Mithra Trust
LGBTQIA+ persons and sexual violence
We’re here, we're queer – and no matter what the law says, our human rights are just as important.
LGBTQIA+ persons face a high risk of queerphobic and transphobic hate crimes, structural violence, and incidents of gender-based violence. Structural violence refers to social or legal systems that are inherently harmful to some people - for instance, patriarchy is harmful to anyone who doesn't conform to stereotypical notions of 'man' and 'woman'.
Often, the perpetrator of sexual violence against an LGBTQIA+ person is someone they know – someone who is a part of their close domestic or social circles.
In India, as in most countries, the laws surrounding sexual abuse and gender-based violence are often limited, thereby invisibilising the experiences of queer and trans people and the unique violence they face. This sustains the cycle of violence, ensuring that most victims never get justice.
India decriminalised homosexuality only in 2018, after the Supreme Court read down section 377 of the Indian Penal Code in cases of consensual sex. The Parliament passed a law in 2019 for the protection of transgender persons’ rights. Yet, these laws and amendments are not enough, and many of their provisions are problematic. The penalty for raping a transgender woman for instance is much less than the penalty for raping a cisgender woman – a woman who was marked ‘female’ in her birth certificate.
Life in India is still very unsafe for a majority of LGBTQIA+ persons.
All of this means that the strategies to address sexual and gender-based violence faced by LGBTQIA+ persons, and to seek redressal for these harms, are different from those of cisgender women.
Further, LGBTQIA+ identities don’t exist in a vacuum. Queer persons are marginalised by their Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Expression, and Sex Characteristics (SOGIESC). They may also be marginalised on the basis of caste, class, religion, disability, health, geographical location, language, citizenship, or education. A person who is at the intersection of multiple identities is more at risk of discrimination.
That is, a lesbian woman who is Dalit can face caste discrimination among her queer peers; discrimination based on her sexuality in her family or caste community; and discrimination on either or both bases in all other spaces she occupies. If this Dalit lesbian woman is also disabled, the chance of her being mistreated, or facing violence, multiplies.
When such a person – who is marginalised on multiple counts – faces sexual violence, it becomes that much more difficult to speak about it, report it, and get justice. There are hardly any stories that provide hope – even the language used in the media and in general discourse about sexual violence is not inclusive of all genders.
This means that a majority of incidents of sexual violence go unreported, and most formal institutions and channels for recourse can be difficult to navigate.
Queer folks are more likely to be estranged from their biological families and queerphobic friends and partners. Dependence on community, chosen family, and friends is often indispensable for queer and marginalised folks, and there is a necessity to fortify these networks.
There are support networks and groups that can be accessed to rebuild these relationships and have chosen families. It is always a good idea to build a support network by meeting more people in the communities, so that you are not isolated from help if/when you need it, especially when faced with a barrier.
Navigating the healthcare system as an LGBTQIA+ person
While it is the right of every individual to have access to quality healthcare, accessing these services after an abusive incident can be triggering and re-traumatising for many, especially in the case of those belonging to socially marginalised communities.
People with Disabilities and LGBTQIA+ individuals are systemically discriminated against by healthcare systems (displayed through patterns of behaviours, policies, and practices). The gap in providing quality care services to marginalised communities is evident across government and private medical facilities. Access is also not the same for any two persons; for example, people in privileged class and caste positions can access better healthcare facilities and networks.
Individuals seeking medical services after an incident of sexual violence may be wary about getting a medical exam due to their own or other queer persons’ past negative experiences. Healthcare providers lack healthcare training and sensitisation to work with and treat LGBTQIA+ persons, specifically transgender persons. Medical examinations and procedures for LGBTQIA+ persons are often invasive in nature. For example, transgender persons have to undergo compulsory and invasive genital examinations to be approved to change their gender legally.
The attitudes and beliefs of healthcare providers often mimic the transphobic and queerphobic views of the broader society. It can be triggering for abuse survivors to approach institutions and seek help and treatment from individuals who do not use affirming and inclusive language. They hardly ever ask a queer person how to address them, and sometimes ignorantly and sometimes deliberately use wrong pronouns.
There is also a misconception that HIV/AIDS is more prevalent among gay men, trans women, and other LGBTQIA+ identifying persons. This misconception puts queer individuals at higher risk of sexual and gender-based violence. Additionally, the stigma surrounding sexually transmitted diseases is a major barrier to seeking healthcare and getting tested, and results in a vicious cycle of violence and injustice.
The lack of trust that LGBTQIA+ individuals have in formal healthcare institutions is rooted in a history of medical malpractice, which includes "corrective" or "normalising" surgeries on intersex persons especially infants; conversion therapy; difficulties accessing hormone replacement therapy; unequal access to reproductive healthcare services (such as pregnancy care, abortion facilities, and breast cancer screenings). Medical professionals have been known to purposefully deny or delay treatment, mock, humiliate, and ridicule queer patients, and ask unprompted or unrelated questions about their sexuality, partners, genitals, and lifestyle. There is also an added risk of the patient’s sexuality and/or gender identity being publicly disclosed regardless of consent and client-practitioner confidentiality.
Barriers during medical examinations
LGBTQIA+ persons who are Dalit, Bahujan or Adivasi, or poor, have little to no access to basic amenities, such as food security, employment, housing, and education. They may lack access to social networks, education, or awareness often needed to navigate a complicated and prejudiced healthcare system. This makes them more vulnerable to medical injustices, and limits access to only low-quality and insufficient healthcare services.
Survivors face several barriers in accessing mental and medical care services, including the lack of safe public transport to hospitals, the fear of confronting bigoted medical practitioners, and being gaslighted or denied treatment, and the inability to afford medical malpractice and negligence lawsuits in case of wrongful treatment.
Lack of support systems
It is common for LGBTQIA+ persons to move to different cities or completely foreign countries to escape their abusive households or queerphobic and transphobic friends despite the risk of being isolated from support networks. Some form community through their intimate partners, however, if these relationships turn abusive, survivors might fear speaking up or reporting such abuse due to fear of being ostracised by their community. Additionally, survivors who are socially and financially dependent on their abusive partners may perceive the loss of their abusers' support as a greater threat than the abuse they endure, given the challenges of finding stable employment, housing, education, and food security. Despite the fact that anyone can be abused regardless of their identity, societal prejudice and stereotypes often prevent men (both cisgender and transgender), masculine-presenting persons, as well as trans women from reporting their sexual abuse due to fear of dismissal.
Barriers to reporting Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) in LGBTQIA+ relationships
There are numerous factors that may prevent someone from reporting an incident of sexual or gender-based violence. The culture of silence surrounding such incidents is compounded by the invisibilisation of and discrimination faced by LGBTQIA+ communities.
Individuals may fear that their gender or sexuality may be revealed in the process of reporting their sexual abuse, especially in a society where the biological family, police, and criminal justice systems often work together to separate LGBTQIA+ couples. Some survivors of abuse don’t want to apply labels like ‘gay’ or ‘queer’ to themselves, because of the fear of the stigma attached to these identities. They may be afraid that if they report an incident, they will be “outed” to the world without their consent. Abusers may threaten to out the survivor's sexuality or gender identity if they speak up about their abuse.
It can be tricky for victims to report their LGBTQIA+ partner as both may share intersecting marginal identities, and encounters with the police may be more harmful than helpful. Since present legal frameworks and laws related to sexual violence only lay down repercussions for perpetrators who are cisgender men, survivors may choose to remain silent about their abusers who have other genders. For instance, if a transgender man faces abuse from his partner who is a cisgender woman, he may be unwilling to report sexual violence which may lead to police humiliation or media reportage that invalidates his identity, and brings harm to her as well. In such cases, one may file a complaint under laws concerning physical violence, which are gender-neutral in nature.