We heard it again: vote for the lesser evil, protect women, stop the nightmare, save democracy. Many of us did, not because we felt safe or represented, but because queer people in Bangladesh have always lived inside survival politics and know what it means to choose the option that may harm us less rather than the one that protects us. But this cannot remain a one-way demand. Each time legitimacy or numbers are needed, queer communities are folded into the language of “intersectionality,” placed within a vague category of “women and minorities.” Yet when it comes to our own rights, the response shifts to silence, delay, discomfort, or quiet hostility framed as security concerns or cultural sensitivity.
Queer people have long stood beside feminist struggles, marching, organizing, documenting violence, supporting survivors, defending bodily autonomy, often at far greater personal risk because our existence itself is politicized and criminalized. We believe in intersectionality not as a slogan but as a condition of survival. Yet parts of mainstream feminism still center a narrow vision of womanhood that sidelines trans, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming lives while expecting our labor, votes, and public support when women’s rights are threatened.
Solidarity cannot be conditional. If queer communities are asked to mobilize for women’s rights, then women’s movements must defend queer lives openly and consistently, not only when it is safe, but when it is difficult. We are not emergency voters to be summoned during crises and forgotten afterward, but people whose safety and dignity are inseparable from any meaningful vision of justice in Bangladesh.
We showed up because we understood what was at stake, but showing up once does not mean we will do so forever. From now on, accountability must move both ways, because queer people are no longer willing to disappear after being asked to hold the line.
NB: Jointly written by a group of frustrated feminist queer people.
Bangladesh Feminist Archives 