Twittering out of the closet

His Twitter bio says, among other things, that he is a Ryan Reynolds fantasiser. Nikhil Bhatnagar, 20, may not conceal his sexual preference — and attraction to the popular American actor — on the social networking site, but he uses an alias for his handle (the name you go by on Twitter) in order to mask his real identity.

He was around 13, says Nikhil, when he realised he was attracted to men. But he never spoke about it until he began tweeting a year back. “I had only told my best friend about it and she was very supportive,” he says. But it was the encouragement on Twitter that really surprised Nikhil. “The thing about Twitter is: very few people are prejudiced, or orthodox in their point of view. Personally, tweeting my thoughts has been very liberating,” he says.

Although gay websites and Facebook have always been places for homosexuals to meet other homosexuals, Twitter has given many of them what they need most: expression. A platform to say what (or who) is on your mind — even if that happens to be a person of the same sex — means an immediate outlet.

Ekta Goradia, 20, who met her girlfriend on Twitter, says, “On Twitter, people are a lot more real. Unlike Facebook, which you probably update once a day or lesser, you are on Twitter pretty much through the day and you know what others are up to all the time. That kind of a connect brings you closer,” she says.

Ekta says she has been attracted to women since she was a teenager but wasn’t sure if there were “others like me [her]” until she joined Twitter. “A lot of people are open about their sexual preferences here, so it’s easy to get talking to someone,” she says. After having gone out with men even when she was attracted to the same sex, eight months ago Ekta went on a date with a girl — someone she met on Twitter. And she says there was no nervousness during her first date whatsoever.

“That’s probably because in my head, I was meeting ‘just another girl.’ If it had been a boy, I would have kept worrying he might turn out to be a predator or something,” she laughs. Would she ever consider dating a boy again? “Not now, when I know what I’ve been missing out on all this time,” she says.

Preeti Rohila, 21, on the other hand, was already out to her friends and had even dated  women before she joined Twitter, “which was only for professional reasons at the time.” But she says the medium has proven to be fantastic not only for her but also her other gay friends. “It’s not like a chat room where you don’t know who the person on the other end is. At the same time it’s not as intimate as Facebook, where you have family members too.

Twitter gives you the time and comfort to come out at your own pace,” she says.

Preeti gives the example of this young girl she met on Twitter — “she’s only 16-17” — who for a year tweeted without a profile picture. “But she came out [of the closet] to her parents recently, following which she put her picture up,” says Preeti, who adds that she herself wouldn’t come out to her parents even though all her close friends and elder sister already know about her sexual preference.

“Besides, it doesn’t matter if my parents know, because it’s not like I can be completely out anyway. I think it’s a lifelong process of coming out and I have made my peace with it.”

Nikhil told his parents he was gay a few weeks back, which he says was possible due to the confidence he got from his close friends and the people he met on Twitter. Harish Iyer, an influential figure in the city’s gay rights movement and who’s Twitter handle is ‘hiyer’, says that even if too many people don’t come out on the networking site, it gives them a chance to be open about themselves.

“Most people on Twitter, gay or otherwise, suffer from foot-in-mouth disease anyway,” jokes the thirty-one-year-old. “Not just homosexuality, other issues like child abuse, sexual abuse, marital problems, and so on also get discussed openly on the site. And because everyone’s tweets are out there for others to see, you can’t really fool anyone,” says Harish.

Which means Ryan Reynolds can read others’ tweets too, including Nikhil’s.