Despite homosexuality being a tabooed issue in our society, about 59% of a surveyed community of 751 people said they have never faced discrimination due to their sexual orientation.
However, many also said they felt their sexual orientation conflicting with their religious identity, some considering it a sin and immoral, the results showed. More than 50% said they live in constant fear of their sexual orientation being out.
These results, along with many other findings regarding the Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual community in Bangladesh, was released as part of a Needs Assessment survey conducted by Boys of Bangladesh, a support group for the gay community in Bangladesh, and Roopban, the first ever magazine for gay community in the country.
The event was organised in collaborations with The Centre of Excellence for Gender, Sexual and Reproductive Health Rights and CREA, held at the ICDDR,B yesterday.
According to the survey, of those who said they did face discrimination (25.8%), a higher percentage said they either had no knowledge or no access to legal support.
“The aim of our survey is to understand what problems our community is facing, what their demands are and how they can be addressed,” said Shakhawat Imam Rajeeb, one of the hosts of the event.
The survey was carried out through eight major cities across the country in order to maintain a varied sample. Out of them, 250 of the surveyors were from the capital. The average age of the respondents, all of whom were self-identified LGB, was 25.
The survey was the first of its kind in Bangladesh, and thus is testament to how much is yet to be done.
“We had actually expected or targeted responses from about 500 people, but we had more than 700 responses,” Rajeeb said, which shows how few people are confident about talking about their sexual orientation in public.
“Sexuality in general needs to be talked about in our country,” said Saad Khan, a researcher who was present among the audience.
“There is such a wide spectrum of sexuality – we have to be open to different interpretations of it,” he said. “That can only happen when you bring in different voices from society.”
Saad, who has completed his masters in gender and sexuality studies, also added that there is a lot of importance of intersectionalities between sexuality and other issues such as disability, ethnicity, and class.
The issue of class was discussed in depth at the event, as there was speculation that respondents were largely from the middle class.
Rajeeb said in the beginning of the event that this was not wholly representative of the LGB community in all of Bangladesh.
This could be possibly because it is difficult to access lower echelon of the society which is less educated and thus has less room for a discourse on sexuality.
