarcasm in the last sentence. When even the concept of coupling or lovemaking is hard to bring up, it is almost impossible to talk about a thing, the whole theme of which is this essential aspect of life. Now, contrary to all that, the prime desire for most of our parents is for us to get settled, get married, and have sex to produce grandchildren for them. So by this fact, we can at least infer that they want us to have heterosexual sex.

But what happens if my orientation is different? What if I am neither mentally nor physically compatible with having an act of such intimacy for which you literally have to get naked in front of a person.

My thought on where the resistance on this matter comes from is some people still want sex to be defined as something someone has to do to create their genetic offspring, a process in which they take no pleasure. This obviously is not true, judging by the sale charts of condoms and the consumption of porn websites in India. Some people just get weirded out by the fact that these people are not doing it to make a baby; they are just doing it for the pleasure of it.

Humans are complicated beings, to say the least. As soon as we see someone “different” from what we are, we get weirded out, and we would not want to be around that person. It has been happening for a long time now, giving birth to concepts like racism, casteism, homophobia, etc.

The thought that has helped me get clarity on this whole theme is the word orientation. One relevant example I think is useful here is when people are left-hand oriented or right-hand oriented. There was a time when even being left-handed was considered a sort of disease, and people with a different hand orientation than conventional were forced to become a part of what was considered normal, which sounds outrageous in today’s world. We now have accepted that being left-handed is just a thing that a person has, and it’s what makes that person themselves. So what’s wrong with accepting a person who has a different sexual orientation and considering it an ordinary thing.

The word modern means to be accepting of the people and your surroundings as readily as possible. It means to be inclusive. No individual deserves to have the feeling of not “fitting in” the society he lives in just because of their inherent inclination. This world is already full of hate and discrimination. Let’s take a vow not to take part in that. Let’s be kind and gentle, and let’s see people just as people, not through the lens of any community they might belong to.

Yashwant Rana