![gay sex art gay sex art](https://images.fineartamerica.com/images/artworkimages/mediumlarge/1/homoerotic-art-two-pd.jpg)
Could homosexuality be considered beautiful enough to paint? Instead I began to prod at art, asking new questions. It prompted me to no longer focus solely on my own body, picking at it and questioning it. Seeing two women pleasuring each other openly at a picnic, with a look of smugness on their faces, gave me a new confidence. I understood that the history of India is laden with queer love. This piece was an important revelation in my understanding of who I am. While scrolling through Instagram, bypassing pictures of straight white hairless women, this image popped up on my screen and I stopped in my tracks. I didn’t expect to find the answers in my own culture, but my discovery of a piece of gay erotica by an unknown Indian artist gave me something to examine. If I wasn’t interested in forming a partnership with a man, then would someone beyond a cis male allow me to finally exist as I truly am? I have spent most of my life measuring myself by the standards defined by cis, heteronormative relationships. Queerness has no place in this journey from sexually available young girl to married woman. With their introduction in 1861 of the Section 377 legislation, homosexual activities in India were outlawed and aligned to pedophilia and bestiality. This included homosexuality, which is archived far back in ancient Hindu texts. While previously we had practised the Kama Sutra, the British stopped us from examining our sexual needs. Winston Churchill once famously told his Secretary of State for India that he considered us “beastly”. The shame of sex also runs deep within Indian society, and was exacerbated by British rule. Deep down, I think that I knew I didn’t want to do anything for a man. When I found that I couldn’t align myself to this notion of beauty, I started to wonder why I was trying.
![gay sex art gay sex art](https://flashbak.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/George-Quaintance-homosexual-sex.jpg)
From razors to clothing, we are told to look perfect in order to attract a man.
![gay sex art gay sex art](https://images.fineartamerica.com/images/artworkimages/mediumlarge/1/homoerotic-drawing-three-pd.jpg)
If I couldn’t align to an expectation of womanhood, then why did I even exist?īeauty is held in the eyes of brands and advertisers, who have a tendency to depict hairless, thin, white women. I was an incredibly hairy young girl with a large hook nose and thick glasses framing my furry face. My body became my enemy, and I began to suffer from depression and disordered eating. If I was not beautiful, I was not worthy, and if I was not worthy of a man, then I didn’t need to exist. My mental health aligned directly with how I was perceived. Until my twenties, I continued to believe sexual pleasure was shameful. Power and wealth come hand in hand with what governs us, so here we are, in this system of capitalism, attempting to be ‘free’, yet finding ourselves committed to antiquated standards from the days of empires. A 2019 Oxfam report looking at inequality in India revealed that women still earn 34% less than their male counterparts. In India, patriarchal power dynamics still determine the lives of women. This was a privilege of wealth, however, as those who carried children and lived in poverty weren’t allowed this liberty. Women had to keep themselves pure for rearing children, so were kept from stress and violence. During the Mughal Empire, men were kings, men had the last word. It is immersed within communities, exacerbated in culture and formed in injustice. His pleasure equates to the release of sperm and the creation of life, whereas a woman’s pleasure is unnecessary. It is only the man who should feel pleasure. I was taught that women are incubators of the seed: told to fertilise and release, but not to feel pleasure ourselves. I was brought up in an Indian family to believe that sex is shameful and so are our bodies.
#GAY SEX ART SERIES#
This Artwork Changed My Life is a fortnightly series of personal essays that share the stories of life-changing encounters with art. Two women embracing and using carrots as dildos.