Funds from the Lisa Sable Brown award have supported research for my dissertation, “Nascent Moves: Loss, Desire, and In/Visible LGBTQ Resistances in Bangladesh,” which argues that to understand queerness in postcolonial global south modernities, we need to employ the lens of kotipona.
Kotipona is a way of life and refers to being flamboyant and having fun (lahalaha, ulujhulu) in a staunch heteronormative world. It is embodied by koti individuals—an umbrella term that encompasses effeminate gay men, hijra[1], and transgender women who play a receptive role/bottom during anal sex. Kotipona are ephemeral and visible practices that saturate everyday life with desire, and sexual meanings and values in lives of kotis. Kotipona is a critical queer world-making practice which creates possibilities of joy and sustenance for queer and transgender individuals in Bangladesh. I argue that kotipona is about archiving, affective labor, and queer temporalities that inform processes of LGBTIQ+ activism within and outside contexts of development/NGO work in Bangladesh. Through my exploration, I also argue that kotipona is expansive and can be embodied by a range of individuals and bodies other than koti.
I will write about kotipona particularly in relation to Ontohin Ami’s amateur Bangla gay films on YouTube that depict and are informed by tenets of kotipona. Centering erotic depiction of gay romance, Ontohin, a gay man/koti in his 30s, uses the style of mainstream melodramatic Bangla cinema to make his films provocative and deliver messages about equal love and rights of LGBT people in Bangladesh. Through these films, Ontohin and his group of koti friends (queer men and transgender women), who are the crew and cast members, visibly express and practice queer desire and sexuality politics and subvert and reinforce ideals of hegemonic masculinity.
During my ethnography, I made participant observation during Ontohin’s shoots and organized a film screening for his latest film Moner Milon (Union of Hearts). Ontohin takes money from his patrons to produce his films. These patrons can be wealthy gay men who live abroad, or straight men. During my fieldwork, I observed Ontohin navigate relations with two of his patrons (one who provided funds, and one who provided his place to shoot a film) in strategic ways to ensure access to resources. These patrons expected Ontohin to put in care work such as cooking or maintain a romantic/sexual relationship in return for these resources. I hence argue that kotipona also reveals how violence is intimately connected to aspects of desire in the context of koti filmmaking by Ontohin, and lives of kotis. I helped Ontohin organize a film screening at a cultural center which he got access to because I am a US-State alumnus. He would otherwise not get access to such a space, which is telling of how certain cultural spaces are available only for people belonging to certain professional networks. Koti is also a class specific jargon, as upper-class gay men would not self-identify as koti.
Ontohin’s movies contain romantic and explicit erotic scenes and dance numbers between a Koti actor and his lover—a masculine “top” (who is not a Koti but identifies as a cis straight man or a masculine gay man). This kind of portrayal is rather bold and uncommon in the context of Bangladesh where activism related to queer sexuality has to happen in a discrete and anonymous manner to ensure safety—especially after the murders of queer activists Xulhaz Mannan and Mahbub Rabbi Tonoy in 2016 in Bangladesh. Desire nonetheless is a core element in Ontohin’s script that is intended to titillate and entertain, particularly for koti audiences. Since 2014, Ontohin’s work has stayed consistently visible and became more and more provocative and expansive in terms of its production. Despite being public with his work, Ontohin nonetheless also makes strategic decisions to avoid backlash in the sociocultural context of Bangladesh where queerness can be a target for immense violence. Ontohin and his team members believe that they are meaningfully contributing to the LGBTQ movement of Bangladesh. However, Ontohin’s work remains culturally marginalized in queer activist spaces in Dhaka, the capital city of Bangladesh, and is often seen as ridiculous, problematic, vulgar, and over the top. Ontohin’s work often goes unrecognized and unappreciated by middle- and upper-class LGBTQ activists and individuals with social capital. I got to experience this class bias firsthand, as I directly or indirectly came across hostility, or judgement by other queer individuals for associating with Ontohin through my research. Analysis of queerness is hence incomplete without an analysis of class. Analyzing kotipona will help me understand the significance of, and the appropriation of, identity labels in LGBTIQ+ activism, the manners in which boundaries of NGO/professional practices of capacity building are often suspended or blurred due to kotipona, vital world-making processes that create networks and sense of community and belonging, how queers navigate political economy through creative work, and the ways queer archiving is connected to affective labor performed by queer and transgender bodies in Bangladesh.
Notes
[1] Hijras are male-bodied feminine-identified people who form different groups on account of occupational practices, involvement with sex work, and knowledge about and conducting ritual practices. Hijras are part of a guru (mentor) chela (mentee) system. Hijras also speak the Ulti language to express and navigate desire that they otherwise cannot in mainstream Bangla language because of the lack of words and inability to encompass desire in the Bangla language. Koti and kotipona are Ulti words.