Z (name changed) is in his mid-twenties and is exploring his sexuality. He spends his time scrolling on different dating apps. One fine day as he scrolls through Grindr, a guy texts him and they hit it off well. So, after a few days of chatting, they make plans to finally meet. Z is excited and a little bit nervous.

However, everything is not as straight as it seems; there is whole other side to the guy that Z hasn’t discovered yet. He belongs to a gang who target queer men on dating apps to extort money after sexually assaulting them. Innocent Z falls into this trap and is blackmailed to pay Rs.25,000 to the gang. If he doesn’t pay, his intimate pictures and recordings will be shared with his family and friends, and later be made viral.

Z is now contemplating different courses of action that he can take.

He is contemplating whether he should file a complaint with the police, but as the laws are almost non-existent for men who are victims of sexual assault, his complaint will be dismissed at the first instance itself.

If he decides to give into the demands of the blackmailers, he fears falling into a loop there will be no way out of.

He wonders whether he should come out of the closet and tell his family about his sexuality, but fears being abandoned by his family and cast out of society.

He also wonders if he should just take the easy way out and end all this once and forever.

Will he get lost among 1000s of silent victims who share their story online but never get any justice?

And so, Z is forced to wear the mask of masculinity, a mask made of the various tropes of stereotypical masculine energy, some of them perpetuated by the everyday media we consume, some of them perpetuated by our peers and family, and some of them passed down through years of generational trauma. However, this mask of masculinity falls heavy on the soul of our protagonist leaving him more confused and lost than he was before.

This is not just the story of Z but of many young queer men, who fall into such traps everyday but have no legal recourse available to them, because the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita does not have any provision to protect men from rape and sexual harassment.

Cover image and other illustrations by authors