5/15 Sandip Roy & "Kelly Loves Tony" Film

I thought this week’s article, “From Kush List to Gay Bombay: Virtual Webs of Real People,” was a very interesting read. The article hypothesizes that “if there were ever a place where South Asians could express their sexuality, it would be America.” This is obviously very true especially with the recent legalization of same-sex marriage in 2015; ever since then, there has been an increasingly amount of LGBT people coming out and representations of pride in our country. The idea of these “lists” in South Asia is very creative and beneficial for those middle-class or lower-class people in small South Asian communities to meet other queer people, or to just gain more knowledge from the forums that they offer. The issues of gender inequity and patriarchy obviously still applies and extends to the men and women in the LGBT community, as well. Women, and especially mothers, often have a much lower economic power and struggle finding access to computers. I would also like to add that LGBT issues should not be charged as being solely “Western property” because homophobia and transphobia are global issues that are still to this day extended to people in all countries of the world.
 The "Kelly Loves Tony" film applied concepts from Bindi Shah's article on Laotian daughters. When Kelly gets pregnant in high school to Tony, both their parents enforced the Mien tradition of arranging their marriage. Like Shah's article says, it is not uncommon in their culture for women to get pregnant and marry young, just as Kelly's own mother had. In addition to this practice, when a Mien girl gets married, the daughter is in a sense being given away to the other family. As Kelly raises her child and continues her college education, she advocates that young mothers have much more in life than "sitting at home and taking care of a child." Kelly prizes her education for getting her a job that will ultimately serve her baby a better future. Another Mien tradition I saw in the film was the value of family. After Kelly gave birth, Tony moved in with her family to maintain a family unit. 

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