One day, I had brunch with a Kyrgyz friend (a mutual friend had introduced us at the beginning of my trip) at a coffee house and we sat on the patio, eating scrambled eggs and drinking lattes. She was fluent in English. I told her what I had been up to. She said, “I can’t even imagine what it would be like to be gay and Kyrgyz.”
In response, I explained to her my theory about the link between colonization and homophobia: Insecurity around land, identity and the future for the KGZ people due to a legacy of Soviet colonization, as well as contemporary Russian and Western imperialism, means that anything different can be a threat, and also means that nationalism, conformity and religion are a source of comfort and survival.
She nodded and said, “Yes, I agree with what you’re saying that we don’t have a secure sense of national identity. We don’t have the same sense of security in the cultural, political or economic sense that Westerners do. I think we have a type of insecurity we grow up with our whole lives. It’s a privilege to have the time and resources to even think about identity. Most people here are worried about food and shelter. They don’t even have the opportunity to think, 'who am I?' As a Kyrgyz, you don’t grow up thinking, 'my country is #1, my country is the world’s police, my country is the most powerful in the world' like Americans do. Thinking about identity, who am I and what I want, how I want to express myself...now that is a privilege. It’s not a privilege we have access to because we have other, bigger things to worry about than identity. It’s a privilege to be able to come out as LGBT. It’s a privilege to come out and feel safe. This is not something we have access to.”
I pushed back against what she was saying a little bit. I said: “Yes, I agree that coming out is a privilege, and coming out and feeling safe is an even greater privilege. But to come to find one’s own identity is not necessarily something that only the wealthy have access to.
Now, I know there is a hierarchy of needs, and one must have secure food and shelter before they can attend to creative needs or self-actualization, and I agree with what you’re saying about insecurity and how KGZ has not had a recent history of secure national identity.
But, to say that identity itself is a privilege that only the rich have access to is not exactly true. Of course, we know that places the world over, rich and poor alike, have national and ethnic identities—and often fierce conflicts over these identities. But identity includes sexual orientation and gender identity. People everywhere are queer, and there is a long history of queer identities in human cultures and societies. It’s just a matter of feeling safe or not. Safety and being queer is not equal across time and place.
For example, the ancient philosophy of Buddhism teaches—and many other faiths teach—that to find true identity—that is, the access one’s Essence not covered up by ego—is something you can achieve through yoga and meditation. Accessing one’s true Essence through prayer is something that people have had access to for thousands of years before material comforts were even a thing. Jesus and Buddha would probably also say that fasting and other kinds of aesthetic lifestyles is one way to achieve enlightenment, this kind of third eye perspective on yourself--what we call identity--is something achievable by anyone no matter their socioeconomic status or situation. So identity is not a privilege. But being able to fully true and open and out in one’s queer identity AND feel safe at the same time is no doubt a privilege, and a privilege that only some people have had access to for a very short time.”
We talked more about her life story and her own feelings living in KGZ.
From this conversation, as well as many others I had in KGZ and working with Indigo in their community space and with their community activities for the rest of the two weeks I was there, I came up with a few goals for my next research project on LGBT community in KGZ:
First, I want to represent the LGBT community as whole people in the fullness of their humanity. Not objectified and exoticized, not as just a collection of limbs and organs and a brain, but as whole people with hopes, dreams, desires and regrets just like anybody else.
Second, I want to find out more about the importance of safe community spaces for queer identity.
Third, I want to better understand the relationship between Islam, colonialism, queerness and spirituality for Kyrgyz people.
My proposed research questions are:
- What is the role of safe community spaces in KGZ queer people’s lives?
- How do queer community spaces function as sources of safety and identity?
- How do queer people in KGZ use queer community spaces to celebrate their identity and transform their culture?
- How do these spaces function as political activism?
- How does the intersection of Kyrgyz, Muslim, Asian, queer, and gender identities influence the way people come together as a community and create a shared culture?
- How do queer identities and spirituality intersect in KGZ?
- What is the intersection of race and queer identity?
- How has colonization and racism shaped the queer KGZ experience?
In my previous work with queer Uyghur people, I found intersecting dynamics between their identity as Muslims, Uyghurs, and queer people. Queer people did not find a conflict between their spiritual and Muslim identity. However, race (e.g., Uyghur versus Chinese) and a history of colonization did play a role in being able to find safe spaces where they could be secure in their queer identity.
In other words, I hypothesize that marginalized communities struggle with accepting queer identities if they already feel threatened in their space and identity by outside forces such as colonization. (For the Uyghurs, it was Chinese influence, for the Kyrgyz, it might be Russian or other outside Western influence.) I would like to continue this work with the people of KGZ to better understand the intersection between race, queer experience, and colonization.
I recently received some great news. Indigo and the Czech Academy of Sciences have approved my research proposal and agreed that I can continue conducting this research in the future. I am excited to continue learning more.
Over and over again I have heard, "I've never even heard of Kyrgyzstan!" This is sad. I hope more people have a better understanding of Central Asia after reading my work.
No comments:
Post a Comment