The official pride month might be over, but the spirit of these desi Instagram accounts supporting the LGBTQ+ community are still very high. Every month is pride month with these accounts. Get ready, swipe through these handles to soak in the vibe and stay updated on the LGBTQ+ culture.
Disclaimer: Homophobes and people with the judgy uncle-ji syndrome are requested to keep an open mind.
With a staunch belief that make up doesn’t discriminate, this account shatters all gender related stereotypes.
Keeping her chin and her standards high, Maya believes that confidence is the key to success.
With her aesthetic and woke illustrations, artwhoring is an active advocate of equal rights.
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A few months ago I had traditional day in college. Everyone turned up in Sarees and Ghaghras and looked gorgeous! I wore a white and golden Kerala saree (because I am from Kerala). However, the saree is not necessarily native to Kerala. We wear the ‘Mundu’. Women as well. But for centuries, wearing a blouse was a privilege reserved to only Upper Caste women in Kerala. There was a breast tax imposed on lower caste women in the Kingdom of Travancore. Lower caste women were forced to be topless. This tax was known as Mulakkaram. Nangeli, a woman from the Ezhava caste ( an oppressed lower caste) cut off her breasts inorder to protest this tax and dishonour. I come from the same Thiyya- Ezhava community, from a legacy of women who were oppressed, and their autonomy over their own body stolen, who had to shed blood to live lives of dignity, who’ve fought the brahmanical patriarchy for centuries. So when I have to turn up for traditional day, my first option is not the saree and blouse. My ancestors have not known the privilege of a saree and blouse. ‘Tradition’ to me is the passing down of the pain and horror that the women I’ve descended from have had to go through, the shame that has been attached to our bodies. My ‘tradition’ is ‘immodesty’, my ‘tradition’ is being ‘topless’, my tradition is this shame. I’ve had to learn to reclaim this oppression. The saree is not my tradition. Your idea of a singular ‘tradition’ that overlooks the oppression it has inflicted upon the intersection of caste, religion and gender is flawed. Your history and your idea of culture are the teachings of the elite and those in power who dictate this biased history to you. Your history doesn’t tell you Nangeli’s story. Your history doesn’t tell you my story. The following pictures are my tribute to Nangeli. Shot by ever enthusiastic @aranyajohar who’s always ready to take pix and put lipstick on me, thank you Aru!❤️🌿 #Nangeli #Kerala #Thiyya #Ezhava #CasteDiscrimination #History #BiasedHistory #Savarna #Caste #IntersectionalFeminism #BreastTax #Saree #Flowers #Portrait #Art #SelfPortrait #Reclaim #Avarna #CasteIdentity #Identity
A post shared by Priyanka Paul (@artwhoring) on Feb 20, 2019 at 8:33am PST
Embracing the title of Mr Gay India 2014, Sushant has influenced many with his coruage.
This trans-feminine, gender non- conformist artist has rediscovered fashion.
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MATERIAL. here we are at the final photo from my latest gender neutral fashion collection. first: i wanted to thank all of you who have been engaging with my images & my captions from this shoot, it means a lot! love & need you. second: i wanted to speak about the materiality of the visual for a second. so often we talk about seeing as one dimensional — we look at images. but those images, i believe, have the power to look back at us. meaning: they impact what we wear, how we shape our bodies, influence the ways that we think & interact. we are denied access to visual depictions of gender non-conforming people. it’s not that they are not being produced (and have always been) it’s that they are deliberately concealed. they disappear us as part of their racist project of establishing & maintaining the gender binary. i create clothes & portraiture because i want to create a canon, an archive, a set of images that are a visual argument to the world that gender non-conformity is real, beautiful, complex, nuanced, and fluid. i do not think mainstream fashion & beauty worlds are doing this work so i started to do it on my own. what they do is mine us for inspiration & then take our aesthetics & put them on white/cis/thin bodies. discard us after like a fruit rind. image making is political insomuch as it can be a portal to another way of thinking, acting, loving, manifesting. i hope that my designs give permission for self expression & transgression of gender norms. i hope that these images stay with you beyond the rinse & repeat of scrolling on Instagram. i hope you think about these images when they repeal our rights. the people that they are demonizing with their fear mongering — we are complex, emotional, sensitive people. you may not see us in your classrooms, on your streets, or your tv screens. but we are here. we have always been, and we always will be. we are…MATERIAL!
A post shared by ALOK (@alokvmenon) on Jun 1, 2019 at 6:09pm PDT
“These are my way of depicting bodies and through them; I speak about things that are largely left out of the mainstream. As a big, gay Sikh, lack of representation of intersectionality has been unsettling.”
7. Vqueeram Aditya Sahai : vqueer With a sleek style and a strong believe in gender fluid clothing, this account is giving us major goals.
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trans, GNC, queer folx fight not for the right to wear what they want but to exercise a little control over their person. sexual intimacies are difficult because it’s difficult to be received as our psychic gendering when nudity confronts the lover-spectator, overwhelming them into the binary, policing a truth of assigned sex as our gender. so clothes – their curation, colours, cuts – become one way to make the world witness the complex conversations we have with our psyches and bodies everyday. do our clothes confuse you? well, they do for we are too. not confused as in lacking self knowledge but grappling with it. the first practice of freedom that many choose when they move out of the custody of their parents or institutions is to wear an item of clothing that flows and flourishes their censored conversations about who they are, what they can be. this isn’t necessarily radical or subversive but it is a practice of freedom. but it is a fragile freedom. the smallest things can take it away. not just threats or violence, but a change in how the day was to unfold or an unexpected storm. tonight as the rains came down on delhi, as everyone finally stepped out to enjoy this city i sought shelter, mostly from the dysphoria this would cost. it seems rather exaggerated and perhaps extravagant to call the wet and cold as terrifying, that autonomy may mean the protection from the weather (?!), that temperamental weather reinforces normativity but i am going to risk it. i was miserable, my body was folding into itself, my clothes were giving way to a vulnerable self seeking warmth, shelter, protection. i was cowering, fleeing, escaping. in another time i would have celebrated this dsyphoria as revealing an ecopsyche that needs a breakdown. but like the climate accords i do not think the marginalised should pay equally as those rich with advantage. a ecodysphoria is welcome to those who are immune to it by structural egonorance, not to those whose psyches are precarious in their own ecology. (continued in comments) PC: @shamini1995 (also thanks for the conversations tonight that provoked some of these thoughts.)
A post shared by Vqueeram Aditya Sahai (@vqueer) on May 17, 2019 at 1:21pm PDT
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had to take a loved one to the hospital today. between worry and courage, one overheard intermittent conversations. people who cared were angry, frustrated, resentful to those sick (or diagnosed otherwise) about their daily habits. one woman scolded her seventy one year old husband (glimpsed that on his file) for doing things that people who love him tell him not to. he should listen. a mother and her sister reprimanded a son who goes to the gym too often. another mother was consoled by her daughter to not be so despondent and she should stop looking so sullen. you’ll be fine she said half as truth, half in force. perhaps with enough force somethings become truth. with the emergency ward below us, people being moved from rooms to rooms with a tube and instrument more than dignity needs, with death just the most proximate possibility, one would wonder how can people be so petty to be angry at those they love who continue to walk out of the docs office and into their homes after a visit with only a bunch of meds in hand? not only is to be brought so close to where life and death lay beside one another so irritating, what the visit showed was how death isn’t some event but all the times we choose to not care to live wisely enough. the soft scolds, the simmering words held back in pursed lips, the eye rolls all about the ways in which we could have avoided this visit had you not eaten this or not done that are the ways in which death is what is carefully avoided in listening to loved ones, in living together, in being more bearable of other’s ideas of our interest. life is, the opposite of death, to be able to hear a loved one’s insensitive words. the conversations i heard didn’t seem petty to the pervasive great suffering but cognisant. they were irritated but they were there. they were protecting a loved one from suffering even as they hurt them with harshness the patient did not need. the hospital staff were the only ones capable of laughter while everyone else was trying very hard to live next to each other. to love someone who betrayed them by eating the wrong food and risking death. how to love those who can leave you so carelessly? leave for another dessert?
A post shared by Vqueeram Aditya Sahai (@vqueer) on Apr 30, 2019 at 2:29pm PDT
Bold and beautiful Taksh describes herself as the “runaway muse”.
With a fearless message to “stand up for yourself”, this “Drag-King” is winning hearts
“I’m both a man, and a woman, and yet neither a man nor a woman. I’m my own gender”.
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There are days when I wake up and thank my stars, and the Almighty again and again for the opportunities I’ve had, for having the sanity to make the right choices, and say a complete NO to projects that didn’t align with my thought process and ideology, because it isn’t easy to be put in a vulnerable situation, and still have the audacity to stand your ground. Being gay in India, especially in a city like Delhi, one has to be very very smart in making sure you’re not putting yourself out there at the cost of your personal safety. I’d probably not even have a roof over my head if I come out to my Landlords. You make your choices, you keep a part of yourself only to yourself, a part of yourself for the world around you, a part of you for your family, and a part of you sometimes at work. Today, I’m grateful my 20 year old self has had the courage to keep up with some very difficult times, even when it felt like the end of the world, I’m grateful to have not let abuse engulf me into an infinite dungeon of depression and never ending sorrows. I’m grateful to each individual who appreciates my work, my art. I make each piece with a lot of heart, and a lot of love, and sometimes with a lot of pain, but it is ALWAYS heartfelt. Thank you for being by my side, my wonderful friends and fam. I am, because of you. #theeffeminaresays #thesariseries #crownthebrown #genderneutrality . . . . . . #anweshsahoo #mrgayindia #mgwi #gayindia
A post shared by The Effeminare (@anwesh.sahoo) on Jan 17, 2019 at 9:54am PST
” When there’s too much hate at school all you gotta do is walk away”.
A young and aspiration trans, who’s on her journey to conquer the world.
12. Aniruddha Mahale : akneerude A charmer with a wanderlusty account.
A quirky lip-synching ‘drag-diva’.
An art platform that provides the Indian LGBTQ+ artists to showcase their talents.
A movement aiming for inclusion through visual arts by the trans community.
The Executive Director of the Lalit Hotels is openely queer and proud.
All hail to thy superwoman.
This “geek in heels” is listed under Forbes Asia’s list of 30 under 30.
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Shoutout to the @elleindia team for such a fun, thoughtful & proud campaign. Check out this month’s Elle India for the complete story & the 5 other phenom peeps I’m honored to have been listed with. ❤️ Posted @withrepost • @elleindia “@thedeltaapp is much more than an app. It’s a way to talk to the community at large. What makes me proud is the work we have done offline—things like the Delta Network, a first of its kind initiative that brought businesses, employers, bars and industries together to encourage inclusivity. Interestingly, 30 to 40 per cent of our users come from non-metros, which is where being a homegrown app really comes into play. We’re now looking at greater vernacular availability and regional language support, and attempting to take a non-dating version of Delta to a younger audience,” says @ishaansethi, co-founder of @thedeltaapp, India’s first homegrown LGBTQIA+ dating app, talking about what makes Delta stand apart. Swipe left to see where he wants our Pride movement to be in five years. . Link in bio for more. . On Sethi: Cotton T-shirt, jeans, both @levis_in . 🖋: @nevillebhandara 📷: @tombomb_adil 👔: @saaniya07 👩🏼🎨💇🏽♂: @bkccad Assisted by: @harshita417 (styling) Music: Punky by Bensound . #IshaanSethi #Delta #LGBTQ #ELLEJune
A post shared by Ishaan Sethi (@ishaansethi) on Jun 13, 2019 at 5:58am PDT
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CONGRATULATIONS PEOPLE!!! Trying to pen down my feelings but I fear words can’t do justice. Today, I stand as an equal citizen of my own country. Todays ruling is a testament to the resilience, courage, drive & perseverance of the LGBTQ+ community and allies. Sitting in the Supreme Court, listening to the judges deliver the verdict was a goosebump moment to say the least. With a unanimous ruling in favor of decriminalizing homosexuality, the judges acknowledged and apologized for the historic discrimination & harassment the community has had to endure & called on all media to widely publicize this ruling via print, tv and digital. A historic hearing in so many ways. Talk to me tomorrow because I need today to just let this sink in. A second to thank my family and friends for always letting me be me and supporting me in my journey even when the world didn’t. I love you. Thank you @suri_keshav for everything you do, for being the voice of the voiceless and for putting yourself out there for so many of us. I am beyond priveleged to be able to call you my friend, mentor and family. Thank you @neehanagpal because without you nothing would be possible. @devduttmyth @kronokare @gjn2580 you are such incredible people and I am so honored to be able to call you friends and family. And of course, my one & only, @adilicious15 – we legal baby. I love ya. 💜
A post shared by Ishaan Sethi (@ishaansethi) on Sep 6, 2018 at 3:29am PDT
Slaying with his sense of humor, this professor is an active advocate for equal rights.
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Equal rights activist @iyerharish, 40, has been one of our queer movement’s loudest voices. He’s part of the core committee on LGBT Rights at the National Human Rights Commission and a Global Innovator at the US-based Human Rights Campaign. An advocate for the eradication of child sexual abuse, Iyer, himself a survivor, recently started his own NGO called the Jimmy Foundation. And in April, he joined the Indian National Congress and made history as the first openly gay person to join the party. Swipe left to see how he defines Pride. . Head to ELLE.in for more. . On Iyer: Cotton T-shirt, jeans and denim jacket, all @levis_in; metal necklace, @amrapalijewels . ✒: @nevillebhandara 📸: @soumya.iyer / @animacreatives 👕: @saaniya07 Assisted by: @girl_in_motorboots (styling) 👱🎨: @jeanclaudebiguineindia Music: Punky by Bensound . #HarishIyer #JimmyFoundation #LGBTQ #ELLEJune
A post shared by Harish Iyer (@iyerharish) on Jun 16, 2019 at 2:45am PDT
The author of “ Straight To Normal” has changed many lives.
“If we painted the World in our colours, would we be ever seen again?”
Happy pride!
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