Dragalicious Drag Ball

Dragalicious Drag Ball V in 2008 Raised $1037 !!

Thursday, April 10, 2008
8pm @ Commons 302
"Viva la Drag!" - Hosted by Jewels
Featuring the San Diego Drag Kings Club & UCR talent
Tickets available @ the LGBTRC (245 Costo Hall)
$5 student or $7 non-student
At the door: $7/$10
Co-sponsored and music provided by KUCR 88.3fm.

Featuring:
  • Performances by the San Diego Drag Kings Club and UCR talent
  • Drag King and Queen Contest
  • Ticket drawing for $50 cash - ticket provided to every attendee
  • Music by KUCR 88.3fm
Benefiting:
  • UCR student scholarships
  • Pratyaya - an LGBT rights organization in India
Presented by:
  • Queer People of Color - QPOC
  • Queer Alliance - QA
  • Stonewall Hall
Established in 2004 by Queer Alliance, Dragalicious Drag Ball is a gender-bending event of drag performances including: music, spoken word, fashion, laughter and other transgressive expressions.

All are welcome. Drag encouraged.

About Pratyay

The Pratyay Gender Trust (hereinafter Pratyay) is a community led initiative that began in the period 1997-98 as a support space for kothi identified and other gender non-conforming/ transgender youth facing harassment, stigma and violence for their gender identity/ expression in West Bengal. Pratyay formed out of a Needs Assessment and Operations Research of males who have sex with males (MSM) in 1997, in the context of sexual health. Pratyay continued to exist as an informal collective for almost five years since its inception, and registered itself only in the year 2002.

Pratyay is one of the earliest community led sexuality rights collective in the country. From a support group for kothi and gender non conforming communities, Pratyay envisions its role today as a “sexualities and human rights advocacy initiative”, committed to advance the human rights agenda concerning those whose sexuality fall beyond the hetero-patriarchal norm. It envisions a role for itself that is capable of generating responses that enhance the ability of people with marginalised sexualities and genders to make informed choices and live with dignity.  As an organisation Pratyay is committed to educating the public and providers about the needs and rights of people with marginalised sexualities and/or gender issues.

Pratyay’s relationship with the community it directly serves is an organic one, since it is an organisation that was formed, developed by members of the said community and its major decisions are still taken by the same community. Within the organisation they are in positions of authority – as team members, key staff and decision makers.

Operating as one of the earliest community led initiatives for kothi identified and other gender non-conforming / transgender communities in West Bengal, Pratyay has played a key role in locating issues and concerns of our communities on the human rights map. This it has done through documentation of abuses, developing relationships and building alliances with other human rights movements in the region and nationally. It collaborates with human rights groups working on a range of issues broadly.

It has developed extensive grassroots networks spanning entire West Bengal. In fact, the relationship with some of these groups date back to almost seven years, when Pratyay itself was an unregistered collective. Over the years Pratyay has formalised its organisation structure and so have some of the informal networks and community initiatives, that have also consolidated themselves in forming community based organisations.

To facilitate the emergence of a new generation of leaders of people with marginalised sexualities, Pratyay has set up a Resource Centre as another community initiative. It is named ‘Centre for Sexualities & Human Rights’ and is designed as that space which builds capacities of this community to understand and negotiate concerns related to their human rights. The space seeks to become to ‘demystify’ human rights, to make it easier to claim for those who have no access to mainstream human rights spaces. A critical linkage between rarefied academic discourse and grassroots experiences – linking knowledge with practice. The Centre is designed to provide exposure to issues in sexuality, sexual health, and sexual rights, in order to assist our communities to reclaim our past and build our futures.

One of the most important achievements we have been able to accomplish as an organisation is developing interconnectedness with other people’s movements. It is not only valuable as a strategy in the project of ‘mainstreaming’ rights, but it becomes useful to develop creative resistance to structural issues of cooption and discrimination. Finding the common ground between diverse movements and working to end oppression has been a major learning for Pratyay. This is vital, for even human rights claims have its peripheries and margins – for a nascent claim of human rights protection from discrimination based on people’s sexualities, this alliance is extremely vital. The greatest example to this claim was in the case of a large gathering and protest outside a police station in Calcutta in December 2005, following abuse and physical manhandling of Pratyay’s field workers by officers inside the police station. In what was a spontaneous outpouring of anger, major human rights groups in the city, individual activists, from diverse backgrounds gathered and lobbied with the state authorities for punishment of guilty officers. This overwhelming public support for a queer collective was for the first time in the human rights history of the city.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS
This and many more such incidents lead us to believe that for Pratyay, over the eight years or so of its existence, there have been some visible shifts in the struggle for human rights of people with marginalised sexualities. We have been able to mobilise the larger human rights community in Calcutta around issues of sexualities – initiating the basic dialogue, overcoming hidden barriers and resistances. For example, those who are not queer identified, are increasingly articulating a greater support of rights of those on the margins of sexuality, at least amongst the human rights community. Pratyay’s work has also led to the development of a leadership amongst the community that is articulate around issues that concern their lives and rights. Thus, today there are individuals who clearly articulate emerging concerns – whether be it at community fora or public meetings, with policy makers or development practitioners. There seems to be also greater human rights consciousness developed over the scope of the work for the past number of years, leading to the germinations of informal crisis intervention mechanisms for people in violent situations.

The Pratyay Gender Trust
P 251/ B Purna Das Road, 1st Floor, Calcutta 700 029
Email: pratyay@riseup.net
Contact Person: Anindya Hajra