Homosexual men in Dhaka who openly identify themselves as such are mostly from the middle and upper income groups. In large part, they have come to understand their identity mainly from information obtained from the internet, which those who know English are able to access from a computer at home or a cyber café. Men in Dhaka have had access to information and images related to gay issues since as early as 1996, but over the past decade there has been a mushrooming of cyber cafes all over the city, with the competition leading to affordable rates.
It was in late 2002 that the first online gay group for Bangladeshis – a Yahoo group called BOB, for Boys Only Bangladesh – was started by a handful of educated men. Tired of looking for other gay men in public places such as the Ramna Park hangout, they were hoping to build friendship ties online so as to begin talking about their sexuality comfortably. Since BOB is the biggest congregation of gay-identified men in Bangladesh, it has since come to be seen as something of a barometer of the gay community in the country. As such, BOB helps to gauge the political aspirations of this group – and, more recently, has provided a window into how the past year of emergency rule has affected the gay community of Bangladesh.
BOB's homepage contains just one reference to gay rights, perhaps offering an immediate insight into the lack of overt political aspirations. The homepage largely concerns itself with 'friendship', devoid of political edge. Indeed, the first attempt in BOB's (and the Dhaka gay community's) history to assert itself politically came as late as May 2005, when the BOB moderators published a letter to the Daily Star newspaper, regarding the first International Day Against Homophobia. The letter read:
People quickly took notice of the letter. Within days, the paper published a rabidly homophobic response from an expatriate Bangladeshi. More importantly, a wave of 'anti-political' mail began pouring into the BOB message boards, nearly all from the site's members. Some of these argued against the decision to publish such a letter in the first place. Two of the oppositional letters are quoted below (misspellings have been corrected to avoid confusion):