You, Me and Bobby!!!

This post was originally posted to a discussion thread in one of the man-2-man sites. The thread started when one of the members noticed Bobby Darling being interviewed on BBC and was referred to as a gay icon when it comes to gay, lesbian and transexual population in India. Here are a few of my thoughts that I shared within the discussion forum. I have added a more lines to the original post.

"Going through this thread I find it quite funny how convenient it is for us to reject someone who doesn't act our way or follows the same path as we do. Whether u like it or hate it, the fact remains that Bobby has the killer strength that most of us don't - to come out and live life on her own terms. Her terms are her terms... Fullstop. None of us has any right to comment on what she wears and how she conducts herself.

What is commendable about Bobby is her acceptance of what she is. She doesn't require your or my approval to lead her life. But you and me in one way or the other, try hard to gain acceptance. We hide what we are with friends, with family, with work colleagues. Nothing wrong about it, except for the fact that we don't have the courage to stand for ourselves, of who we are. And we love to swear by machoism, studliness and masculinity. We believe robust external apperance is what being a man is. The very essense of being a true man is about conviction, courage, truthfulness, taking ownership of your life and that of others. Alas!!! the essense died long back and we are stuck with the hard soul-less cage.

Thats where the twist comes to our lives. Those who cannot stand for themselves, can you expect them to stand for their love interests? We already have been escaping from the "big bad homophobic world" as we like to term it... And the slightest of itch gives us the reason to escape from people/ relationships rather than understanding and reconsiling them. We have learnt how to hide ourselves from issues and concerns rather than taking them head-on. We are nurturing an escapist within ourselves.

If courage, grit, straightforwardness, being truthful to oneself are one of the attributes of masculinity than I would refer to Bobby as a super-stud.

There are millions of us who ridiule Bobby every single day, yet she manages to live through it. She gives a damn of what u and I are thinking of her. Many of the much admired macho gays go banana when they come face to face with a difficult situation and succumb to all XYZ pressures and blame it to fate. Playing safe indeed!!! thats all we do all our life.

Its very easy to reject someone who doesn't fit our bill, doesn't fit the way we think, the way we act. The larger society has been apathetic to homosexuals because it doesn't want to come to terms with the fact that homosexuality exists... They simply decline it. Why? coz it doesn't fit within their limited understanding of lives. They tend to think life is all about the way they have been broughtup, what they have experienced, what they have gone through and there can be nothing beyond. And we homosexuals have this apathy towards other homosexual males with dominating female characteristics. Why such limited understanding??? Why do you want to be a pigeon who closes his eyes and thinks the cat has gone away??

Big question is, if you and me as a homosexual man cannot accept another homosexual, how do we expect the larger society to accept homosexuality???"


Let's have a logical look of being/not being an icon..

An icon is a symbolic representation of let's say a group, a belief or anything. From where do you choose an icon? Of course, from a set of people who are visible to the rest of the world. Bobby is visible to the rest of the world as an indian gay man. R u or I are visible to the rest of the world as gay? Sorry, we are discreet... No matter how much we shout or cry, it will remain within this thread and won't go out to the rest of the world.

We are only visible to each other on small virtual islands like g4m. The rest of the world hardly has as an idea about us. U have to appear on the surface to be taken into consideration by people. The irony is that an extremely small chunk of the iceberg is visible to the world and world is making its judgements/perceptions based on that small sample of indian gay men right visible to them. And we cannot blame it to anyone but us. The society will take a note of people/issues which are visible.

That's what BBC has done. Based on the gay men visible to the them, they have taken of Boddy to be the symbolic representation. That doesn't mean that the homosexual community in India is Bobby's clone. She represents the strength of those men/women who have suffered humiliation, double acts, possibly physical abuses as well just to be oneself.

If you feel that Bobby's depiction as a "gay icon" is an incorrect impression of indian gay men, please come out of your closet and be there on the open ground, face the humiliation, be a butt of joke for your straight friends, fight for your self-dignity everyday and let the world know what makes the real indian gay society."

That was it mates!!!