Founder of Voices of Humans Kapila Rasnayaka believes we are all members of this planet and that’s all there is to it. Voices of Humans is a platform that promotes a genderless society by protecting human rights, and aims to create a world free from violence by engaging men and boys in partnership with women and girls. Voices of Humans envisions a world where all people work to create a nonviolent, caring, and gender-equitable future for themselves and for their children; the movement works through collaborative partnerships and advocacy initiatives with voluntary and people’s organisations, social and political groups, media, and society at large, to promote gender equity and justice and to advocate human rights of all individuals. In discussion with us on his ideas, sentiments and plans with regards to social change in the country, Kapila had this to share. Q: Voices of Humans has a done a great deal of work for the community and a major part of this work include YouTube videos. Do you believe YouTube is a good platform to discuss social issues? Yes I do. The thing is topics like abortion, sexual harassment, LGBTIQ rights and HIV cannot be discussed freely in traditional media outlets. I am talking about gender equality, female empowerment and environmental issues on YouTube and Facebook; I think it is a smart way to reach the masses. It has a larger audience. I have started developing English content as I want to reach the international communities as well. Q: What is your most popular video? The ‘kota saya’ video. This was inspired by the very misinterpreted conception most people have on the attire of girls. Majority of Sri Lankans would say girls get raped because of their attire, so I wanted to address this conception. Q: What was your favourite one to create? All of the videos we create are meant for social commentary, so I have loads of fun creating each one. However, I have this idea to create a video with international representatives to discuss environmental issues in every country. I already created a similar one to discuss masculinity issues called the “Be a human”. Q: You attended the recent silent protest. What was your experience like? It was important to be a part of it, as a human and a citizen of this country. It is understood that we cannot change the system, but it is possible to challenge the system. The feedback was positive, most people wanted to be part of this and we made it a point that we kept this away from all politicians. We wanted this to be an independent forum. I am really happy about the media support we received as well. Q: Do you think social media is a good forum to stir political change in Sri Lanka? Yes. Specifically on YouTube and Facebook as both forums have fewer restrictions. And almost everyone, especially the youth in Sri Lanka including the ones residing in rural areas have a Facebook account, so it is a larger audience. It will take some time, but we can create an opinion through social media. We can help to change people’s attitude this way but not policy changes. Another thing Sri Lankans should stop doing is criticise history. We should forget about history and think rationally about the problem right now. Q: What do you think about keyboard warriors? People should learn to take constructive criticism and also ignore constructive insults. Talking about things without any facts or logic doesn’t do any good to anyone. Content creators should also take responsibility for their content. They should understand that these things affect the community. There are several YouTubers who are creating problematic content, things that may send the wrong message to their audiences, and that is not doing any good to the society. Q: What do you have to say about Sri Lankans’ notion of the LGBTIQ community? People I mostly associate are open and more accepting towards this community. Five years ago we didn’t have this level of acceptance among people. This is mostly due to influence of social media. People are talking about it more openly. India decriminalised homosexuality this year, so we there is talk about it and people have an understanding now that it is not a psychological issue. The thing is our people tend to criticise the things we don’t know so I think the ideal way to completely change societal notions would be by education. Q: Why do Sri Lankans shy away from talking about sex? And does this help the betterment of our society? Sex is a natural thing and we have to talk about it to create more awareness and we don’t do that which in turn leads to a lot of problems including sexual harassment. We have to promote safe sex and awareness is vital. Another thing is that when we don’t accept the natural things, people are tempted to embrace the artificial things as their own. This is the same thing with porn. It creates an unrealistic image of sex; it may even feed it certain elements such as violence and results in younger generations having convoluted conceptions about it. Sexual education is very important; we have to teach our younger generations that sex is not taboo. Q: Do you think our society has assigned gender roles for boys? Boys in our society are told to be aggressive; they are taught that this is necessary to be a man. So when they have to make decisions or express their emotions, they don’t know anything besides the violence. This is also a result of how power is perceived by the society; it is always given to men. This is the fault of the system. We have to train our boys to solve problems with non-violence. Q: Are we doing enough to protect the environment from polythene and plastic? We should do more. We are a very small country and if we all do our part, we can preserve our environment. We are planning to do a beach cleaning project soon, to rid the beach stretch from polythene and waste. We also just finished a project where we planted 125 Kumbuk plants in Wilpattu. I am using a water bottle, lunch box and bamboo straw, so I am trying to cut down the use of polythene one at a time. We make a trend out of everything, yes, so why not make this a trend? Q: What is the one thing everyone in the country can do to preserve the environment? Reduce the use of plastic and live by Mahatma Gandhi’s words: “Be the Change you want to see”. Q: If you could change one thing, in the way Sri Lankans think in 2019, what would it be? People should start thinking that we are not permanent members of this society. It is also important to start respecting each other and the environment we live in. Q: Will there be any new projects by Voices of Humans? I am planning to do a Voices of Humans Talk Show. This will be a series of episodes and I will include members of every community, including commercial sex workers, people living with HIV, members of the LGBTIQ community etc. This is a project I really want to see succeed. Let’s see how it goes.   YouTube: Voices of Humans Facebook: Voices of Humans   By Pujanee Galappaththi Photos: Pradeep Dambarage