I’m a male Belly Dancer. I have always loved this dance style. But Belly Dancing is often associated with femininity and sensuality, leading to stereotypes that it is exclusively a dance form for women. When male dancers like me perform belly dance, we are criticized or ridiculed for challenging these gender norms.
I often get comments like fag, weird, quit dancing etc. Even among other dancers, I get the pressure to conform the binary gender expectations and pursue more “masculine” dance styles. Not to mention the limited opportunities I have in this career.
I always face bullying, teasing, or ridicule for my feminine expressions and can’t ask for help because somehow it’s expected of me to endure all this for choosing to disobey the prefixed gender rules.
But I continue to move forward with my art as a form of representation for all those people like me who see art as art, not another way to enforce toxic gender rules.”
অনলাইন ভিত্তিক লিঙ্গ সহিংসতা: কথা (চার)
মাইয়া না বেডা- এরকম কথা শুনতে তো হয় রাস্তাঘাটে সবাই জায়গায়। কিন্তু অনলাইনে আমার হেনস্তার পরিমাণ দিন দিন বেড়েই যাচ্ছে।
নিজেকে ননবাইনারি হিসেবে দাবি করলেও, এই সমাজে আমাকে গ্রহণযোগ্যতা নেই। তারা বলে, “তোমার দেহ একজন পুরুষের, একজন পুরুষের মতো ব্যবহার করো।
অনলাইনে জেন্ডার বেসড ভায়লেন্সের নানা ঘটনা আছে আমার। কোনটা রেখে কোনটা যে বলবো। একটা আপাতত বলছি,
আমি ইন্সটাগ্রামে একটা স্টোরি আপলোড দিয়েছিলাম। আমার অনেক লম্বা চুল- এই চুল নিয়ে অনেক বাজে কথা শুনতে হয়। সেই চুল ঝাঁকিয়ে একটা ভিডিও স্টোরিতে দেই। এক অপরিচিত লোক সেই স্টোরি রেকর্ড করে নিজের আইডি থেকে পোস্ট করে বলে, “এই মাইজ্ঞাটারে কেউ আনবেন আমার এক বন্ধুর হলুদে নাচামু। টাকাও দিমু বেশ্যারে।”
আমার কাছে এক পরিচিত ফেইসবুক বন্ধু স্ক্রিনশট শেয়ার করে। বুঝাই যাচ্ছে পরিচিত মহল থেকে কেউ ফেইক আইডি উইজ করে কাজটা করেছে।
ওসব পড়ে আমার মাথা ঠিক ছিল না। মনে হচ্ছিল এখুনি আমি চুল কেটে সেগুলো আগুন দিয়ে পুড়িয়ে দেই নাহলে চিৎকার করে কাঁদি। আমার খারাপ লাগে যখন মানুষজন আমাকে বুলি করে। বেশ্যাকে গালি হিসেবে নেইনি, কেনই বা নেবো- কিন্তু ওই লোকের ইনটেশনটাই জঘন্য।
Online Gender Based Violence: Story Three
I get approached my strangers with fake id often on Instagram. Recently I refused some guy. I didn’t exactly keep count, and I’m not aware of their identity as their account is completely blank.
After that, I started getting more texts, but this time they all kept mentioning “chatblink” app, that I’ve chatted with them there and told them to dm me on Instagram for more s3xting. The number kept growing. So I changed my username and locked my profile. But some texts kept coming. I still get texts sometimes from chatblink users.
The harasser kept stalking me and kept spreading my username just out of pure joy of revenge.
When you’re trans, you’re taken for granted to accept everyone’s offer; that belittling male gaze never stops.”
Online Gender Based Violence: Story Two
After I broke up with my ex, I faced harassment online for almost three years, and it’s still ongoing, but not as much. He used to make fake accounts but would leave hints for me to understand it was him. He would text me really vulgar things from them. Sometimes would spam my comment section with things I cannot even utter. He would then make fake accounts with my pictures to get my attention. But all in all, I never understood why he did those. I had to lock my profile just because of him. Cause one day; he started spamming my Facebook comment sections, writing things I cannot even imagine one can say. One time I took a break from social media, and he opened an account with my name and pictures; and he used a few hints to make me understand it was him; I had to activate my account again to take that one down. Then I had to do a GD just so he would stop; I put it out on my story, then I would do a GD to whoever was doing it, then he stopped. At least he doesn’t leave hints anymore. He probably still stalks me all the time. It’s been four years.
Online Gender Based Violence: Story One
Joyee (Pseudonym)
[TRIGGER WARNING]
I opened an anonymous messenger app, named kubool. That time it was a huge trend in social media, everyone was sharing cute anonymous texts on facebook. So I thought why not? I also opened one and shared only in friends option. ( only the people I know personally can saw that) within an hour I got two texts in kubool,
One was “tumi to darun busty. Tomake dekhe onek khechsi. Fb te aro dudh ber kore chobi diba. Tomake dekhlei amar ekdom kharaya jay”
Another one was ” tomar dudh eto boro monta chay khaya dei”
I was completely shattered and immediately deleted my kubool account. I will never open any anonymous message app. I have experienced years of molestation in my childhood. I have worked really hard to overcome the traumatic experiences. But that one kubool app reminded me of all those days.
And the worst part is someone whom I know personally did this, this still scares me on a daily basis.
The Problems with FRIENDS
Eros
I think it’s safe to say that FRIENDS didn’t age well. But it’s still a hit among people of all ages. The first time you watch FRIENDS you may like the TV series – it’s funny, hilarious, and relatable too, until you start thinking.
Many who are anti-FRIENDS now liked the series when they first watched it, which includes me. I loved it the first time I watched it; I finished all 10 seasons in almost a week. But now when I look back, the series and its characters make me cringe.
In a wide-ranging interview with The Hollywood Reporter, series creators Marta Kauffman and David Crane, and director and executive producer Kevin Bright, acknowledged that if the series were made today, the racial makeup of its six main stars would be different.
“If we did Friends today, no, I don’t imagine they would probably end up being an all-white cast,” Kevin Bright said in the piece, which came on the heels of the Friends reunion special on HBO Max.
“We would be so aware,” he added. “So much would change, but to get them to behave realistically within this time, there would be a lot that would change about them. And the racial makeup of them would change because of that.”
While these statements are all very nice, in the last few years, show-makers have been using ‘diversity’ as a means of capitalism. There seems to be an uprising of woke people among critics and viewers, and in order to appease them, show-makers use at least one cent of diversity to make their shows popular. That’s why I’m skeptical whether the show-makers of FRIENDS would have changed the racial makeup for getting a higher rating or for actual humanitarian reasons.
In this day and age, everything is political. Every movie and series that is being made has an agenda behind it, and most of it revolves around making money. While I’m a money-loving person, I don’t endorse forsaking humanity for it.
Now, let’s get back to our discussion. FRIENDS is a very problematic show, especially considering the world we are living in now. It promotes toxicity, homophobia, body-shaming, lechery and insensitivity.
There’s homophobia in almost all the characters. Not to mention, the show-makers sometimes used homosexuality as a gag, like when Rachel said Phoebe was gay when Tag wanted to date her, or when Ross set up Chandler’s university profile saying Chandler was gay.
Chandler’s father is a gay, drag performer. Growing up, Chandler developed an aversion toward being associated with his father or his sexuality. It was never addressed why that happened. Why was Chandler so afraid of being thought of as gay? More than that, why did people mistake his sexuality? What was it about him that made him seem gay? Because he had a “quality”?
I guess the scriptwriter wanted to portray that having certain so-called girly habits doesn’t make you any less of a man also that gay people are also just like any other person they don’t have any labels attached!
This is from an answer on Quora where somebody asked why people thought Chandler was gay.
I’d have liked to believe the same, but in order for it to be true, we needed to see this being addressed clearly. Instead, all of the “unmanly” traits of his character were made to be kept hidden, like how he could pluck eyebrows. That’s why, if I want to give the scriptwriters any credit regarding this, I’d say they wanted to show that the “girlish” behaviors of boys should be kept hidden. None of the other characters ever said it was okay to do those things.
Then there is the whole girl-on-girl fetish. While Joey’s playboy nature is problematic, his fetish for girl-on-girl sex is obnoxious. He doesn’t even leave his close friends out of this fetish, and Chandler does it too. None of the girls in the group ever condemns them for it. If anything, they took advantage of it when Monica and Rachel had to get back their apartment from Chandler and Joey.
A lot of straight, homophobic men have this fetish, and that’s where the problem lies. They think girls can have sex with girls as long as they, the men, are getting something out of it.
Here, Ross is a special category. His wife divorced him because she found out she was a lesbian, and that’s why Ross developed this dislike for Carol and Susan’s relationship, and possessiveness toward his relationship with Rachel and Emily, and on top of all that, had a girl-on-girl fetish as well, that so involving Rachel and Phoebe. The last part was shown when Rachel and Phoebe tried to prove who was the best candidate to be Monica’s bridesmaid and Ross and Joey judged it.
Let’s talk about Chandler’s father. It seemed like he was never aware of how he affected Chandler. He was a supportive father who always went to Chandler’s sports events at his school. But what he should have done, objectively speaking, was try to understand what young Chandler was going through. You’d expect a queer person to be more aware of their kids’ childhood experiences, given how many of us have nothing but trauma to remember.
The showrunners messed the character up further, in my opinion, by giving a straight, cis-woman to play the role because she had a husky voice. When I first saw her in FRIENDS, I was glad that they hired an actual drag queen. But when I looked it up, I was very disappointed.
On the surface, FRIENDS seems like a very queer-friendly TV show. But it used LGBTQIA+ characters only as a stepping stone for other characters to develop on, laugh, and tease about.
I have seen a lot of sitcoms after FRIENDS, and some of them, while being very suitable for their time, will definitely be equally suitable in the future as well. Like, Schitt’s Creek, Brooklyn 99, Orange is the New Black, Working Moms, The Bold Type, Grace and Frankie, The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, etc. These shows didn’t use queerness as a means of redeeming themselves, but really tried to explore the characters’ depth. There’s also a new genre on the rise – Asian BL dramas. Many of the older ones are very ill-developed, and the characters are very shallow. But the newer ones are comparatively better, like I Told Sunset About You, Until We Meet Again, Moonlight Chicken, A Tale of Thousand Stars, etc. I will write a review on them in future.
Reference:
https://www.quora.com/Why-did-the-girls-in-Friends-assume-that-Chandler-was-gay
Sannoy Bangladesh 