About Us

Queer Academia is an initiative under Mendlife Foundation, that seeks to create a space for amplifying queer voices in the Indian academic discourse. Owing to a largely hetero-patriarchal society, the queer discourse in India is sparse and limited. Apart from a few cosmopolitan urban spaces, the gay/lesbian/transgender identity in India is generally seen as pathologized and many individuals from the LGBTQIA+ community face rampant homophobia and social-ostracism. Even in urban spaces, queer identity is othered and is seen as a result of Western intervention. As Kaustav Bakshi and Rohit K Dasgupta remark in their book Queer Studies: Texts, Contexts and Praxis (Orient Black Swan, 2019): queer identity in India is “reprimanded as a Western import” (13). Owing to such bigotry against the queer community, it becomes imperative to craft a narrative for queer voices.Queer Academia believes in the power of words to challenge the heteronormative claim to truth, by synchronizing action and iconoclasm. It aims to establish a platform to generate discussions and debates around issues that greatly affect queer identities in India. The many concerns which Queer Academia seeks to engage in, range from the following (but not limited to): queer historiography, representation of queer bodies in media, socio-political issues around LGBTQIA+ rights in India, queer pedagogy, mental health, HIV-AIDS crisis and its impact on queer individuals, trans-rights and more. It welcomes voices from both professional academics as well as budding writers and scholars to contribute to this burgeoning discourse on queer rights.

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Why do we need an LGBT inclusive curriculum in Schools | Aashi Singh

Suggested Citation: Singh, A. (2021, May 31). Why do we need an LGBT+ inclusive curriculum in schools. Queer Academia. URL On 6 th September 2018, Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code was decriminalized by the Supreme Court of India. This historic ruling was a ray of hope for the LGBTQ+ community of India. But despite this positive step by the Court, LGBTQ youth continue to face bullying, harassment, and discrimination. In May 2020, a 21-year-old queer woman committed suicide after being forced to undergo conversion therapy by her family (Deol, 2020). In July 2020, Mumbai Mirror reported an incident wherein an LGBTQ youth from Kolkata was beaten up at night by a group of policemen and arrested without any charges. The individual’s phone was taken away by the policemen and several homophobic insults were hurled at him. He was detained by the police for twelve hours and was released on bail the following morning (Nag, 2020). These are only some of the several incidents of abus...

What's a boy?Addressing issues of masculinity | Aashi Singh

Suggested Citation: Singh, A. (2021, July 9). What's a boy? Addressing issues of masculinity. Queer Academia. URL. Gender rules every aspect of an individual’s life. From clothing to career, it defines what is accepted and what isn’t. Gender roles and norms are taught to children at a very young age. Girls are taught to play with dolls and are expected to like pink, whereas boys are taught to play with trucks and are supposed to like blue. Women are deemed as ‘weak’, ‘emotional’ and ‘submissive’ whereas men are labelled as ‘strong’, ‘aggressive’ and ‘dominant’ (Gupta, 2017). Men are constantly told to live up to certain standards to be respected. If they don’t fit into the specified gender norms then they are shamed and bullied both by family members as well as their peers. This has a severe psychological impact that is often ignored. According to a report by the National Crime Records Bureau titled “Accidental Deaths and Suicides in India 2019”, out of every 100 suicides, 70% ...

Queer Affirmative Curriculum and Teaching Pedagogies for Indian Schools

Suggested Citation: Verma, T. (2021, May 31). Queer Affirmative Curriculum and Teaching Pedagogies for Indian Schools. Queer Academia. URL Queer Affirmative Curriculum and Teaching Pedagogies for Indian Schools | Teena Verma Paradoxes are inevitable. In a land where ancient texts like Arthashastra, Manusmriti, and Kamasutra traverse themes of same-sex attraction and behavior, and Hindu scriptures include stories of dieties being born from the union of same-sex gods, for example- “Bhagiratha'' was born from the coupling of two women, and God Ayyappa from the sexual intercourse between the Gods Vishnu and Shiva, it is bewildering to observe atrocities against homosexuals (Conner, Sparks, & Sparks, 1998). In the domain of queer acceptance, it needs to be acknowledged that some significant feats have indeed been made like the decriminalization of Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code in 2018 but the fight for equality is still not over as even after three years, the law do...

Gender Equality in Teacher Training

Suggested Citation: Sunil, A. (2021, May 31). Gender Equality in Teacher Training. Queer Academia. URL Gender Equality in Teacher Training | Aishwarya Sunil UNICEF defines gender equality as “equal rights and opportunities for girls and boys to help all children fulfill their potential.” This definition concerns itself with bridging the gap between only two genders. It fails to include individuals whose identity lies outside of the gender dichotomy. Such exclusionary mode of thinking is also reflected in policies formulated by the government such as the National Education Policy released in 2020. The NEP mentioned that it will consider "full equity and inclusion" as the bedrock of education-related decisions but it aims to do so by providing "equitable quality education for girls as well as transgender students”. The document makes no mention of lesbian, gay, bisexual, or any of the other members of the queer community. It continues to look at gender in terms of binari...

The Taboo of Female Masturbation and its Relation to the Orgasm Gap

Suggested Citation: Papadakou, C. (2021, May 31). The Taboo of Masturbation and its Relation to the Orgasm Gap. Queer Academia. URL The Taboo of Masturbation and its Relation to the Orgasm Gap | Christiana Papadakou In heterosexual relationships, one cannot help but notice that at times gender inequality exists. More specifically, there is a prevalent phenomenon called the orgasm gap – by definition, the orgasm gap is the large inconsistency in the frequency between males orgasming when engaging in heterosexual intercourse, in comparison to women (Jordan, 2019). In a survey conducted by Wade and colleagues, out of a sample of 985 undergraduates at the University of Wisconsin-Madison it was reported that 91% of men experienced an orgasm in their sexual engagements when only 39% of women said the same (Akers et al., 2020). In a similar study conducted with a sample of Canadian people above the age of 18, more than 87% of men reported having an orgasm in their sexual relations, but ...

FAMILY AND IDENTITY IN INDIA | Tanisha Singh

Context: The following paper is an essay on my views about the Family, its constituents, the inter and intra dynamics of it within the society and gender and its conception, in the Indian context in particular, based on the text given as well as what emerged for me during the class discourse. The essay sort of ties together all the three questions posed in this paper, without necessarily having a demarcation for each answer separately. I have tried to make points that each add to and apply to all three questions of this paper, which all add up to make one big point in the essay. Since our experience of concepts of the Family, Gender, and the Couple all coexist together and parallelly forming a holistic experience, I felt it most natural to write in a way that one idea flows and feeds into the other as a holistic thought, without necessarily or entirely separating the different questions posed in this paper. Any couple or any sub-unit of relationship exists within a larger social group ...

Is Gay Rights All About Gay Sex?

Suggested Citation: Hammish, R. S. (2021, September 6). IS GAY RIGHTS ALL ABOUT GAY SEX?. Queer Academia. URL. “Are we, cis-hetero (they used the S-word that are used for heteros, and I deliberately am abstaining from using it) people, having a pride month for being heteros? Are we announcing to everyone around us that we are cis-heteros?” asked Mugil, a close friend of mine, and they further added, “Nowadays, there are a lot of series that are trying to overly normalise homosexuality.” Mugil definitely was a guy who laughed for those silly stereotypical gay jokes in movies, and at present, Mugil seems to miss all those idiotic jokes when homosexuals are shown in a positive light. Mugil’s homophobia seems to be different from the usual cat-calling and slur-using hatred that most of the gays (yes, I am using it as a noun) are used to hearing. There is an element of unwilling acceptance and fear in this hatred. Acceptance, because this person understands that being gay i...

Need for Feminism in Indian Education System

Suggested Citation: Sinha, S. (2021, June 3). Need for Feminism in Indian Education System. Queer Academia. URL Need for Feminism in Indian Education System | Satyawati Sinha It has been seventy-four years since India gained independence and yet Indian women do not have the freedom to walk the streets freely. They continue to be harassed, raped and murdered in broad daylight. In April 2021, The Hindu reported that a man stabbed his wife to death in the crowded area of Rohini in Delhi while people watched. The video of the gruesome incident even went viral on social media platforms. The accused said that the reason he stabbed his wife was that he didn’t want her to work and suspected her of having an extra-marital affair. The ‘Crime in India’ 2019 report by the National Crime Records Bureau’s (NCRB) revealed that there has been a 7.3% increase from 2018 in the number of crimes against women. 30.9% of the crimes were registered under ‘Cruelty by Husband or his Relatives'...

Fire: Igniting the sexual Taboos

Suggested Citation: Sinha, S. (2021, June 3). “Fire”: Igniting the sexual Taboos. Queer Academia. URL “Fire”: Igniting the sexual Taboos | Stuti Sinha This essay explores the movie “ Fire ”, India’s first lesbian movie [1] released in November 1998, from a feminist perspective. It focuses on the overlap of Indian culture and sexuality. Overview of the movie Fire, a film by Deepa Mehta is about two sisters-in-law, Radha ( Shabana Azmi ) and Sita ( Nandita Das ), who are married to two brothers Ashok and Jatin. All of them live under the same roof. Both Radha and Sita were neglected emotionally and sexually by their husbands. Soon they discover that they love each other and establish a sexual relationship. What makes the movie more interesting is the fact that it is set within the boundaries of Indian culture within the late ‘90s. Cultural Oppression and Sexuality The movie depicts how women are not allowed to explore their own sexuality and if they do, are met with emo...

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