Feminist views tend to subordinate the issue of women's sexuality to the apparently larger problems of poverty and overpopulation, for example. The little progress that has been made in terms of women's sexual liberation is limited to the area of reproductive rights. The idea of lesbian rights can only be understood as a privileged position available only to women who are financially independent, i.e., westernized. Tragically it is the case that many lesbians, in order to acknowledge their love and avoid violating the heteropatriarchal boundaries, have committed collective suicide. In India today gay men have many advantages over lesbians, particularly given that sexism and misogyny are pervasive in that society.
Men have economic privilege and greater access to the public domain.
In the arena of religion there exist temples and sects that are exclusively male. Analogous feminine traditions are practically extinct, and goddess shrines and temples have been appropriated by the dominant male structure. Clearly the phenomenon of gender politics is not unique to western homosexuals. In 1990 a lesbian collective known as Sakhi emerged. It is fascinating that these women unanimously understood themselves as lesbians.