The time couldn't have been more right. Today, India celebrates Children's day. And today, I watched this masterpiece of a movie 'Boy erased'. In one sentence, the film is about a gay boy whose Christian preacher father sends him to a conversion therapy centre. The film takes you through 'techniques' at the centre, from shaming to violence, each making you cringe more than the previous. "Fake it till you make it", the teacher at the centre says.
What works about the movie, on the contrary, is that one moment when the fierce mother drives the son out of the centre screaming "Shame on you!" to the teacher. That one line lifts the spirit of the film, turns the mood of the film on its head. When the mother stands up for her son, the viewer heaves a sigh of relief. When a mother tells her gay son that she will shield him from everyone including her husband, you know that everything is going to be alright for the son.
'Boy erased' is a film for parents, to see for themselves, how much their support can turn around the lives of their children. 'Boy erased' is a film for straight family members, to stand up against systematic breaking down of a gay person s self-esteem. When the lesbian girl 'confesses' her sins in the conversion therapy course, you can see her self-esteem shatter to pieces.
Conversion therapies such as these are advertised rampantly in Indian ashrams as well. Boys and girls are trained to stop being gay, to think worse of themselves. An Indian parent who performs hundred background checks on his daughter's prospective groom, tells his son confidently, "Just get married. Once you have a wife, you will be alright!"
We don't need conversion therapy centres. The society does enough to infuse shame within us the gay men. There are those few occasions when the most out among us stay quiet about being gay. And there are those gay men among us who say proudly that they are 'straight-acting'. That's when you know that the societal conversion therapy has worked.
For once, one prays that parents take the steering of their families in their own hands, like the boy's mother in this film who drives her son out of the place. Parents wield the power to empower their boys.
Because when a boy is erased, so is his parent.
-Aditya Joshi
