Moving from school to university as a queer person was a scary yet exciting opportunity because I was relocating to not only a different city, but also shifting to an unknown crowd of people. I was unsure of whether I would be able to create a safe space for myself again after having already spent so much of my energy doing that in Grades 11 and 12 (I had a lovely best friend who was accepting of my queer identity). That, coupled with the anxiety of starting university online due to the pandemic, worsened my fear of being alone.
However, the Club Fair was the first space on campus that pointed me in the right direction (that of inclusion and safety). I naturally gravitated towards the Zoom link for the Queer Collective and was comforted after seeing queer people run the club and promise a safe, exciting, and riveting space for the university’s queer students. I applied to be a content writer for the club and proceeded to work in the club’s core committee (and later, executive committee) for three years.
My experience with the Queer Collective on-campus
The Queer Collective also gave me the courage to come out to my sister over a mundane conversation about flavours of tea. I came out to her just before the club’s first meeting of the academic year. Although online, I was slowly able to befriend like-minded queer people (those into queer media, fanfiction and literature!) and soon after, talk to them until early in the morning about our shared experiences and embarrass ourselves on many quizzes on Buzzfeed and uQuiz! After the lockdown lifted and we were called to campus, I also met them all in person and spent almost all waking hours with them, whether that was walking to classes together or crying in their arms about how dysphoric I felt about my body and chest.
Later, in my third year, I was also appointed the Vice President of the club. Together, my friends, committee members and I conducted events including a mixer with games, makeup and dance, a venting session and a discussion on the Supreme Court’s decision regarding marriage equality (this was also a very fresh topic at the time, making our discussion relevant and timely). Unfortunately, I did have to step down from my position a month later due to irreconcilable differences.
My hopes for the Queer Collective
While the club has been instrumental in helping me find more queer people and making friends, access to resources is still limited. There have been times when dress codes for certain functions have strictly been gendered and enforced along with access to washrooms and housing blocks, aggravating my gender dysphoria. Further, the club’s nature slowly turned more monetary, (capitalising on every event) instead of spreading LGBTQ+ awareness, taking action and fighting for rights, pushing my friends and me to slowly withdraw from the club’s activities. That being said, I am still hopeful about the increase in access to resources for queer people, given the inclusion of gender-neutral washrooms in other Indian universities like Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) in Mumbai and Jadavpur University in Kolkata.
I am about to graduate from university in less than two weeks and my only hope for the club is that it gets stronger, more inviting and collaborative, not just with other on-campus clubs, but with various queer creators and organisations. Having gone through the same arc of loneliness followed by safety in my queer skin and community, I want the baby gays from freshman year to find acceptance and joy. I want them to look for their found family and stick with it, just like I have and continue to. It is up to queer societies, clubs, and collectives to guarantee these for their students.