RIFLE RANGE BOY: Is it because of Nature or nurture?

Badhaai Do (Congratulations Due, Hindi; 2022)
Netflix

Learnt a new word today, a lavender marriage.

Sure, the law has accepted the third gender and various sexual orientations. But, mind you, it is not universal and definitely not freely tolerated by many conservative communities.

To conform to societal expectations and pressures, many members of the LGBTQIA+ community get themselves involved in 'sham marriages'. Couples undergo lavender marriages to appease the family and conceal their socially stigmatised sexual orientations. This is not something new. Rock Hudson, Barbara Stanwyck, Tyrone Power and many more in Hollywood had made arrangements to save their careers. Lately, in Communist China, it has been revealed that gay men hook up with lesbian women through social media to show their 'wife' during the new year visits to prevent nagging from the family members. Same-sex unions are illegal in China.

Slowly, we can see that OTT (Over-the-top) platforms are trying to override the prevailing societal norms as determined by the local cultures. Some may argue that these OTTs, being international in their outlook, may only have one goal - to push their boundary, provoke, start a conversation, and perhaps create a single narrative, a New World Order for everyone. They do all these while laughing all the way to the bank. These OTTs, media services that transmit directly to viewers, bypass traditional gatekeepers who keep a tab on what the public can consume. Rightly or wrongly, via this film, I get the vibe that they are trying to make LGBTQIA+ mainstream.

The next burning question that needs to be answered is whether this LGBT tendency is ingrained in Nature or artificially created? Do we all have an inborn sexual attraction that gets suppressed due to social mores - as the woke generation implies, gender is fluid? Or is it because of society's openness and expressive nature that we can tell our wants and dislikes?

Is the contamination of drinking water from our river polluted with hormones from contraceptives pills, making men more effeminate? Are plastic wastes and toxic hydrocarbon effluent screwing up our internals? Or is it just Nature's way to curb population explosion before the re-set button is ignited.