I have a very vivid memory of being around six, tagging along with my dad to a barbershop in Kolkata. I would sit patiently, watching him in the mirror, and then climb up onto the chair for the exact same haircut as his. There was no question of whether I should; it just made sense.
For a long time, a lot of things made sense to me in ways I never thought to question.
I went to girls’ schools until the third standard—first in Coimbatore, and then again when we moved to Kolkata. Back then, I genuinely believed that only girls went to school. The boys in my neighbourhood were always outside, —playing gully cricket, cycling up and down the street—while I came home tired, sat at the table, and did my homework. It felt less like a coincidence and more like a rule of the world.
Even in Kolkata, my school felt like it belonged entirely to girls. It had existed since my grandmother’s time, and in my mind, that meant something. Like girls had always been here;—learning, growing, taking up space. Boys appeared occasionally, a few in each class, but they felt like exceptions to something much larger.
In school, I sat with girls, and girls gravitated toward me easily, —touching my curls, pulling me into conversations, adopting me into their friendships. I was shy at first, then playful once I warmed up.
But on the sports field, something would shift in me. That was where I felt most like myself—loud, expressive, uncontained. The boys didn’t question my presence there. I wasn’t “different” or “out of place.” I was just… one of them.
Looking back, I don’t remember feeling confused about any of this. It all felt natural. Like this was simply how the world was arranged and where I belonged within it.
But somewhere around adolescence, things began to shift.
Not all at once, but in small, accumulating ways that you don’t immediately notice, until they start to change how you move through the world. The rules of gender, which had once felt invisible, began to show up everywhere.
At school, boys were still encouraged to take up space—to wear their shorts, to run out into the sun, to come back muddy and loud and unapologetic. There was a kind of easy camaraderie around them. The sports field belonged to them in ways that didn’t need explaining. They got first access —to the ground, to equipment, to attention. Even the PT teachers mirrored that world. For girls, the rules were different. Subtler, but constantly enforced.
I started getting told off and having my body remarked upon —for not being “skinny enough”,”” for my skirt being too short, for the way it rode up when I ran (even though I wore tights underneath), for my sports bra showing through the collar of my shirt. Later, when the uniform shifted to salwar kameez, the dupatta became its own kind of discipline. It had to sit just right—pinned, centred, controlled. Sometimes teachers would pull me aside and fix it themselves. Sometimes they would comment on it loudly, turning it into something other girls would also begin to watch out for.
My body, which had once just been mine, started to feel like something under surveillance. And something else changed too.
The girls I had felt closest to—the ones I played sports with, laughed with, and felt drawn to in ways I didn’t yet have language for—began to pull away. What had once felt like easy closeness started to carry weight. They worried about what people were saying, about how it looked, about what it might mean. Some of them lashed out, distancing themselves from me before anyone else could say anything. It was confusing and I didn’t understand what had changed, only that something had.
With boys, things felt simpler—at least at first. I could still be one of them, especially in the spaces that felt most like freedom. But even there, something would shift the moment a crush entered the picture. I would pull back;—not because I wasn’t curious, but because I was afraid. Afraid that closeness would start to feel complicated the way it had with girls.
I found myself stuck in between. Wanting the ease I had once had with girls. Wanting the freedom boys seemed to move through the world with. Wanting, more than anything, to just exist without having to constantly adjust, explain, or anticipate how I was being seen.
I just wanted to be me.
It was around this time that I first became aware of something larger unfolding beyond my own life.
I remember hearing about protests in cities like Delhi and Kolkata (I had moved to Coimbatore for high school)—cities I was starting to develop a sort of kinship with—where people were speaking out against and protesting Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code. Section 377 was a colonial-era law that criminalised consensual same-sex relationships, treating them as ‘against the order of nature’. I didn’t fully understand the legalities, but I understood enough to know that something about it was unjust.
The faces and voices I saw most often in these conversations were of gay men. Lesbian representation was rare. Bisexual people, even more so. But even with that limited visibility, I couldn’t think of a reason to disagree with what they were asking for—the right to exist, to consensually engage with another adult, to love and establish intimate partnership, without being criminalised. It felt obvious to me that this was indeed a fundamental right.
At the same time, my own upbringing had subtly shaped how I understood gender and queerness in ways I only began to recognise later. In Tamil Nadu, terms like thirunangai, thirunambi, and thirunar—respectful, affirming words for trans women, trans men, and trans people—were part of public language, coined by M. Karunanidhi during his tenure as the CM. As a school student, I used public buses every day, carrying a pass that clearly included a transgender category. It was rightwas there right next to the categories of boy and girl. Not hidden or erased, but for all to observe.
In my family too, my aunt, who had also grown up in Coimbatore, would speak openly about how strongly she believed that trans people deserved dignity, visibility, and a place in society; that exclusion was never justified. Those conversations stayed with me, even when I didn’t yet have the language to connect them to my own life.
All of this gave me a feeling of certainty, an almost idealistic understanding of queerness. It didn’t feel like something other people were. It felt like something I already understood, just not something I had named yet. All of that idealism didn’t prepare me for what “womanhood” would come to mean in practice.
In college, I began to see how womanhood was imposed—implicitly, but with firmness. Women’s colleges spoke the language of empowerment and progress. But at the same time, they kept us quite literally contained within the gates. Movement was monitored, restricted, timed. It was for our own protection, we were told, without anyone asking who must be held accountable for its violation.
I had always felt drawn to electronic music, to nightlife—spaces that felt expansive, expressive, often coded with queerness. But access to those spaces was limited. For someone like me, they came with negotiation, caution, and oftentimes, altogether denial.
Even in workplaces later on, the pattern continued. What I wore, how I presented, how I took up space—these were all things that could be commented on, corrected, judged. With men, similar behaviours were brushed off. Somewhere in my early twenties, I started to understand how all of this had shaped the way I approached intimacy.
So much of the world around me seemed to place sexual attraction at the centre of relationships. But that was never how I experienced connection. I wanted to be seen, understood, and prioritised;—not for performing a script, but for who I was.
That’s when I came across the idea of asexuality.
There wasn’t much out there. I found people online, began conversations, and slowly built my own understanding. For me, asexuality is about decentering sex as the defining feature of intimacy. And yet, the systems around us continue to define relationships narrowly, —through marriage, through legality, through expectations that don’t hold space for all of us.
When Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code was read down on September 6, 2018, there was a kind of collective exhale.
For many of us, it wasn’t just about legality, but the possibility of a life we had been forbidden. I saw more people, especially bisexual folks, begin to live more openly, to explore relationships that felt authentic. But even then, something felt incomplete.
While the law had shifted, the world we were moving through hadn’t fully caught up. And in some ways, it feels like it is still pushing back.
In March 2026, the Indian government introduced an amendment to the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act that stripped out self-perceived gender identity as the legal basis for recognition, — effectively erasing trans men, trans-masculine people, and gender-diverse people outside recognised cultural categories from the law entirely. Twelve years after the Supreme Court affirmed that gender identity is a matter of self-determination, the state is attempting to take that right back. You can read more about what this means here.
When I think about this, I don’t just think about policy. I think about how early these ideas begin.
About the ways we are taught, as children, to constantly assess ourselves:—
Am I being a “good girl”?””
Am I taking up too much space?
Am I behaving the way I’m supposed to?
Or, for boys:”—
Are you “man enough”?””
Long before laws attempt to define us, these questions begin to do that work subtly.
At a sexuality education summit organised by Pratisandhi Foundation in Delhi earlier this year, something crystallised for me. Young people are being taught to recognise harm, understand consent, and question norms. But outside those rooms, the world often remains unchanged. Families don’t always know how to hold these conversations. Schools prioritise discipline over dialogue. And so what we’re left with is a painful gap: young people who can name what’s wrong, but are navigating environments that don’t yet know how to hold them.
If you’re reading this and feeling that gap in your own life, I want you to know this:
There is nothing inherently confusing about who you are.
What is confusing is trying to make sense of yourself in spaces that are inconsistent, restrictive, or unwilling to hold your full reality.
I’ve been where you are. And I know how isolating that can feel.
But I also want you to know this: —there are people, communities, and spaces that will see you. Even if you haven’t found them yet. Even if it doesn’t feel like it right now.
You don’t have to rush to define yourself.
You don’t have to shrink to be accepted.
You don’t have to become someone else to belong.
Take your time. Stay curious. Hold on to what feels true to you, even when the world around you feels uncertain.
While laws can change overnight, the deeper work of building a world where people can exist fully and freely, takes longer.
And many of us are already doing that work. So that one day, you won’t have to question whether you’re allowed to be yourself. Only how you want to be.
Tejaswi Subramanian (they/she) is a writer-editor-filmmaker and culture strategist associated with Gaysi Family. Their work examines how culture, identity, and power shape the ways people relate, desire, and belong.
