Jaded jezebels, chainsmokers, gypsies, and ninjas: Criminality and the refurbishment of lesbian identity and gender non-conforming identities in Sri Lankan newspaper narratives

Abstract

This essay focuses on how Sinhala and English newspapers in Sri Lanka interpret and refurbish lesbian identity and gender non-conforming identities using tropes of criminality. My premise is that, despite the existence of British colonial laws against ‘sodomy’ and ‘impersonation’ in the Sri Lankan Penal Code, law does not offer a clear definition or interpretation that can act as an organizing narrative for these identities. Although newspapers cite these laws, criminality has to be narrated, and the modes of narration produce instabilities around, and re-articulations of, those identities. Thus, the essay asks how Sri Lankan newspapers discursively construct the criminality of lesbian and gender non-conforming identities. I survey print and online newspaper articles dating from August 1999 to August 2020, critiquing attempts to make these identities explicable by way of strict legal framings of criminality. I draw out four tropes, “Jaded Jezebels,” “Chainsmokers,” “Gypsies,” and “Ninjas,” arguing that they are proxy categories for lesbian and gender non-confirming identities and that they reflect how the meanings of criminality are discursively produced and rendered unstable across frames of reference such as religious orthodoxy, cultural conformity, heteropatriarchal norms, and modernity vs. tradition. I highlight moments of narrative instability, including the above bizarre tropes, forced discursive connections, misfiring formulations, and rag-tag collections of meanings. The article concludes that the question of whether lesbian identity and gender non-conforming identities are obsolete is inflected, in Sri Lankan newspaper narratives, by how they are refurbished via proxy categories with their own contingent meanings and frames of reference.

Keywords:

• Lesbian identity
• gender non-conforming identity
• tropes of criminality
• ‘sodomy’ laws and ‘impersonation’
• Sri Lankan newspapers

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.

Notes

1 I deploy the English terms ‘lesbian’, and ‘trans’ not as strictly representative of categories of persons but in the context of their use in newspaper articles and reports, towards understanding how identity is discursively constituted. A range of forms and terms of identity, including in Sinhala and Tamil, exist in Sri Lanka, and some people may not identify or use such terms. The term ‘lesbian’ is employed in newspaper articles without overtly specifying cis and trans women. Non-specific use of the term in this essay should not be seen as replicating or affirming that lack of inclusivity, but, rather, tracing and analysing it.

2 Titles include, “LESBIANS: TO REVEAL ALL” (U. Dissanayake, Daily Mirror, 6 August 1999); “Lesbians band together with gays to fight their cause” (S. Weerawarne, The Island, 7 August 1999); “Lesbian conference: Churches: Any issue should be open for discussion” (The Weekend Express, 7 August 1999); “Lankan lesbians plan coming out with women on women parley” (A. Jayasinghe, The Sunday Island, 8 August 1999); “Proposed lesbian conference sparks huge response” (I. Nizam, The Weekend Express, August 8 1999); “Lesbians on the run after threatening calls” (A. Perera, The Sunday Leader, 16 August 1999); “Lesbian Conference in Colombo?” (P. Alles, The Island, 20 August 1999); “Woman and Woman” (K. Hettiarachchi and M. Mendis, The Sunday Times, 22 August 1999).

3 See EQUAL GROUND (2016) and Women and Media Collective (2017).

4 See Penal Code for Ceylon at http://hrlibrary.umn.edu/research/srilanka/statutes/Penal_Code.pdf.

5 See Penal Code for Ceylon at http://hrlibrary.umn.edu/research/srilanka/statutes/Penal_Code.pdf.

6 See Tambiah (2003).

7 Some of the current and former LGBTQ organisations involved include EQUAL GROUND, Venasa Transgender Network, National Transgender Network, Heart to Heart, Companions on a Journey and the Women’s Support Group.

8 Such occasions include recommendations made at the Universal Periodic Review of the country in 2008 and 2012, as well as Concluding Observations made in 2011 by the Committee overseeing the country’s fulfilment of its obligations under the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), and concerns voiced in 2014 by the Human Rights Committee (Women & Media Collective, 2017).

9 See Wanniarachchi (2019).

10 The Island responded that the letter was published as a matter of “public interest” and that lesbian sexual activity was a Penal Code offence in Sri Lanka, punishable as “gross indecency” under Section 365A. The newspaper argued that “the government is bound to protect family unit [sic] in terms of Article No. 27(12) of the Constitution” (PlanetOut, 2000, para, 9).

11 The Sinhala headlines translated into English are: “I used to be a girl, and I became a man 3 years ago. I was to marry my girlfriend Vasundara” (S. Weeraratne, Lankadeepa, 09.03.2000); “Young woman who posed as a man, duped women, and got married, is caught” (V. Kumarasiri, Lankadeepa, 06.01.2001); “Young woman in male disguise found working at a Marawila hotel. Having married, the secret came out during the honeymoon” (S. P. Jayasooriya, Lankadeepa, 20.01.2001); “Young woman who got married while posing as a man is released on bail” (M. Goonesekera, Lankadeepa, 07.02.2001); “Young woman has been disguised as a young man while searching for the father who abandoned her before birth” (M. Asiq, Lankadeepa, 26.03.2001); “Young man turns into 18-year-old young woman on Badulla holy ground. From the police to the courts and then on to the Salvation Army” (K. K. Ariyadasa, Lankadeepa, 10.03.2004); “Twenty years disguised as a man but turns into a woman at the police station” (M. Asiq, Lankadeepa, 01.03.2009); “Young woman who was disguised as a man and singing viridu at the bus stop is remanded” (U. Jayaratne, Lankadeepa, 29.10.2011); “Young woman who married a young woman while in male disguise referred to medical examination at Angoda” (M. Goonesekera, Lankadeepa, 01.01.2013).

Additional information

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Shermal Wijewardene

Shermal Wijewardene is Senior Lecturer at the Department of English, University of Colombo, and holds an MPhil in English Studies from the University of Oxford, UK, and a PhD in Gender Studies from Monash University, Australia. Her research is multidisciplinary, engaging with the intersections of technology, literature, social movements, human rights, and queer representation in law, literature and the media.