In Sri Lanka, the LGBTQ+ community is one that has faced more challenges than almost anywhere else in the world. Despite this, the community’s persistence and determination is something to be admired as more and more people fully embrace themselves each year. Students For Liberty Sri Lankan chapter organized a series of webinars with the partnership of Chokolaate Magazine and Pulse Media in order to explore the ever expanding landscape of this community in a local context. 

The first discussion, titled Know Your Community, featured Rosanna Flamer-Caldera, executive director of EQUAL GROUNDS Sri Lanka, Shanuki De Alwis, ally and activist, and Prabhashana Hasthidhara, project coordinator of the community welfare fund. 

The discussion took place over two hours and covered many important details about the community, noted below: 

Rosanna opened the floor about a discussion of her journey to start EQUAL GROUNDS when it was sorely needed, and how they are now intervening and condemning discrimination against the LGBTQ+ community, most recently and notably, a case of forced examinations against members in Sri Lanka. 

Rosanna noted that as a community, they deal with three main adversaries. 

-Law enforcement

-Schools

-Parents of LGBTQ youth (a dire situation particularly this year because of the youth forced to be under curfew in abusive households)

She appealed to the audience to imagine the process that most LGBTQ people go through on a daily basis

-Confused growing up

-Gets bullied

-A fear of being shunned and unloved, regardless of coming out or not

-If they’re closeted, a constant awareness of what to say and do

-Problems finding jobs 

-Police, government, society 

“Put yourself in our shoes, just for an hour” she asked us. 

Prabhashana added their views to Rosanna’s, noting that the Sri Lankan education system has immensely failed their community in particular, with the cultual narrative of stygmatizing sex. 

“Look at the response to hathe ape potha, and that’s heteronormative.” they pointed out. 

“We have a long way to go.” 

Prabhashana went on to outline how in schools the lessons about sexual and reproductive systems were skipped over, ignored, or even stapled together. STI’s are demonized, and therefore leading to a culture where sexual struggles and mental health issues are rampant. 

They note that these cultural taboos make it particularly difficult for LGBTQ+ youth to ascertain what they want, since most of the time Sri Lankan parents are closed off about sexual concerns as well. 

While some of the community have the privilege of education, accessibility, the internet, others do not, and the lack of progressive sexual education is a key factor in further confusing youth, Prabhashana added. 

Shanuki agreed with this, noting that this is a community issue where it’s important to talk about this as human beings. She further elaborated stating that there’s a lot to be changed in journalism in Sri Lanka, particularly when it comes to sensitive content. 

She recalled a quote from transgender activist Bhoomi Harendran- It shouldn’t matter what’s between a person’s legs, but rather what the person has done. 

Shanuki pointed out that when it comes to this topic, we focus on all the wrong things and create an Us vs Them narrative by creating labels. 

“It’s so normalized for mainstream media to make the LGBTQ person comedic,” she emphasized. “That until we’re sensitized to this, we don’t see how bad it is.” We’re taught to take it as entertainment, she noted. The media narrative is something that definitely needs to change.  

As an ally, Shanuki emphasized that it’s important to speak out against this issue, to be vocal in your support. “It’s up to all of us (not just the community) to fight for their rights” she said. 

“If we’re intolerant of one section of our community, we’re intolerant of ourselves in a way

It’s 2020, we should grow up. We don’t have an excuse to be misinformed anymore.”

This discussion was followed by a QnA session where everything from the process of transitioning to explaining LGBTQ+ concepts to children were covered. The full discussion can be found here. 

The webinar concluded with a heartbreaking statement from both Rosanna and Prabhashana: 

“We are also very boring human beings. We’re not aliens from outer space. We just want to be normal people.”

The second webinar in the series was called Know Your Rights, and focused on the legal rights of this minority community in Sri Lanka. 

Danushi Fernando, director of LGBTQ+ and gender resources at Vassar College, New York, started the ball rolling by speaking about her personal experience coming out in Sri Lanka, going against her religious and cultural beliefs, and what she does not as a result of her personal story. 

Using a presentation, Danushi started with why we should educate ourselves. The answer comes in three segments:

-Knowledge

-Self advocacy

-Allyship

She moved on to the origins of restrictive laws surrounding the community, laws that came not from our own culture, but the British empire. She explored the articles in the constitution that criminalized the community, and pointed out the many discrepancies and questions surrounding them. 

She went on to point out the controversy of our politicians and how their attitudes affect the community with occasions such as 

-Arbitrary arrests

-Forced marriage

-Discrimination in employment

-violence against women in a same sex relationship when reporting domestic abuse

She emphasized by saying that discrimination doesn’t always take a single form. Instead what it looks like is;

-no marriage

-relationships not recognized as a union

-no adoption

-cannot serve openly in the military

Concluding her segment, she noted the prevalence of conversion therapy in Sri Lanka, and questioned the tendency to think of therapy for something that it specifically not termed as an illness. 

“It goes against our code of ethics to practice conversion therapy in any form”

Chandrasekaram Visakesa, senior lecturer at the faculty of law, university of Colombo, agreed with Danushi, questioning the vagueness of ‘gross indecency’ and ‘order of nature’ in our constitution. 

He went on to bring to awareness that welfare is lacking in Sri Lanka. We don’t have a welfare system at all. And while most of our community rolls with it, many minorities, including LGBTQ+ people, fall through the cracks. 

Speaking on whether decriminalization of homosexuality possible in Sri Lanka, he admits that it is hard to predict. “We’ve gotten so close, but then we’ve been rebuffed.” he recalls, remembering several occasions where they thought they were stepping forward, but actually stepped back. 

However, decriminalization doesn’t and shouldn’t have to be an action of fanfare, he noted, but rather just a quiet change, under the right leadership. 

The last speaker for the discussion, Dr. Chamindra Weerawardhana, international LGBTQ+ rights activist and researcher, spoke about something largely ignored, even when speaking about the community itself. 

Chamindra started the discussion by speaking about trans feminism, an aspect typically not thought of by the conventional feminist. She emphasized Danushi’s point about following colonial rule, and questioned why we do so. 

“Ours is a society where conventionalism is shaped by colonial baggage.”

Reminding everyone that LGBTQ+ is not just about sexual orientation but also about gender identity, Dr. Chamindra spoke about intersex people and their discrimination, as well as the forced surgical intervention. 

Some of the community are weaponized by activist pages, or politicians, she went on to state. And the sad thing is, most of the time it’s not realized. 

She also brought to light the trend of saying “we can’t be politically correct all the time” as an excuse to not be inclusive. LGBTQ rights are closely connected to ethnic minority rights and reconciliation as well, she noted. A fact that may help in getting LGBTQ+ rights to the forefront faster. 

Speaking about the Transgender community, Chamindra outlined that the community in Sri Lanka deal with the Gender recognition circular which allows people in transition to change their gender legally, which sounds like a progressive step, until you find that in order to be eligible, you have to be clinically diagnosed to be suffering from gender dysphoria. 

Being transgender shouldn’t define a person, she emphasized. It’s an adjective, not a noun.

You can access the full discussion on Know Your Rights here. 

The third webinar in the series dealt with the international community and the lessons to be learnt from the global landscape for Sri Lanka. 

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By: Paramie Jayakody