Dealing With Ridicule: Why Kolkata School’s Gay Diktat Wasn’t Cool

Members of the queer community say why reprimanding teenagers for being lesbians is scarring.

The Quint reached out to members of the queer community to understand how scarring such an act of admonishment could be for teenagers who are just beginning to understand their sexuality.

(Photo: The Quint)

On 9 March 2018, twelve class 9 students of Kolkata’s Kamala Girls’ High School were asked to write that they were “indulging in lesbian behaviour” by the school’s acting headmistress and then threatened with expulsion if they “didn’t get treated.”

The school made the kids write graphic details of their behaviour on a piece of paper and sign it.

“Write that you have put your hands in your friend’s blouse; that you’ve tickled them under their skirt, hugged them and held their hands”, the girls were told.

The West Bengal Education Minister, when asked to react to this said, “Lesbianism would not be allowed in Bengal’s schools as it is against Bengali culture.”

The parents have denied that the girls were doing any such things and have said that they are not lesbians, overruling the fact that the girls may or may not have been lesbians.

The Quint, reached out to members of the queer community to understand how scarring such an act by the authorities could be for teenagers beginning to understand their sexuality; understand that they are “different” from the rest. And the respondents agreed that it is nothing short of emotional scarring.

Growing up with ridicule can be difficult, and it is made even more difficult if one is constantly told that what they are doing is ‘wrong’, ‘illegal’ and ‘uncivilized’.

A queer person’s teenage is very different from that of a heterosexual person, just because of the societal pressures that they have to deal with and the backlash they have to face when they want to publicly acknowledge their feelings.

“Priya Prakash Varrier could never have been one of us because if we did that eye-to-eye-contact with people, they’d call us a creep”, one respondent said. Love and romance takes a different meaning when your “kind” of love is not accepted.

Growing up queer is difficult enough already, without our schools moral policing and suppressing a teenager’s sexuality more than it already is.