It is one thing to be asked this question in your daily life, and it is another to be asked the same question in a PhD interview from a panel that includes professors of a reputed institution of higher education in Delhi. We as PhD scholars/candidates are expected to write a ‘decent’ proposal with a well-researched literature review and proposed methodology and present it during the PhD interview. The panel is supposed to judge us based on how we understand the concept, our positionality, and hence, the rationale behind our choosing the proposed area of research. With all of this theory and their expectation of our having some primary experience of the topic of research, we as candidates also hope, at the very least, to be received with some conceptual informedness about our research areas by the professors.
This is not to point a finger at the person who asked me the question about “queerness being a natural thing or a state of mind”, but rather point to the direction in which today’s educational institutions are headed. It is with certain undeniable experiences and understanding that I enter the gamut of Queerness and choose to pursue it academically to do justice to people like me, who rarely got the opportunity in their higher education to understand themselves. I had not expected the panel to ask me questions like, “What is queer?” I calmly replied that it consists of the LGBTQIA+ community and went on to explain more. However, I felt guilty about the fact that I was still sitting in the interview room and explaining the very definitions of sex, gender and sexuality, let alone queer academic frameworks, even though I found some of their questions offensive. I am not sure that questions like these come up when somebody is ‘testing’ your knowledge. Knowledge testing doesn’t start with a problematic question like that.
Queerness is not just a concept, but a lived reality of a huge group that faces such scrutinising questions daily. The conversation that I had with the interview panel was no different than the ones I have at home, except that my family is still in the process of understanding Queerness; this was not expected of the professors of an esteemed institution. I expected them to do their homework, at the very least. I wonder why we have to upload our PhD proposals on the website if not one person on the interview panel makes an effort to at least read the title of the thesis proposal to acquaint themselves with the forthcoming discussion.
Moreover, when the topic of the recent Transgender Protection of Rights Amendment Act, 2026 came up, one of the interviewers ‘politely’ asked me if I knew about the “fake” trans people begging at the red lights. I had to ask the interviewers to question their own idea of being a man and to imagine choosing to be woman-like or ‘feminine’ in a patriarchal Indian society. A couple of times it felt as if their questions came from a lack of information and they genuinely wanted to know what queerness is, from a queer person. But, the cost of that ignorance becomes my emotions. Ignorance that works as the face of indifference. It was several times during that interview that I felt triggered and even then I couldn’t have chosen to do anything else but to reply with calmness, because I was at the lowest rung of an obvious hierarchy. The hierarchy and the binary of professor/student that stands unchallenged till date. Especially when questions like “Isn’t it a whole woke culture? It has become a fashion of sorts that leads to the Queerisation of spaces…” come up. Questions that are inherently biased and presumptuous.
These professors are yet to be sensitised about asking questions without doubting and demeaning an interviewee’s identity and sense of self. The absence of a thoughtful and respectful approach to the topic as well as the interviewee is what unsettled me the most. It put me in a dilemma where I couldn’t choose to not answer their questions, yet was also hurt and disappointed to have to explain basic things to them that I am already tired of explaining to other people in my life. During a conversation, a theatre practitioner once said, “The responsibility of making the oppressor realise the cycle of oppression falls upon the oppressed.” I can say with confidence that it does not. With so much information, literature, films, stories, along with the recent news of the Trans bill etc., being available to them, it was not my responsibility to educate the interview panel. It also seemed like a matter of their convenience that I was ‘singled out’ and ‘had to’ answer their questions with as much experience and knowledge I could.
The very idea of queer identities always being ‘read’ (Borisa, 2017) and hence being on the verge of being judged, questioned and scrutinised, manifested in the form of that interview. That I had to become the one to answer on behalf of the whole Queer community is not what I had expected. The effort of knowing a community and being sensitised enough to address them properly, know them well and stand in solidarity with them starts from spaces where one takes a chance to risk their privileged position and stand with them especially in times where an arbitrary bill like the Transgender Bill had been introduced. This, of course, the professors had not done.
So then, is queerness natural or a state of mind?
Everytime I try to respond to this question, it is thrown back at me once again.
I am tired of dealing with it for so long.
Queerness for them is ugly, because of its dynamic nature.
They wear consistency and stability with pride.
Queerness has pride too.
For them it is ugly, unstable and unpredictable.
Even the pride that comes with Queerness.
For them there’s always a possibility of ‘realisation’ that queerness inherits.
A realisation that sexuality can change any day (to heterosexuality obviously).
They bet on it.
Wouldn’t a better bet be on the certainty of my sexuality than on the possibility of it changing?
My sexuality is not a testing ground for them to bet on.
For me exploration and understanding happen everyday.
For them it is stupid, self-centered, and irresponsible.
