In an exclusive email interaction with Outlook, Jamil F. Khan, a critical diversity scholar, columnist and author tells us about their searing personal essay, titled Gay boys don’t cry when we’re raped: Queer shame and secrecy in the recently published anthology—Intimacy and Injury: In the wake of #MeToo in India and South Africa (edited by Nicky Falkof, Srila Roy, and Shilpa Phadke; Manchester University Press, May 2022). Khan discusses the multiple challenges and hardships members of the LGBTQIA+ community face in society, which is still, somehow, reluctant to go past the heteronormative script of power, desire, sex, and love. Within this cosmos of privileged heterosexuality, sex hierarchy and power relations, the universe of gay love, passion and compassion is caught in a web of limited choices, rather only two available options: 1) don’t protest and simply obey the orders of the powerful by sacrificing consent, and 2) seek pleasure from pain whether you like it or not.