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Caste In My Pleasure, Pleasure In My Caste

Queer Rights

By Sudipta Das

My early articulation of pleasure revolved more around absorbing joy through identity-affirming experiences within sexual-romantic relationships rather than sexual intimacy itself. Now, as I facilitate sessions on pleasure and love with adolescents, I have started looking at pleasure more holistically in cohesion with desire, feelings, love, and also recognising pleasure as a right. Many of my articulations are also shaped by the givings of bell hooks. In her book ‘All About Love’, hooks talks about how we don’t have a shared language for love — this often makes it difficult to comprehend the commonality of our experiences around love. Similarly, we don’t have a shared definition or language for pleasure, which I look at as an opportunity to imagine and reimagine it as we want.

Conversations around pleasures are often tricky, complex, and messy — especially when we look at pleasure not only personally, but also objectively. Many of us who are Dalit and queer, have migrated to urban spaces and achieved some extent of social mobility through university education, speaking English, and pop culture awareness—we now find ourselves in spaces that have otherwise been unwelcoming — spaces that offer love, dating opportunities, and desire.

Often Dalit-queer experiences are consumed as theory and not as day-to-day praxis. I love how journalist Dhrubo Jyoti says ‘I don’t think there is any intersection. Caste is sexuality and sexuality is caste.’ Dhrubo’s article ‘Caste Broke Our Hearts And Love Cannot Put Them Back Together’ is one of those rare writings that I read in times when I needed solidarity, resonance, and solace. Even within queer spaces, experiences of people from marginalised caste locations are often distant from the dominant narrative of queer-affirmative pleasure-desire discourses. As many of these discourses centre around shaping language above everything, trying to create vocabulary that is shared and homogenous, let’s not forget queerness has always been about bodies — as sites of curiosity and explortion, and as tools to claim visibility, respectability, education, employability, desirability, and pleasure.  Hence, it is impossible to initiate a conversation around Dalit-queer pleasure without understanding the positionality of Dalit bodies within queer spaces.

 

Body as a site for pleasure 

Bodies of Dalit people are more often seen as sites of oppression rather than pleasure. Even when regarded as sites of sexual pleasure and entertainment, a certain amount of impurity, illegitimacy, and stereotyping is associated with them. More often than not, this gaze is internalised by Dalit-queer people that shapes their own perceptions around their body and desirability.

At times like this, how do we move away from this understanding and locate the possibilities of pleasure that our bodies and minds are capable of creating? Our bodies experience pleasure in complex ways. Many of us also have a complex relationship with our bodies given years of social-institutional-systemic conditioning around beauty standards, oppression, and stereotyping.

While thinking about the body and the spaces we occupy with our physical bodies, Megha*, a bisexual Dalit cis woman living in Delhi, reflects on how she doesn’t looks at herself in the mirror in separation from all the gaze that she has consumed over the years. “The only compliment I received as a child was ‘Your features are amazing, if you would have been fair-skinned, you would have killed it.’ This one statement by a neighbour aunty still haunts me — once I dressed up in a pretty fluorescent yellow skirt and she said ‘If you put this girl in the dark, her skirt will glow with her invisible body.’

‘Now, my wardrobe consists entirely of black or pastel-coloured clothes because I was made to believe bright colours aren’t for me. This, for me, is how the world censors our access to consume pleasure.’

Christina Thomas Dhanaraj, a Christian Dalit woman from Chennai/Bangalore, India, writes about the experiences of urban Dalit women in dating spaces in her article ‘Swipe Me Left, I’m Dalit’. She talks about how Dalit women are often seen primarily as victims, unfeminine, and promiscuous. The lighter-skinned, savarna woman that is pure, quiet, and delicate versus the dark-skinned Dalit woman that’s polluting, loud, and tough—the dichotomy is quite prominent — even in mainstream pop culture media such as the recent short ‘Geeli Pucchi’ by Neeraj Ghaiwan from the anthology Ajeeb Dastaan, it fosters this dichotomy. It perpetuates the idea that our caste is often ‘how we look’.

Kush*, a young queer Dalit trans woman, says ‘There are typically some dominant-caste markers – for example, having fair skin, caucasian features, perfectly cut hair, well-groomed, clear skin, etc. When I am intimate with people having those markers or even surnames that give away their caste location, the way I perceive them is that they are such well-groomed people but that my body probably isn’t groomed enough. Despite me taking a lot of painful efforts, such as hair removal or moisturising — my body can never be cleaned.’

Apart from these insecurities around our bodies, there is a long-lived history of queer people and/or Dalit people being at the receiving end of sexual violence that further complicates our relationship with our bodies and how we access pleasure. We are often conditioned to believe that our bodies don’t deserve dignity or care. Our pleasure isn’t the priority in a sexual setting.

Kush shares, “In my first year of college, it was apparent I was a non-city person struggling with navigating urban spaces. I used to dress up and appear in a way  that might give away my social location. During that time, I was often desired by rich men. They would pursue me and send cars to pick me up. But in intimate settings, they would be extremely disrespectful and coercive. Often they would slap and choke as a part of the sexual act even without my consent. I couldn’t help but connect these instances with my caste location. It almost felt like my body didn’t deserve dignity.”

Adding to this, Kush also shared how the dynamics change with contexts. “Post COVID, my beard line is almost always covered by my mask, I have long hair and I often wax my full body — these all mimic the ‘upper caste cis woman’ image and allow me to access certain spaces. Because I live in a locality with a prominent presence of the Dalit population around, I often ended up hooking up with someone from my own community. I noticed that if they had more apparent Dalit markers than me, they didn’t expect me to treat them with a lot of dignity. Similarly, when I hook up with someone who is – or who I perceive to be – upper caste, I don’t expect them to pleasure me. It’s interesting how in both settings our years of conditioning unfold.”

Dignity is deeply intertwined with how we experience pleasure – as a source or as a resource. Megha shares, “’As a survivor of sexual abuse, my initial experiences of intimacy – even those where I had consented and exercised agency – were devoid of orgasms. I didn’t think of them as something that I could have. I grew up believing that my body is only a resource of pleasure, something that other people could access from me.”

But our bodies are also sites of euphoria, affirmations, and joy. Many of us do reclaim our bodies and the spaces we physically occupy. So what happens when we are desired because of our bodies and identities?

 

Moving Away and Moving Into fetishisation

“OMG! You are a Dalit person! Yet so strong, courageous, and confident!’ I hear this regularly. But it is a very romanticised and sexualised perception of me, and one that is not always true. We are more complex, nuanced, and messy than that. The idea of a Dalit woman showing her cleavage, speaking in English, and occupying cis-het upper caste supremacist spaces invites a certain kind of gaze. My idea of taking up space always has been through situating and accessing affirmations within these gazes. I have also sexualised myself — it might appear morally corrupt on the surface, but the deeper you look, the better you understand why some of us might do it. From a person who has never understood what it means to be desired or what it’s like to get this attention — why would I let it go?!

I have never checked the box of a conventional ‘pretty woman’ or had a body that is conventionally considered beautiful. So when I get this kind of validation, I take it at face value without politically, morally, or ethically examining it. If showing cleavage brings me validation, I will do that, but I am also aware of the labour I need to do to ensure acceptance and safety. So now, I also know when I need to detach”, says Megha while talking about being profiled as a Dalit-queer woman living in a metro city.

She also added, “Me taking up space also comes with the cost of profiling me as a character for the easy comprehension of the people residing outside of my lived experiences. The times I try to be otherwise — silent, less-opinionated, vulnerable — I feel invisible in both physical and virtual spaces. This restricts my mobility across sections. In my queer relationships, I always end up taking the dominant role both responsibility-wise and sexually, almost as if it’s a default setting.”

This phenomenon where apart from all the marginalisation Dalit people experience within queer spaces, they are also fetishised for their identities, presents the opportunity to discuss if we move away from or move into fetishisation? There’s a thin thread between preference, prejudice, and fetishisation. If someone’s desire is solely influenced by a person’s single identifier, and they refuse to see anything beyond that, that perpetuates a certain kind of discrimination. This fetishisation often comes from the assumption that all Dalit men are working-class people and hence muscular, manly, and rough-dark-handsome. Dalit women are thought to be unfeminine, strong, and bold. Dalit transwomen are reduced to the “status of beggars or sex workers.” This often evokes a certain amount of desirability amongst non-Dalit queers to fetishise them without any accountability.

In my recent experiences, I have come across dominant caste queer men explicitly writing on Grindr ‘Looking for SC, ST’ or my date telling me ‘Dalit and communist is my type’. That got me thinking – is this desirability a new acceptance? If yes, then what is this unknown crawling discomfort followed by it? When someone says ‘I like your skin tone’ – when our skin carries generations of oppression – isn’t romanticising that also romanticising the years of oppression? But then why do I also feel immediately elated and thank them for complimenting me?

As a transfeminine person who has also socially transitioned, Kush looks at pleasure beyond physical intimacy and feels it is more psychosocial in nature. She says, “When someone fetishises me as a transwoman, I am euphoric because this person is thinking of me as a woman. It affirms my identity.”

There are large numbers of men who like going down on transwomen but not on cis men. It might be because the feeling is strange, new, thrilling. For a very long time, I had this fantasy of somebody going down on me while I wore sexy stockings under my skirt. In my mind, the image is that I am a beautiful girl and this guy is going down on me. And this is why I perhaps look at being fetishiszed as a manifestation of my fantasy.

The larger notion is such that chasers might want sexual intimacy with you but might not want anything romantic or serious. I have come across such chasers who have also become lovers. So I don’t have a binary opinion of fetishisation.

While talking about being fetishised, Megha says, “I look in the mirror, and I don’t like my body. I go to this person. This person fetishises my body, my dark skin tone, my pigmentations, my septum ring, everything, my entire character. If I take that away from them, are they going to look at me the same way? My fetishisation by both men and women as a ‘black, fat, bold’ woman is the only thing I have. Am I ready to give up on that? Perhaps no. Even if I want to give up on playing this character and become submissive, become vulnerable, it’s often followed by the fear of my identity crisis kicking in.  My entire identity has been shaped around my marginalisation and my response to that marginalisation. Who am I if not this character? More than my lovers, do I even want to look at myself in my most authentic state which has a long-lived history of self-hatred, rejection, and not being desired?”

 

Inviting vulnerability as a practise of pleasure 

We don’t talk enough about vulnerability and marginalisation.

Being vulnerable is about being our authentic selves with all our realities, histories, flaws, — and sharing that with lovers, talking about fears, expressing discomfort.

Often when marginalised people show their vulnerability it is seen as cribbing or weakness. Over time, many of us also have acquired the skill to censor the parts of our beings that might be discomforting for people at positions of power. Instead, we mimic a certain kind of caste-class-gender performance to gain acceptance. While at it, is it possible to experience pleasure without being vulnerable?

Megha reflects on how she hasn’t ever been completely vulnerable with anyone while being intimate with them. She says, “I enjoy sharing a space with someone, being intimate, talking, but at the same time I have also noticed a pattern where I consciously make a choice of being with my lovers for some hours and not throughout the day because I am afraid of them seeing me completely — all my flaws, emotions, vulnerabilities, and ‘not so strong’ aspects.”

Though the outside world might look at Dalit-queer issues as focus areas, we the people who are navigating within the spaces, breathing within our realities, and figuring out day-to-day praxis, know our lives aren’t only about raging, educating, and articulating our feelings in tangible statements for the perusal of people residing outside of our marginalisation. Our lives are also about pleasure, euphoria, rest, and joy. We also exist beyond and between Dalit suffering and Dalit resistance. It is exhausting to look at ourselves only through the dichotomy of undesirability-fetishisation.

Kush says, “The structures have conditioned me. Change the structures. If you want to fight the fetishisation, first fight the dehumanisation of caste and gender-sexual minority groups.”

These structures aren’t created by us, so the primary responsibility for dismantling them should also stay with people in positions of power and privilege. Equally, the creation of spaces that allows us to be vulnerable should be a collective responsibility. We can’t self love our way out of systemic oppression. Many times, idealistic behaviour is expected from marginalised people, but that takes away the tenderness that realistic behaviour could offer. Vulnerability allows us to bring our imperfections, mistakes, insecurities, and anxieties around our bodies and intimacy with us. It helps us connect to our gut feelings while being present in our physical bodies and in the moment. Vulnerability helps us shift from fear to security. It fosters collective healing. Vulnerability affirms identities, bodies, and experiences.

As we think of vulnerability as a practice to experience pleasure authentically, Megha says, “The day my two experiences — when I am alone, having wine, touching myself lying on my bed as well as when I am with my lover — will mirror each other, I will call it a day!”

 

(*Names have been changed to ensure anonymity.) 

This article was written as part of TYPF’s digital campaign for Pride Month in 2022. The #PrideInPleasure campaign highlights experiences of pleasure that do not find representation in mainstream media, and amplifies queer voices from the margins.

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