Foreign and Out on Campus

The University of Maryland, College Park, student newspaper did a  story on  'out' , foreign, students/staff on campus to catch a glimpse of the myriad issues they face.

Queering AND Browning the campus..huh?
The overall response was pretty positive. The only negativity I heard of was that one staff member in the department was overheard saying what is the need of such issues to be on the front page .... I guess the question is the answer in itself.
But without further ado, let me engage in shameless self-promotion by posting the article:

Comfort away from home

          

Campus an easier place to be gay for foreign students 

December 08, 2005
By Mariana Minaya
Senior staff writer 

Coming out of the closet in the United States meant more to sixth-year graduate student Ayush Gupta than facing the social backlash and stigmas that threaten many young gay Americans. He feared that if his superiors opposed homosexuality, he could lose funding for his graduate research position and have to return to his native India, and the subsequent task of explaining to his parents that he is gay.

Talking to his parents would not be easy, as some Indian families exert pressure on their sons and daughters to marry early and start families, Gupta said. Though his parents were accepting of his sexuality, Gupta said others haven’t had such a painless experience.

“It does become an act of courage to actually go in and talk,” Gupta said.

Some international students at the university find that moving to College Park makes it easier to be openly gay. Freed from what they consider cultural and social restraints at home, moving overseas to attend school in this area exposes them to openly gay people and allows them to think about their sexuality miles away from family pressure.

“It was much easier coming out in this country,” Gupta said. “I could actually mull over a lot of things without the presence of my family.”

A person’s family, surroundings and societal attitudes toward gays can play a significant role in how comfortable they are with coming out, said Luke Jensen, director of the campus’ Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Equity Office.

“There’s this tension between sexual identity and national identity that can really complicate the experience a person has,” Jensen said.

Different cultures have varying attitudes toward sexuality and homosexuality that can potentially complicate a person’s coming out experience, Jensen said. Some formerly colonized nations, including some in Africa and South Asia, believe that homosexuality is an unhealthy phenomenon inherited from their Western colonizers. Other nations, such as some Latin cultures, have firm beliefs in patriarchy where men cannot be perceived as feminine.

In India, there is technically a word that means gay but it is not widely used, said Naresh Cuntor, a Ph.D. electrical engineering student from Bangalore, India. The lack of terminology made it harder to talk to his mother, he said.

“‘I don’t like girls’ is pretty much all you can say, and you really can’t elaborate too much because it’s your mother,” he said. “It was awkward.”

Although Cuntor realized he was gay at around age 13, he couldn’t put a word to his feelings until he watched a gay-themed movie about two years later.

Gupta said he had not even heard the word ‘gay’ until he got to college. In Calcutta, India, where he grew up, there were not many openly gay people and he was not exposed to gay culture.

For Gupta, coming to the campus for graduate studies was liberating.

“It gives you courage you to see other people who are open,” Gupta said.

However, even having the proper terms does not make embracing homosexuality completely easy. Shiva Sivagami, coordinator of Office of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Equity, who is from India, said when she immigrated to the United States in the 1980s, it was hard to identify with the lesbian label.

“The labels, to me, that was very white,” Sivagami said. “None of it reflected my experience. When I first heard the word ‘lesbian,’ the only lesbians I knew were white women.”

“The labels are a big part of the problem,” she went on. “The labels signify lifestyle; for a lot of people it may be a stereotyped notion of life.”

She said that because the public LGBT community is predominately white, it can be difficult for people of color to find a niche.

“They wanted me to leave my race at the door and just be gay,” Sivagami said. Conversely, “[The South Asian community] wanted me to leave my sexual orientation at the door and just be Asian.”

However, increased exposure to homosexuality usually helps students, including Gupta, Cuntor and fourth year graduate civil engineering student Roger Chen.

Chen said he was rarely exposed to homosexuality while growing up with his parents, who immigrated from Taiwan in the late 1960s. Although Chen has not told his parents he is gay, he has tried to drop hints and get them acclimated to the idea by talking about cousins who are gay and watching Will & Grace with them.

“Will & Grace is easiest way to do it,” he said. “It would definitely help if we had some gay Asian figures out there.”

Fifth-year graduate computer science student Ruggero Morselli said coming to campus made coming out more reassuring because he hadn’t met an openly gay person in his native Modeno, a city in northern Italy.

“I think what actually made the difference for me when [I] moved here on campus, there were many more openly gay students and homosexuality seems largely accepted,” he said. “That’s why I decided to come out of the closet. Maybe if I ended up working a job in Kansas, that environment would not have helped,” Morselli said.

Jensen said varying prejudices among religious and ethnic communities within the United States affect how people experience their sexual orientation.

“It’s very important that when you talk about these global or international terms that you not assume that coming to the U.S. is the solution to everyone’s problems. You don’t want to suggest that homophobia happens [only] there,” said English professor Marilee Lindemann, director of the LGBT studies program.

Although homosexuality isn’t widely accepted in India, male bonding is often more acceptable, Gupta said. Many people don’t blink an eye if two men hold hands or hug.

If fifth-year engineering graduate student Ayan Roy-Chowdhury, who is also from Calcutta, India, were to go back to India now, he might be able to hold his partner’s hand, but not in a way “that would convey that you are more than just friends.”

Some people in India hold the notion that homosexuality was imported from their Western European colonizers, Gupta said. But in ancient India, homosexuality was often accepted. There is a similar situation in some African cultures, Jensen said.

Gupta said he is optimistic that attitudes in his country — as in many nations all over the world — are changing for the better. While the campus has a relatively gay-friendly atmosphere as compared with some schools in the region, some improvements can still be made, Jensen said. Sivagami said she is working to make LGBT groups address the issues of minorities, including international students.

Gupta suggested that academic departments post visible gay-friendly signs available from LGBT organizations so students won’t fear their academic surroundings are homophobic.

“Having a supportive environment is not enough if that support is invisible,” Gupta said.