My Happily Ever After

We need safe houses for queer and trans persons escaping persecution during COVID-19.

TW: sexual violence

While many of us ‘stayed home, stayed safe’ due to the COVID-19 pandemic, ‘homes’ did not come with familiality or security for queer persons. TS, a final year arts student in Ranchi, Jharkhand, was asleep in her room in the family house, when she heard her family members planning her marriage with a boy without having sought her consent. TS, who identifies as lesbian, bravely confronted her family and shared the same with them. What followed over the next 3 days, before TS escaped from her home/prison, is best left unsaid.

TS reached out to a local support group for queer women (not named here for security reasons), she had first known about the group in 2019 through the campaign ’16 Days of Activism’, and with their support, TS negotiated her return to her family house (she no longer refers it as home) as she had nowhere to go due to the lockdown. Even though her family did not physically assault her upon her return because TS had told them she is in touch with the police, she was put through conversion regiments, poojas etc. It was when she heard her father and brother plan her sexual assault by multiple men in order to convert her, she knew she could no longer stay in that house. TS was lucky and brave enough to escape again! But the onus of surviving families should not fall upon individuals in the first place.

Queer and trans persons need community run safe spaces (not modelled after state run rescue homes), especially in the light of the pandemic, where they can seek refuge from persecution.

Artwork by Solo.

Story curated by CREA.

View the illustrated story here.