A Tale of Education and Queer/Ace Time in India

​I am a closeted asexual, an Indian Brahmin woman, and a military kid. I have highlighted these aspects of my identity because they matter to the discussion of how Indian schools have shaped my relationship with my asexuality. Invoking the bragging rights of a military kid, I am proud to say I have studied in twelve schools across the country. From schools in the mountainous valleys of Uttarakhand to schools in the southern tech-metropolis of Bengaluru, from overcrowded classrooms with brown benches carved with obscene drawings to air-conditioned classrooms with sleek and glossy benches, from long blue frocks, traditional white salwar-kameezes pinned with white dupattas, kurtis and pants, to t-shirts and three-fourths as uniforms, I have seen it all.

The common thread that ties all these Indian schools together is the mind/body dualism that feminist scholars of education have critiqued (Barbour, 2016; Paechter, 2006). These schools have the institutional imperative of repressing the body while nurturing the intellectual growth of the mind. They are also highly heteronormative spaces, with teachers surveilling interactions between girls and boys and policing girls’ uniforms and appearances lest they look less ‘respectful’ and attract the attention of boys for the ‘wrong reasons’ (Jose et al., 2023). Most Indian schools also do not provide comprehensive sexuality education. Teachers skip the more ‘descriptive’ parts of the human reproduction chapter and chastise students for asking questions about sex and sexuality. Indian schools are also casteist spaces. They are seen as temples of knowledge suited for the intellectual (and sometimes spiritual) enrichment of Savarna students. Dalit students are often made to sit at the back of classrooms and are assigned menial tasks like keeping their classes clean (Ramachandran & Naorem, 2013).

What does all this have to do with my asexuality? Good question. It leads me to what I want to explore in this essay. The institutional policing of bodies, sexualities and desires, in Indian schools along with my position in the socio-cultural matrix have profoundly impacted the way I view my asexuality.

“There will be time, there will be time”

I remember singing a clapping game with my fellow girls when I was in 2nd class. It was called Miss Mary. After sharing food from our lunch boxes on the school playground, we would gather in a circle and clap and sing, “When Miss Mary was small, her habit was like this.” “Like this” was accompanied by gesticulations signifying the kinds of things Miss Mary did at different stages of her life. When she was small, we gestured that she played. When she went to school, we gestured that she took notes and studied. When she went to the office, we gestured that she worked on her laptop. When she married, we gestured that she put the mala around her groom’s neck (a North Indian Hindu wedding tradition). When she had her own kid, we gestured that she nursed her kid in her arms. When she died, we gestured that her body went slack. So, Miss Mary’s life progressed according to the edicts of heteronormative time: from childhood school life to married adult life, then birthing kids, and finally dying. This clapping game also taught us how we are supposed to live our lives as girls and then later as women. I felt like my plan for life was set. All I needed to do was go through these stages one by one. They will unfold by themselves, and I will just need to hop from one stage to the next.

I was wrong.

Cut to 6th class. New place. New school. New friends. My friends started talking about having crushes. I, too, had a crush but was too shy to talk about him. At that time, we used to play against boys. In an eccentric game, the girls chased the boys, and after all the boys were caught, the boys chased the girls. We also grabbed and tackled each other's shoulders, legs, and torsos. The game was a bit ruthless. Later, our class teacher talked to us. I see this talk as one of my earliest instances of receiving formal sexuality education.

She said, “I know you find the opposite gender attractive. But there is a specific time for all this. Once you get older, once you have studied well in school and college, you can pursue your boyfriends and girlfriends. There will be time for all this later. But not now. Now, you must focus on your studies.”

Her words got imprinted in my mind. They also matched well with the Miss Mary timeline. I internalized the belief that ‘these things’ will happen in their own time. Now, I need to focus on my studies.

As I said earlier, I come from a Savarna Brahmin family, filled with veteran teachers and scholars. Academic achievement matters a lot to them. Cousins are pitted against each other as academic competitors, and their scores are compared by adult relatives. So, I was socialized to perform well in studies and attach my self-worth to my scores. My parents also wanted me to become a financially independent woman, although this was not something I understood at that time. So, the logic of heteronormative time suited me just fine. I was happy to outscore my classmates, especially the smart boys who, for some reason, called me stupid. There will be time for the dilemmas of love and desire later.

But I had a crush at this time. I was in awe of his ability to mimic teachers and make everybody laugh. During the Annual Day cultural event, he was my partner for a dance performance, and he used to make me laugh with his antics. During the performance, we had to hold hands for some time. Both of us were shy and only held hands for as long as required. Other girls complained and boasted in the same breath that their partners refused to let go of their hands. I appreciated my crush for being chivalric and respectful enough not to do so. Growing up watching Bollywood movies and Hindi-language TV serials, I had highly chivalric and romantic notions of love. Once, my crush was absent for a whole month. Nobody knew why. Each day, I played a game of betting. If my crush came the next day, it meant I truly loved him. I lost the bet thirty times over the course of those thirty days. That should have told me something, but I liked this game. More than interacting with my crush, I was content with the idea of having a crush. When I left this school to shift to another school in another place, I made another bet. If I meet him again in the future, it will signify that we are meant for each other. I was content with these musings. They, too, fitted well with the heteronormative timeline. I was sure I would meet my crush again in college as an adult, just like what happens in the movies. Now, I just need to focus on my studies.

Boyfriend talk

As I grew older, the boyfriend talk among my friends increased. My female classmates became more and more interested in boys. Unfortunately, there was no talk about girls being interested in girls, boys being interested in boys, and genderfluid and queer identities and desires. My interaction with boys was restricted to academic competition. I admired their intelligence, but no one could meet the standards of my first crush. That bet with fate was still on.

In 9th class, my friends and I signaled out and denigrated girls who were more interested in boys and thought that we were better than them as we focused more on academics. One of my friends told the tale of a boy proposing to her the previous year when I had not joined. She narrated the story as a horror tale. After his proposal, she was devastated because she felt that her reputation was tarnished. I didn’t understand what the fuss was all about and why this incident meant so much to her. I felt she could have easily rejected him and moved on. Why add more weight to the incident by talking about tarnished reputations? Later, I realized this was my privilege talking. My socioeconomic position shielded me from understanding my friend’s need for protecting her reputation.

In later schools, too, I made friends with the most intelligent girls in the class. We took pride in our focus on academics, rather than on boys. As I have said earlier, these schools were highly heteronormative spaces with a very heteronormative understanding of time. Girls and boys were not meant to be in relationships in schools, romantic or sexual. So, teachers praised us for scoring well, wearing our uniforms in the correct measurements and proportions to cover our bodies and not talking to boys. It is important to note that these schools were in semi-urban and rural areas, where sexual codes of conduct are stricter, and girls are under greater pressure to be ‘respectful.’ At that time, I was also studying with girls who lived outside the military camp and came from lower socioeconomic backgrounds than mine. For them, focusing on academics was not only desirable as a means of protecting their reputation but was also a means of gaining socioeconomic mobility for themselves and their families. Of course, I understood this much later, but I was content to follow the heteronormative timeline set by Miss Mary and my class teacher long ago.

The time has come. Or has it?

College changed things for me. New place. New kind of educational institution. New friends. I lost my earlier bet with fate because my crush did not turn up, but I was open to falling in love. My college was set in an urban setting, so I had a bit of a cultural shock. All my friends were talking about sex and relationships (this time including queer ones). I got introduced to Gender Studies and fell in love with the field. I realized I had a lot of unlearning and relearning to do about my understanding of sex, gender, and life. I had to unlearn the girl/boy binary and learn how to appreciate love in all its shades.

I was interested in the ideas of romance, sex, and relationships intellectually and was fascinated with how gender norms shape our understanding of everything from sexual consent in the bedroom to how cultures, societies, and nations work. I believed in the slogan of second-wave feminism that the personal is political. I questioned my own caste privilege and how my Savarna status rewarded me for being pure and chaste while Savarna men saw Dalit women as ‘impure’ and ‘easy targets’ for sexual exploitation. I also unlearned the slut/saint binary and appreciated all friends as agentic sexual beings. But when they started talking about their sexual lives, I switched off.

I thought, “What is so interesting about all this? Why suffer ill treatment by (mostly cis heterosexual male) partners when we can stand up for our rights?”

I didn’t understand the hype around romance, sex, and relationships. Among my friends, I gained the reputation for not having any partner, ever. My friends were puzzled and got into the habit of boasting about their active sexual lives in a bid to make me feel jealous. I didn’t feel jealous, but I felt hurt because they saw me as inferior and inexperienced compared to them. I also wondered why I didn’t feel sexual attraction the way they did. Simultaneously, I gained a reputation for being a people-pleaser, who saw the good in everyone. And because of my sheltered upbringing as a privileged military kid, they believed I had not matured enough to understand how evil the world can be. This gave them more reason to infantilize and desexualize me.

All this made me believe that the time to find love has finally come, and I should make efforts in this direction. Even though I had lost my bet with fate, according to the Miss Mary timeline, I am supposed to ‘fall in love’ now. I had a crush on one of my batchmates. But again, I was happy with the idea of having a crush instead of initiating anything. I was utterly confused. This is when I first learned about asexuality.

Ironically, it was my crush who raised a question about asexuality in a psychology class. Unlike other teachers I had interacted with till then, our psychology teacher was very open with talking about sex and sexuality and initiated discussions about the gender ethics of porn viewing and variation in sexual identities. It was one of my first experiences of formal comprehensive sexuality education.

My crush asked, “I have heard that there are people who feel no sexual attraction. They refer to themselves as asexual. Is this possible?”

My psychology teacher’s sexual frankness notwithstanding, he said, it is not possible. He tied asexuality with hyposexuality, a psychological disorder. He explained that victims of child sexual abuse tend to grow up to be either hypersexual (‘excessively’ sexual) or hyposexual (‘under’ sexual) and deviate from having a ‘normal’ level of sexuality. I, too, have had experiences with sexual abuse when I was a child, so I became sure that I am ‘hyposexual.’ I started believing that I was psychologically abnormal. I was immature and childish and was incapable of ‘falling in love’ because something was wrong with me. Although, as I read more about child sexual abuse and unlearned how to stop carrying guilt and shame, I still felt that my ‘hyposexuality’ is a psychological defect that would be tough to ‘cure’ through therapy because I was not ready to talk about my experience. Hence, my first exposure to the word asexuality came with psychological baggage instead of self-liberation.

Then I graduated, first with a Bachelor’s degree and then with a Master’s degree, continuing to believe in my ‘hyposexuality’ and feel isolated among friends for whom sex and relationships were very important.

Queer/Ace time

I am a PhD scholar now, and the pressure to follow the edicts of the heteronormative timeline intensified. However, as I immerse myself in queer theory, I am becoming more familiar with asexuality and finding experiences I can relate to. Academic books like Asexualities: Feminist and Queer Perspectives, edited by K. J. Cerankowski and Megan Milks, specifically the chapter titled “Asexual Desires? Mismeasures in the Sexual Sciences” by Jacinthe Flore (2024), taught me the allosexual bias behind categorizing people in terms of ‘levels’ of sexuality. Approaching asexuality academically has helped me to dismantle the relationship between asexuality and sexual pathologization.

I also have a friend who identifies as ace. She lent me Alice Oseman’s (2021) novel Loveless. Reading this book has been the most comprehensive sort of sexuality education I have received regarding asexuality. I could relate to Georgia’s journey as I relate to breathing and being in this world. I am grateful to my friend for lending me this book. Our discussions on ace issues have also helped me understand my asexuality better.

Right now, I am a bit afraid of my ace status and am procrastinating a bit like Eliot’s Prufrock in telling the people closest to me about it. I am also a bit confused about the dimensions of my ‘ace’ness. Where do I fall in the romantic-attraction spectrum? Am I aromantic? Where do I fall in the sex-averse/sex-positive spectrum? Currently, I exist in a subliminal space where, once again, I strive to build a life for myself as an independent woman, focusing on my academic career, on one hand, and worrying about the heteronormative clock that is ticking louder and louder and compelling me to find a ‘groom’ on the other. I know I need to have the tough conversations with my loved ones. Do I dare disturb the universe? But there will be time for that later, or so I hope.

Notes

1. The caste system laid out in the religious Hindu text of Manusmriti, hierarchically segregates people, families and communities based on trade and occupation. Brahmins, the priestly and scholarly class, occupy the top position in the hierarchy. In this essay, “Savarna” is used to denote traditionally dominant upper-caste groups, while “Dalit” refers to historically oppressed, erstwhile untouchable communities.

2.  Quoted from The Love Song of Alfred J. Prufrock by T.S. Eliot. The speaker of this poem is commonly interpreted as procrastinating about getting fully involved in his romantic relationship. As a closeted asexual, I relate with the idea of being under societal pressure to stop procrastinating and to find a romantic/sexual partner. As someone who has studied in Indian schools, I also relate with the idea of there being a ‘correct time’ to pursue romantic relationships post-school life.

3. I borrow the concept of queer time and temporality from Jack Halberstam’s (2005) In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives, in which they highlight how queer individuals experience time in a non-linear fashion that challenges dominant heteronormative notions of how individuals should experience time.

References

Barbour, K. (2016). Embodied ways of knowing. Waikato Journal of Education, 10(1). https://wje.org.nz/index.php/WJE/article/view/342

Flore, J. (2024). Asexual Desires? Mismeasures in the Sexual Sciences. In K. Cerankowski & M. Milks (Eds.), Asexualities: Feminist and Queer Perspectives (pp. 118-133). Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003178798

Halberstam, J. (2005). In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives. New York University Press.

Jose, P., Chunawala, S., & Chari, D. (2023). Of the forbidden frontiers of the body: exploring teachers’ narratives about students’ sexuality in the south Indian state of Keralam. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 37(5), 1393-1409. https://doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2023.2181446

Oseman, A. (2021). Loveless. Scholastic Press.

Paechter, C. (2006). Reconceptualizing the gendered body: learning and constructing masculinities and femininities in school. Gender and Education, 18(2), 121-135. https://doi.org/10.1080/09540250500380489

Ramachandran, V., & Naorem, T. (2013). What It Means To Be a Dalit or Tribal Child in Our Schools: A Synthesis of a Six-State Qualitative Study. Economic and Political Weekly, 48(44), 43-52. https://www.jstor.org/stable/23528806