Although the Supreme Court’s landmark verdict that decriminalised Section 377 saw the light of the day in India, our country has a long way to go when it comes to making our LGBTQIA+ community feel welcome and accepted nationwide.
Homophobia and discrimination remain a matter of concern for those who have come out in public. Such is the plight of two women in Chennai.
Rasika Gopalakrishnan and her girlfriend Shivangi Singh accused The Slate Hotels on Khader Nawaz Khan Road in Chennai of homophobic treatment. The women alleged that they were forced to leave the premises by bouncers late on Saturday night accusing them of indulging in ‘inappropriate behaviour’.
In a Facebook post, Rasika Gopalakrishnan shared her ordeal.
This is what she wrote:
Recently I went through a horrifying and infuriating experience, do take the time out to read this if you can. My girlfriend and I decided to go to a bar called The Slate Hotels on a Saturday night. While dancing, there were 4 to 5 men who were standing at the bar and were constantly staring at us, making us very uncomfortable. As far as we knew, almost everyone else was enjoying themselves as much as we did, yet why did we draw such unwarranted attention? Why was it so hard to digest that 2 people of the same sex were dancing together? I was appalled at the way in which we were immediately fetishized by the people around us.
We felt these stares follow us to the washroom. Moments later, we hear frantic knocks on our door, ordering us to step out of the washroom. 4 male bouncers and 1 female bouncer were inside the washroom, demanding to know what we were doing in the washroom together. They accused us of “doing something else”, they warned us about “several complaints” they had received from the guests, and they insisted that we leave immediately. So we left.
What were these “complaints”, I am curious to know. Did we hurt anyone? Did we pick a fight? Did we abuse/harass anybody? We minded our own business, so why didn’t they mind theirs? How dare they throw us outside their bar without having the decency to explain to us the exact reason. Such offensive and unprofessional behaviour from the staff is UNACCEPTABLE. How dare they have the audacity to assume that we’d be “upto something”?
I am devastated by the assumptions that are made about people who deviate even slightly from the norm. They decided to make a “threat” out of us for absolutely no good reason, and worse, tried to make us feel guilty for something we didn’t do.
Please help me get the word around by sharing this amongst your circles on social media. Suggestions on how I can progress further will be appreciated.
Soon after Rasika wrote about their experience on her FB page, the hotel’s FB page responded and apologised for the incident after which they spoke to the management.
Shivangi later wrote about their conversation with the hotel management on her FB post:
However, Varun Ganeshan, working partner with The Slate Hotels claimed that the staff had received “multiple complaints from multiple people” that the two women were behaving “inappropriately” on the dance floor. He even allegedly issued a veiled threat about leaking their ‘video’ online and denied that the bouncers had gone inside the women’s washroom.
Multiple claims and accusations in this incident only call for an extensive investigation into the matter. While we await the updates, we hope that establishments and people of the nation understand that such a level of intolerance makes innocent citizens feel unwelcome and persecuted.