Who 'framed' Ramchandra Siras? Journalistic discourses of sexual citizenship in India. (September 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Ejaz, Khadija; Moscowitz, Leigh
• Other Names: Vänskä Annamari guest-editor.
• Is Part Of: Sexualities. Volume 23:Number 5/6(2020)
• Page Start: 951
• Page End: 970
• Publication Date: 2020-09
• Subjects: Indian newspapers -- LGBTQ issues in India -- news framing -- Ramchandra Siras -- sexual citizenship; Sex -- Periodicals; Sex customs -- Periodicals; Sex (Psychology) -- Periodicals; 306.705
• DOI: 10.1177/1363460719876829
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1363-4607

Abstract

In 2010, a professor in India was forcibly outed as gay and catapulted into a nationwide debate about LGBTQ rights in India. A textual analysis of prominent Indian English-language newspapers revealed the framing devices journalists used to report the case, unpacking how coverage essentialized gay identity, signified civil rights and citizenship, problematized notions of consent, complicated public/private demarcations of sexuality, and negotiated competing claims of morality. Journalistic discourse inevitably privileged dominant western neoliberal conceptions of sexuality, reducing sexual citizenship to a particular classed and gendered subject at the expense of a more expansive range of alternative sexualities in India.