Queer Blogging in Indian Digital Diasporas

Abstract

Queering and transgendering practices have been visible across the Internet since the time of multiuser domains (MUDs), MUD object oriented domains (MOOs), e-mail lists, and Web bulletins. This article maps some themes of queering in the Indian digital diaspora through an intergenerational lens, produced in the acts of online and offline coauthoring, weblogging, and reading of instances of such online queering relationally. By way of a dialogic encounter on their own blogs and employing performative writing that simulates the blogsphere, the authors look at the interplay of codes of identity through the employment of themes, language, symbols, and cultural influences in their writing. Examining the themes emerging from the specific blogs they study, the authors ask how power is shifted and relayered in these articulations and what the inviting interactional features of their writer-audience communities are that allow for certain kinds of self-expression while also shaping their performance of sexuality in these spaces.

User‐generatedonline queer media and the politics of queer visibility

“…For instance, Williams's (2007, p. 37) analysis of the content of three blogs run by three gay American college‐age males shows that users could articulate a public queer identity by discussing sexual orientation, same‐sex relationships, or referencing queer culture and/or LGBT and queer (LGBTQ) community affiliations. These techniques were also found by Mitra and Gajjala (2008) in their study of Indian queer blogs. Thus, within the blogosphere, there is a tendency among users to authenticate their individual identities as “real.” That is, they “assert their representations of themselves online as ‘real’ and ‘true’ by incorporating markers such as ‘signatures, photographs, proper first and last names for people and places, and the reportage of experience’ as a way to validate more abstract ideas about the world” (Rak, 2005, p. 175).…”

Sites of Exception: Gender Violence, Digital Activism, and Nirbhaya’s Zone of Anomie in India

“…Dalit groups in India have turned to alternative spaces online, not only to challenge dominant discourse through discursive practices but also to build solidarities nationally and transnationally (Kumar, 2015;Kumar & Subramani, 2014;Mishra, 2017;Nayar, 2011). New media have also had significant impact on queer communities in India, providing them avenues to not only establish their own political narratives but carve a social space for interaction and dialogue (Dasgupta, 2014(Dasgupta, , 2017Mitra & Gajjala, 2008). Within the feminist movement, most recently, following the #MeToo movement in India, hundreds of women came out online with their own narratives of sexual harassment and abuse (Chadha, 2018;Datta, 2017;Gajjala, 2018;Pujari, 2017;Sen, 2017).…”

Queer geographies of spatial media

“…Queer diasporic studies have revealed, for instance, that “home” pressures operate with the assimilative demands of “host” societies, deepening the margins for those also subject to misogyny, racism, Islamophobia, and/or eroticisation (ascription of “attractive” ethnic and/or class stereotypes) in lesbian and gay consumer space (Haritaworn, ). Otalvaro‐Hormillosa () suggests these pressures are why “home” is unattainable for many queers, hence the internet's relevance for belonging (Bryant, ; Mitra & Gajjala, ). Even under conditions of person‐to‐person connectivity, spatial media trouble ideas of “freedom” from place whilst strengthening claims against sole emphasis on network flows.…”

“…Otalvaro-Hormillosa (1999) suggests these pressures are why "home" is unattainable for many queers, hence the internet's relevance for belonging (Bryant, 2015;Mitra & Gajjala, 2008). Even under conditions of person-to-person connectivity, spatial media trouble ideas of "freedom" from place whilst strengthening claims against sole emphasis on network flows.…”