Monica Dogra talks about being pan sexual (Photo: Instagram/ Monica Dogra)Actor-singer who came out as pan-sexual last year, says she has been saying this for many years and that people only took notice after her show The Married Woman started streaming. Recently, she opened about the repercussions that she faced after a harsh article was written about her in 2016 and that her name began to ‘be tagged as a joke’. She said that the queer communities and the indie music scene ‘hated her’ and she fell into a dark depression, and that she was unable to leave her house without panic attacks.
What is pan-sexuality?
According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, pansexuality relates to, or is characterized by “sexual desire or attraction that is not limited to people of a particular gender identity or sexual orientation”. The word has also come to mean an attraction that is uninhibited by gender.Stonewall, the LGBT rights charity in the United Kingdom, defines pansexual as “a person whose romantic and/or sexual attraction towards others is not limited by sex or gender”. In the spectrum of gender identities, there is only a small proportion of people who identify themselves as being pansexual.
In an interview to Hindustan Times, Monica also opened up about her secret marriage. She said that she was married to a very ‘understanding and kind man’, and she had to admit to him that she felt feelings for her co-star in a film that she had acted in, about a trans-woman who wanted to transition. She said that he was very understanding about it and ‘held her hands’, and that made her love him even more. “We have gone our separate ways and chosen to dissolve our marriage,” she said, adding that she had always kept it a secret from the media.
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Talking about her growing up years, Monica said that she alternated between being a tomboy and being ‘hyper feminine’ on other days, adding that she liked to express both sides of herself. She said that she was ashamed of her gender for the most part, and when she hit puberty, she ‘wept, thinking life was now over’. She also revealed that she had been molested by her cousins and by a family friend. “I think I am just another story amongst many stories similar to mine,” she said. “If you look at my music videos and listen to my lyrics, I’ve been revealing my soul for a long time,” she added. Till college, she said that she identified herself as straight, till an experience with a woman, presenting as a man, at a party ‘messed’ with her head and at first she thought that she was pansexual.
Monica is a prolific musician-actor, and has starred in six feature films and has released five studio albums. She has also hosted four seasons of the music-docu series The Dewarists.
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