Welcome to Gaysians!
By Gaysians Founder, Reeta Loi. June 2025
18 months ago we moved from an active movement to a digital-only resource. We took time to take stock of 7 years of campaigning, we took time to heal, to gain our strength and to strategise for the work ahead of us. We said we’d return if we were needed and we’ve decided there is more for us to do, especially now.
We were founded in 2017 when I was a columnist at DIVA magazine, before joining GAY TIMES as Contributing Editor. Before this I had spent several years writing and speaking in the media anonymously. In 2017 I was travelling to India to work with activists and artists and march at Mumbai Pride. At the time Section 377 was still in place, which criminalised homosexuality in India. The landmark victory in 2018 with the successful removal of Section 377 was felt the world over by the Indian diaspora and beyond. We had our own Gaysians celebration in London and it was a defining moment.
I had grown up in the UK under Section 28, which systematically removed all mention of LGBT+ lives from our education system from 1988 to 2003 in England and Wales and 2000 in Scotland. As well as this erasure of LGBT+ people in the media and our education system, there was no inclusion of colonial history in our education either.
It wasn’t until I was in my late twenties, after years of searching that I found a blog post written by an anon Indian lesbian in Mumbai. Her story changed the course of my life, because it inspired me to share my own. I began writing about my experiences in the media because I’d had enough of not seeing myself reflected anywhere.
I am sharing this to illustrate how easily we are erased.
There is erasure each time a new tech platform is launched and is dominated by profiles that are not us. There is erasure each time a law is passed to limit our ability to be ourselves and to access each other in the past, present or future. There is erasure each time we censor ourselves and do not share our voices, out of fear, shame or lack of belief in ourselves. There is erasure each time members of our community compete with each other to be validated by a world that will never give them what they seek, because what they seek can only be found within themselves. And there is erasure because many of us don’t make it. The levels of abuse and trauma that we have endured and are experiencing is beyond what many people realise and you are not alone.
This erasure is designed to make us forget who we are from one generation to the next. But we have to be stronger than that. We are stronger than that and our freedom threatens the very powers that oppress us. We have to fight together, side by side. For ourselves, for each other and for people we will never get to meet.
It is no coincidence that current legislative attempts to erase trans lives are happening at the same time as the genocide of the Palestinian people. The power of LGBT+ people to effect change in society is exactly why we are oppressed and this latest attempt to silence us will fail. We have always existed and nowhere more in the world is this more prominent than in Asia, where historical sites that evidence our history still exist. Where we are a visible part of society. Where we have a third gender on our passports. Where transness is a normalised part of our mythology, storytelling and survival, dating back thousands of years. We belong here.
Gaysians works with organisations and charities to advise them on how to best serve us as people that have specific, nuanced experiences and often complex challenges navigating our culture, sexuality and gender identities in the diaspora. We have a wide range of partners, offering a broad scope of support including mental health, housing, sexual health, faith, trans and youth support. Our Resources section is a growing space that we’ve dedicated time to curate for you, please use this to access support.
As well as this, we work with the media to continue to push for positive visibility of Asian LGBT+ people, our rights and our stories. The Letters sections of the site is a space for members of the community to share open letters about the topics that matter to them most. This exists so that you can share your voice and spotlight what we as a small team do not have the lived experience to speak on. These letters are far reaching and can influence culture and policy. If you would like to submit a letter to us then please get in touch.
We also have Interviews which we will be expanding on, along with a forthcoming Events section. The very first iteration of gaysians.org promoted events and we want to bring this back. Meeting irl has never felt more important for us as a community. As an independent and unfunded organisation that chooses to maintain autonomy, we have decided not to set up as a CIC which would restrict our campaigning work. Rather than access funding in exchange for censoring our voice, we will be offering a paid event listing service to help pay for our costs and time.
While Gaysians is widely recognised as a success story, there have been challenges, largely with misogyny within our community. For this reason, we are dedicating this era of Gaysians to women, trans and non-binary Asians. We are centring our stories, art and wellbeing. We are doing this to fight the erasure that occurs within our community and outside it.
Gay Asian cis men, I urge you to take on the work of unlearning the misogyny you have been taught in both gay community and in South Asian community. Because until you do, we are not safe, and neither is our movement and thereby neither are you.
Ultimately, more than our identities it is our values that matter most. We experience generational trauma and the path to recovery and mental health is a large reason why Gaysians exists. I took time away from activism to heal and within the tough stuff, there is self-compassion and self-love that has fundamentally changed my relationship with myself. We need to take care of ourselves and learn to love ourselves before anything else. Or what is all this for?
This chapter of Gaysians is our Gaysiana era, where we embrace our feminine. This era is for the women, trans and non-binary Asians. We celebrate you, we are you and we invite you all to join us! Keep an eye on our socials for more.
Free Palestine.
With love,
Reeta x