Bobby Darling participated in the reality television show Sach ka Saamna in August and besides entertaining audiences by facing the truth; she was also made to cry for them. The show, whose logic is so brilliant that even I can only admire it (pitting people’s hypocrisy against their greed), is certainly no place to pose hard questions on gender and sexuality. I started wincing right at beginning when the host, Rajeev Khandelwal, asked Bobby to resolve a dilemma for him — Should he address Bobby as Kaisi hai or Kaisa hai?
Now, correct me if I am wrong, but aren’t the producers supposed to do a bit of research on their guests before having them over? Their questions indicate that they do, so why would you invite a pre-op transsexual woman and ask her an insulting question like that? Even if your knowledge is limited on the terminology, one would expect that since you know Bobby dresses like a woman, wants to undergo sexual reassignment surgeries, then you would also know that you’re supposed to address her as ‘her’. Bobby, to her credit, smiled and resolved this dilemma for Rajeev by chirpily answering, “I’m a girl.”
I wish that was the end of it — but the entire face-off with truth was lined with questions that just made me gasp at the stupidity. It was so obvious that Bobby was asked to participate so that she could be humiliated for the titillation of the middle class audience.
Questions like, “Do you think men are better than women?” would never have been posed to other participants because its inanity is so glaring — to which men are they referring to? Which women? Better at what? Are men better at giving birth to children? But the question was posed to Bobby because she is biologically male and attracted to men. Poor Bobby was forced to answer this question with a yes or a no. She answers yes, and is forced to psychoanalyze herself then and there about complicated notions like sexuality and desire, to defend herself saying, “Men must be superior because I desire them so much that I am ready to undergo painful surgeries to be with them.” This was the highlight, I think, when misogyny, patriarchy, homophobia all aligned themselves to placate the uncomfortable heterosexual viewer.
Thus, transsexuals are tolerated because they worship men. These are the same men that abused Bobby Darling. I infer this from the last question on the show, “Have you ever been physically abused by any of your boyfriends?” Bobby replies, “No” but the show ‘beeps’ her a liar and implies boyfriends have indeed beaten up this transsexual. I wonder why this question is not asked of women who appear on the show with their husbands in tow — isn’t there a possibility that they are suffering from domestic violence in their homes, from the very husbands and mother-in-laws who are seated there on that couch? Thus, the show once again assumes and projects a happy family next to the physically abused transsexual.
The slew of offensive statements barely disguised as questions never stopped. They included, “Do you believe that most of the men you meet want to sleep with you?” So, on one hand Bobby is supposed to desire men (who are better than women) to such an extent that she is willing to undergo painful surgeries and on the other hand men are also supposed to be throwing themselves at Bobby? I wished Bobby had turned the question back on to Rajeev — he’s a man, presumably he has met Bobby before — why don’t we ask him whether he wants to sleep with Bobby? Instead we ask the woman who has suffered the violence of struggling in Bollywood, who has never been given credit for what she has achieved (her acting in Navarasa), her bravery is only superficially acknowledged in the spirit of this moment of liberalism.
We must be wary before we celebrate such visibility — they come at a very high price. We are cut up, dolled up and made to not only entertain television-viewing, dinner-chomping families, but also to placate their most homophobic tendencies. Bobby was forced to answer all sorts of contradictory questions that would force her to conform to a notion of a socially marginalised sexual person that would be palatable to the audience. She was made to cry, to evoke sympathy, her family was dragged in to prove what? That these perverts have families too, so let’s be kind to them? She was made to confess that her running away from home killed her mother — so, let’s be kind to them but let’s also remember that they are a source of pain for families and mothers? And to top it all, the suffering of somebody who is so open about her transgressions, her isolation and alienation is summed up with the question — “Do you think you are going to die a lonely death?” Well, if these are the forms of the new visibility of Gay India, that instead of being sympathetic to a member of a sexual minority is displaying her as a moment of sensationalist commodity, meant to be consumed and tittered away at, then I am sure we’re all going to die lonely deaths.
— vaibhavsaria@jhu.edu