If its delegates voted in favor, Amnesty would call on governments to “repeal existing laws and/or refrain from introducing new laws that criminalize or penalize directly or in practice the consensual exchange of sexual services between adults for remuneration,” alongside stronger efforts to prevent trafficking and exploitation, on the grounds that criminalization forces sex workers to operate covertly in ways that compromise their safety and serve to deny them support or protection from government officials.
In the extensive materials posted on its website, along with the draft policy, it gave example after example of how even indirect criminalizing laws were invariably used to persecute sex workers, noting that “in many countries of the world, two sex workers working together for safety is considered a ‘brothel,’ ” while “so-called ‘pimping laws’ ” lead to sex workers being routinely evicted from their homes. Even the Nordic model being embraced by many Western nations—where clients are punished with heavy fines and prison terms and sex workers are in theory considered victims—resulted in extensive harm to sex workers, Amnesty noted, including worsening violence, police harassment, eviction from homes and workplaces, loss of custody of their children, and weakened HIV prevention—not surprisingly, as its goal is to force sex workers out of this work.
Just days before the vote, in a public letter that made headlines internationally, prohibitionist groups and a swath of American and European celebrities—including Tina Brown, Jennifer and Peter Buffett, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Gloria Steinem, and Meryl Streep—accused Amnesty of “incomprehensibly proposing . . . the decriminalization of pimps, brothel owners and buyers of sex.”
Women “whose lives are shaped by absence of choice” would be “set apart for consumption by men and for the profit of their pimps, traffickers and brothel owners,” they charged.
I could not remember when the carefully thought-out position of a reputable organization had been so deliberately misrepresented as this. It was depressing to see intelligent, otherwise humanistic thinkers be party to this effort, seemingly as if they had not bothered to read the extensive draft policy and the wealth of research that lay behind it. Amnesty’s long record of resolute support for human rights—even those that made them a lightning rod for criticism—was forgotten.
Despite this costly blow to Amnesty, which depends on donations for its work, the overwhelming majority of its national chapters voted in favor of full decriminalization of sex work, making it the organization’s official position in its work with governments. But the face-off exposed a wide fault line between rich Western countries and many developing countries.
The signatories to the open letter denouncing Amnesty’s position were overwhelmingly white women, disproportionately from the US, with very few signatories from developing countries. Within Amnesty, too, the opposition had come most strongly from its Norwegian and Swedish chapters—the Swedish chapter resigned en masse, while Norway’s decided it would fall behind the democratically reached institutional position. It was impossible not to conclude that the mainstream of the rich world—including its mainstream feminists—was now hopelessly out of touch with the practicalities of how to advance the best interests and rights of sex workers, particularly of sex workers in developing countries.
Fortunately, public health and human rights defenders still understood what needed to be done. The Lancet and Human Rights Watch, for instance, had adopted this position several years ahead of Amnesty, as had key United Nations organizations. In June 2016, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told world leaders, “The criminalization of adult consensual sexual relations is a human rights violation . . . [T]he decriminalization of sex work can reduce violence, harassment and HIV risk. Sex workers should enjoy human rights protections guaranteed to all individuals, including the rights to non-discrimination, health, security and safety.” The vision that Priscilla Alexander, Selvi, and other pioneers had laid out twenty years ago had now been embraced by the world’s leading rights defenders, a development that filled me with hope that in time rationality, truth, and good would win over misinformation and moralistic ideology.
In India, too, there were grounds for despair as well as for hope.
Much as in the US, there was instance after instance of irreparable harm being done to countless women because of the bad old laws criminalizing sex workers and the new antitrafficking zealotry. In September 2014, a well-known actress, Shweta Basu Prasad, was arrested in an antiprostitution sting at a luxury hotel in Hyderabad. Prasad was incarcerated in a government reformatory, sentenced to a six-month term, the media frenzy turning her into a national figure of notoriety.
Civil rights groups and movie industry leaders pressed for Prasad’s release, but in depressing contrast the city’s leading antitrafficking figure, Sunitha Krishnan—lionized by Nick Kristof and other Western prohibitionists—was quoted in the Indian papers urging that Prasad be held for a lengthy period. It took months to “rehabilitate” victims of trafficking, Krishnan said, though there was not the slightest likelihood that Prasad had been trafficked.
I was angry at the scale of harm and continuing injustice, but I realized, too, that the situation was no longer hopeless. In contrast to the 1980s, when Selvi and other sex workers had been jailed indefinitely with no one speaking up for them, today there were thoughtful people in influential positions committed to their rights and well-being. In late 2014, Lalitha Kumaramangalam, the newly appointed chairperson of the National Commission for Women, spoke out in favor of sex workers’ rights, saying, “It is my personal and professional view that sex work should be legalized but the commission must make an informed decision and I am open to listening to all views.” In 2018, in an extraordinary statement, the UN special rapporteurs on trafficking and contemporary slavery urged the Indian government to not “conflate sex work with trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation.”
Most heartening, the Supreme Court’s new commitment to defending individual liberty—alongside its longstanding record of protecting marginalized individuals and their socioeconomic rights—meant there was even a possibility that this enlightened court would eventually force the government to decriminalize sex work and give sex workers rights. In a series of rulings from 2013 to 2015, the court overturned the ban on dance bars across Maharashtra State that had been enacted in 2005 by the Hindu-supremacist government, saying that it was an unconstitutional infringement on the women’s right to carry on their profession. In 2016, another bench of the court accepted the recommendations of an expert panel it had instituted, making it likely that in its decision it would instruct the government to provide a panoply of social services to sex workers, including guaranteed admission for their children to government schools and meaningful livelihood alternatives, as well as to reform the aspects of the criminal laws that punished them.
In the course of my lifetime, now on the verge of sixty, from all that I had experienced and seen, I had come to two paradoxical conclusions.
One was a saddening one. It was that the actions of a minority of people are what doom the world to the savage, inhumane condition that it is in perpetually, century after century.
The other conclusion was uplifting. It was that the impoverished, the oppressed, the reviled, and the outcast—whether black or untouchable, whether girly boy, faggot, hijra, or whore—never stop fighting for dignity and justice. There is hope in this—undying hope. It makes bearable even the most indefinite of sentences—and keeps alive humanity’s chances for preservation.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
In a book that spans my lifetime, there are countless people and institutions to thank—family, lovers, friends, teachers, and mentors, places that supported me, and the innumerable people who set aside time to speak to me. Many of them will see my gratitude, respect, and affection expressed in these pages.
And then there are thanks specifically regarding this book.
The foremost is to Jacob Gayle, then head of the Ford Foundation’s global initiative on
AIDS—this book owes everything to Jacob’s willingness to support what I candidly told him would be a no-holds-barred account.
Immense thanks go also to Roshmi Goswami, who led the foundation’s efforts in India on sexual, reproductive, and women’s rights. I have the greatest respect for the Ford Foundation itself for its long history of fighting for the excluded groups and the embattled freedoms that many other funders lack the sense and courage to defend.
I’m grateful also to Canada’s International Development Research Centre for an unrelated research grant on poverty that helped me with the broader research for this book. My thanks in particular go to Stephen McGurk and Anindya Chatterjee for their patience regarding that project.
Anna Ghosh, my supportive and indefatigable agent, found this book the perfect home, with Rakesh Satyal at Atria Books. Rakesh has been the most perceptive of editors, and his combination of gently given advice and fulsome praise inspired me to do my very best. I was blessed to have another gifted and sensitive editor for the original, Indian edition, Manasi Subramaniam.
In Vrinda Condillac and Supriya Nair, I had the personal editors that all writers dream of—engaged intellectual companions and the source of tough but infallible advice. To have all that as well as their friendship makes me feel singularly blessed.
My friend Olivier Föllmi, a great photographer and humanitarian, generously allowed me to use the photograph of Tandavan.
My blessings continued. Krishna Kumar pushed me to be outspoken. Sumit Baudh and Aniruddhan Vasudevan were not just inspiring collaborators but also became my soul mates. Joanne Csete—one of the most brilliant, principled, and generous of people—painstakingly read and improved both editions of this book. My beloved brother Bharat worked on virtually every draft, pushing me to do better, his patience and kindness such that he never let on if he was bored.
For everything from comments and encouragement and sharing of their knowledge to other unforgettable kindnesses, I am also indebted to Sohaila Abdulali, Ashok Alexander, Priscilla Alexander, Vivek Anand, Tonuca Basu, Alexia Bedat, Tina Bennett, Rustom Bharucha, DJ and “Bops” Bopanna, Corinne Brenner, Anna Chacko, Jean D’Cunha, Kiran Desai, Akash Dharmaraj, Melissa Ditmore, Pratap Dube, Helena Eversole, Rosemary George, Suzanne Goldenberg, Anjali Gopalan, Gray Handley, Andrew Hunter, Jimmy Jacob, Roshan Jain, Smarajit Jana, Katharina Poggendorf-Kakar, Sudhir Kakar, V.K. Karthika, Saleem Kidwai, Ed Klaris, Rachna Kucheria, Senthil Kumar, Loan Le, Lakshmi Mani, Madhu Mehra, Suketu Mehta, Geeta Misra, Neel Mukherjee, Shyamala Nataraj, Derek O’Brien, Barbara O’Hara, Cheryl Overs, Sophat Phal, Radhika Ramasubban, Gowthaman Ranganathan, Rosemary Romano, Kim Rosenthal, Rahul Roy, Swarup Sarkar, Sankar Sen, Meena Seshu, Vikram Seth, Meenaskhi Shedde, Nimis Sheth, Saudamani Siegrist, Anjum Singh, Sree Sreekumar, Chitra and Ram Subramaniam, Tarun Tahiliani, Tina Tahiliani, Shashi Tharoor, Ellen Tolmie, Nilita Vachani, Ardeshir Vakil, Kamala Visweswaran, and Mithoo Wadia. Thank you all—immensely!
And then there are my boundless thanks to Lorca, more than words can convey, for making every day of the past sixteen years sweeter and more joyous, for making my heart sing, for making me feel singularly blessed.
And finally, there is my indelible debt to my late father, Basant—while I wouldn’t have published this book while he was alive, everything good in it is owed to him.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Born in Kolkata, India, Siddharth Dube is widely known for his writing on AIDS, public health, and poverty. He is a graduate of Tufts University, the University of Minnesota’s School of Journalism, and the Harvard School of Public Health. He has since been a visiting fellow at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies in Delhi, scholar-in-residence at Yale University’s Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS, senior adviser to the executive director of UNAIDS, and a senior fellow at the World Policy Institute in New York City. Visit SiddharthDube.com.
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NOTES
CHAPTER 1: SHAME
I was at the Grand: Elite Calcutta was famous for striptease, cancan, and drag performances until the late 1970s. See “A Merry Journey,” The Telegraph, December 25, 2011, www.telegraphindia.com/1111225/jsp/graphiti/story_14923690.jsp#.VVy4k1VViko.
CHAPTER 2: A BOY’S WORLD
For reports on physical and sexual abuse in Indian schools and colleges, see Dev Lahiri, “Bullying: A School Teacher’s Perspective,” Times of India, June 1, 2009 https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/Bullying-A-school-teachers-perspective/articleshow/4601025.cms. A former housemaster at Doon and headmaster at other leading institutions, Lahiri wrote, “When I took over a school in 1991, I found that it was commonplace for senior students to entertain themselves by hanging little boys out all night from the first floor windows, to break their arms with hockey-sticks and to proudly autograph the plaster cast, to brand their slaves with electric irons all in the name of tradition.” Edward Luce, “Liberal Streak,” Financial Times, January 2, 2004, provided a thoughtful discussion of Doon’s strong points as well as of the difficulties of curbing bullying there.
“For years after I left”: Richard B. Woodward, “Vikram Seth’s Big Book,” The New York Times Magazine, May 2, 1993, www.nytimes.com/1993/05/02/magazine/vikram-seth-s-big-book.html.
Nowhere in the India of this time: The one exception was a sympathetic book by the mathematics genius Shakuntala Devi, The World of Homosexuals, published in 1977. But the enforced silence about homosexuality was so extreme that despite Devi’s fame the book went barely noticed. I didn’t know of it until I was in my twenties.
CHAPTER 3: IN AMERICA
the early 1980s saw: Jane E. Brody, “Psychiatrists on Homosexuality: Vigorous Discord Voiced at Meeting,” New York Times, January 26, 1982, www.nytimes.com/1982/01/26/science/psychiatrists-on-homosexuality-vigorous-discord-voiced-at-meeting.html.
Prominent in the news at that time: The history of regulating sodomy and “deviant” sex in the United States is covered in William N. Eskridge, Jr., Dishonorable Passions: Sodomy Laws in America, 1861–2003 (New York: Viking, 2008). See also Martha C. Nussbaum, “A Defense of Lesbian and Gay Rights,” Sex and Social Justice (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.)
They were also disproportionately: Gary David Comstock, Violence Against Lesbians and Gay Men (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991).
I read that US immigration law: James R. Edwards, Jr., “Homosexuals and Immigration: Developments in the United States and Abroad,” Center for Immigration Studies, May 1, 1999, www.cis.org/Immigration%2526Homosexuals-PolicyTowardHomosexuals; Claire O’Sullivan, “Sheltering and Discriminating: Homosexuality and Immigration Law in the United States,” http://blogs.law.columbia.edu/gslonline/files/2010/05/OSullivanPaper.pdf.
described a mysterious killing disease: The classic nonfiction works include Randy Shilts, And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic (New York: St. Martin’s, 1987); Paul Monette, Borrowed Time: An AIDS Memoir (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1988), and Becoming a Man: Half a Life Story (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1992); Charles Kaiser, The Gay Metropolis: The Landmark History of Gay Life in America, 1940–1996 (New York: Grove, 1997); David France, How to Survive a Plague: The Inside Story of How Citizens and Science Tamed AIDS (New York: Vintage, 2016). Douglas Feldman and Julia Wang Miller, eds., The AIDS Crisis
: A Documentary History (New York: Greenwood, 1998), is a unique collation of writing and reportage on AIDS, including iconic early material.
how unwelcoming the Tufts campus was: I’m grateful to Michael Giangrasso for discussions regarding the Tufts Lesbian and Gay Community and more generally the state of life for gays at Tufts in the years that we were both undergraduates there.
A year before I joined: “Anti-gay graffiti found on the Memorial Steps,” October 29, 1980, Tufts Queer History Project, Tufts University LGBT Center, http://ase.tufts.edu/lgbt/about/tqhp/1980s.asp.
it was “a miracle”: The quote is from Dr. Marshall Forstein, in Brody, “Psychiatrists on Homosexuality.”
CHAPTER 4: COMING OUT
Gandhi seemed just as tortured as I was: For a sensitive and penetrating analysis of Gandhi’s multifaceted struggles with his sexual drive, see Sudhir Kakar, “Gandhi and Women,” Intimate Relations: Exploring Indian Sexuality (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1990).
CHAPTER 5: FIRST STEPS
The most heinous of the outrages: The most thorough source of worldwide information on human rights abuses of individuals because of their sexual orientation or gender identity is the yearly report by the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA), State-Sponsored Homophobia—A World Survey of Laws: Criminalisation, Protection and Recognition of Same-Sex Love, www.ilga.org. For illuminating analyses of worldwide trends, see Aaron Xavier Fellmeth, “State Regulation of Sexuality in International Human Rights Law and Theory,” William & Mary Law Review, 2008, http://scholarship.law.wm.edu/wmlr/vol50/iss3/3, and Omar Encarnación, “Gay Rights: Why Democracy Matters,” Journal of Democracy, July 2014, http://journalofdemocracy.org/sites/default/files/Encarnacion-25-3.pdf.
An Indefinite Sentence Page 38
