Lost in Translation: Queerness in culture
Queerness is as old as humanity.
Queerness is as old as humanity. Yet, our world attempts to discredit figures and experiences of queer people beyond the Western world and our modern epoch. So, here are three stories of queerness in culture, through time and space.
Mashiyat Ahmed: Queering the diaspora
I first came across writer and activist Maya Bhardwaj’s writings in my class this semester through their article “Solidarity through care in queer Desi diaspora,” which was published in the Journal of Lesbian Studies in 2023. As a bisexual, I was tempted to consider myself as a part of the “LGBTQ+” community for a long time, but as I grew more into my sexual identity and became increasingly radicalized, I couldn’t help but feel an inherent tension burgeoning between my identity and my political convictions. Something within me yearned to deserve the label of queer, but what is queerness for someone like me?
The more I engaged in liberal spaces, the more I felt that my bisexuality was talked about and interpreted—indeed, commodified—as something fundamentally separate from my leftist politics. In other words, I saw many around me claim the label of queer as a marker of just their identity rather than a marker of their praxis—otherwise known as actions. This made me uncomfortable, rageful, and perhaps most substantially, reconsider my friendships and the nature of my solidarity.
It wasn’t until I came across Bhardwaj’s work on how solidarity can be reimagined through queerness that I was able to find the language to organize these messy, transgressive feelings I had in the pit of my stomach. As a queer member of the Desi diaspora—and much like me—Bhardwaj’s work explores how tropes, stereotypes, and unresolved tensions about queerness can shape how diasporans claim not only their identity, but their solidarities with other groups and their political convictions at large. We need to move away from the idea that queerness is who one is attracted to or has sex with. Queerness is not just about being outside the hetero-normative norm. Queerness to me is a mode of resistance that challenges all aspects of the world that try to put us in boxes, whether it relates to power, desire, love, sex, knowledge, or anything else that’s ever been worth our time. I found a version of queerness that works for me through the help of Bhardwaj’s writings, and I hope you can too.
Madhav Ajayamohan: Iravan, the God of Transgenders
This summer, I decided to read Jaya: An Illustrated Retelling of the Mahabharata by Devdut Patnaik. Within its pages, I found an Indian god for those who identify as transgenders: Iravan. Today, I’ll recount his story.
Iravan was the son of Arjuna, one of the Pandavas—protagonists—of the epic. During the Kurukshetra war, the climax of the epic, the Pandavas needed to sacrifice a warrior with 32 special marks in order to secure their victory. Only three members of the Pandava army fit this criteria: Arjuna, the Pandavas’ strongest warrior; Krishna, the physical avatar of God that supported the Pandavas; and Iravan. Given the circumstances, Arjuna asked Iravan if he would be a sacrifice.
Iravan agreed, but he had a final wish: he did not want to die a virgin, and wanted to be married before he died. Given that the sacrificial victim’s final wishes had to be satisfied, the Pandavas looked for a woman who would marry Iravan. But no woman agreed to marry him. Who would want to marry a man doomed to die?
Finally, Krishna himself transformed into his female form, Mohini, and married Iravan. While Iravan was beheaded the next day, “Krishna wept for him as his widow.”
In a footnote, Patanik explains that Iravan’s story validated the existence of Alis—transsexual people in Tamil society. Every year, Iravan’s sacrifice is ritually re-enacted, where he becomes the “divine husband” of the Alis.
I absorbed the Mahabharata at a time when I wasn’t aware of other sexual orientations. Re-reading it again, with knowledge of other sexual identities, made me realize that the Mahabharata had always featured queer characters, and even accepted them. Iravan taught me that even before the 21st century, different identities were always accepted.
Grisha S.: Sappho’s Legacy
The word “sapphic” derives from her name and, yet, the history of the queer woman herself has been lost to time in the midst of marble fragments, footnotes in male-centered Greek epics, fancy labels in mall bookstores, and niche pockets of TikTok. As a questioning girl with a seething discomfort for the juvenile boys around me, I dug for ancient women who bared their experiences in poems like myself. There, I found Sappho.
Sappho is not just a champion of romance; she is a defying spirit against homophobic values that claim queerness as “unnatural” and urge others to return to the antiquated world of traditions and “great men.”
A disruptor of her own time, Sappho remained a revered poetess amongst her male contemporaries, often quoted and referenced. A praised woman of antiquity and, yet, the same people who pedestalize those “great men,” refuse to learn about a great woman, who possessed the same talent, romanticized the same gods. However, Sappho dared to take a step further, she expressed her love for women and not a generalized, stereotypical pantheon of women—like the evident in many male-written lesbian fantasies throughout the decades—but passion for individuals, multi-dimensional, whole beings.
This is evident in her fragment for the Ode to Anactoria:
… Peer of Gods to me is the man thy presence
Crowns with joy; who hears, as he sits beside thee,
Accents sweet of thy lips the silence breaking,
With lovely laughter;
Tones that make the heart in my bosom flutter,
For if I, the space of a moment even,
Near to thee come, any word I would utter
Instantly fails me…
It is perhaps tradition that a queer woman’s works are partial and broken while the battle and adventure epics of people like Homer are maintained. Or perhaps, it might just be an example of poor recordkeeping.
Opinion Editor (Volume 51); Associate Opinion Editor (Volume 50) — Mashiyat (Mash) is a third-year student studying Neuroscience and Professional Writing and Communication (PWC). As this year’s Opinion Editor, Mash hopes to use her writing, editorial, and leadership skills in supporting student journalism in the essential role it plays in fostering intellectual freedom and artistic expression on campuses. When she’s not writing or slaving away at school, Mash uses her free time cooking cultural dishes, striking up conversations with strangers, and being anxious about her nebulous career plans. You can connect with Mash on her LinkedIn.
Features Editor (Volume 51); Associate Features Editor (Volume 50) — Madhav is a third year student completing a double major in mathematics and computer science, and a minor in professional writing. Everyone in UTM has a unique story that makes them special and deserves to be told. As the Features Editor, Madhav wants to narrate these types of stories with creative and descriptive writing. In his off-time, Madhav loves watching anime, reading manga or fantasy novels and listening to music.
