Queerphobia, the biggest STIGMA!

Dear friends,

I hope you all are in the pink of your health. It should be brought to your notice that June every year is regarded as the Pride Month all over the world. It is indeed known that we celebrate special days all round the year to praise and commemorate it only on those occasions and forget the very meaning of it during the rest of the days.

Though the time it took to properly decriminalize homosexuality in our country and normalize the alternative sexualities and genders were long, the plight faced by the queer people are quite longer still. The LGBTQIA+ people who already face bias, attacks and bullies simply for who they are or whom they love are now experiencing heightened stigma as a result of the virus.

Queerphobia has its roots from almost all the sections of the society starting from within our homes to the educational institutions to the workplaces. We incorporate queerphobia into the minds of our children from an early age and thus there exists staggering amounts in our society. From the stories being heard to the cinemas we see, always have impregnated this phobia in many forms like prejudice, bigotry, violence, abuse and even murder at times.

Though we grow towards an idealistic modern society, we still are seeing it as a blemish with anything we find undesirable, feminine, weird or those who do not conform to society's expectations of 'real' manhood or feministic values. A lot of teenagers and adults also view being queer as a vile and express in many forms, sometimes subtle, sometimes outwardly displayed as jokes and bullies.

This cycle of hatred is vicious and it is still passing on and on from generations to generations. But it is time we take a responsibility to put an end to this. The amount of pain the queer people go through for not being respected for what they are is gripping. Some families even go to the extent of forcing queers to undergo conversion therapies most of which result in high levels of stress and fatalities.

People of few sections though claim that it is unnatural and unethical, the queer people also do deserve a place in this world and they are what they are. It is time we see that these differences shouldn't be met with hate, violence or disgust but rather with acceptance and respect. Safe, violence and discrimination-free public and private existence are the right of queer people as much as they are for the straight people. Beyond gender and sexualities, we are living humans able to feel every emotion. After all at the core of every faith, there is only LOVE.

PRIDEly,

A Straight :) 

Thank you.