‘Official Humans of Queer’ has also become a platform that takes forward concerns and demands of the community to the authorities.
Giving the public access to individual accounts and stories from the queer community plays an important role in inspiring people and allows for collective voices to be heard loud and clear. There is definitely a different target group for different types of stories but any story can resonate with anyone you never know,” shares Sharma. With ‘Official Humans of Queer’, we don’t have specific criteria when it comes to stories. We have very few people who are openly out. The core idea is to create a space to feature stories with takeaway messages that can help others. On scrolling this page, you will find accounts of individuals talking about their coming-out experiences, queer couples elaborating their love stories and how they convinced their families about each others as well as messages and quotes from parents of queer individuals who prompt others to accept LGBTQIA+ members around them. The ‘Official Humans of Queer’ is a platform through which Sharma seeks to highlight life experiences of people who are in the queer spectrum. After ruminating for a while, Sharma decided to start ‘Official Humans of Queer’, a storytelling platform on Instagram. It was then that Sharma’s mother prompted him to take some initiative for those who probably don't have a support system like him. My life changed after that,” the Rohini resident smiles. This is also a time when the process of learning and unlearning commenced for his parents. To Sharma’s surprise, his parents were supportive and accepted his sexuality.
“I knew they wouldn't throw me out of the house but I expected some sort of resistance,” he laughs. More so, it tends to be burdensome for many people to divulge similar details to their loved ones.Įvidently, Sharma expected emotional fireworks. In a country where heteronormativity remains the status quo, affirming one’s gender identity in the open can be difficult. He shares that the plan of revealing his sexual identity to his parents-after recently coming out to his friends-was not well thought out. Yash Sharma (23) a student at Delhi School of Social Work, decided to come out as gay to his parents in early 2020.