ItemArticle

Navigating Queer Subjectivities: Identity Negotiation and Spatial Constraints Among Sexual Minority Women in Kerala, India

Title
Navigating Queer Subjectivities: Identity Negotiation and Spatial Constraints Among Sexual Minority Women in Kerala, India
Creator
Chacko, Diya Mariam; Chakraborty, Rituparna
Description
Psychological theories often conceptualise identity as a coherent, interiorised essence, a framing that constrains the fluid and relational experiences of sexual minority individuals. In caste-structured contexts like India, identity emerges from continual negotiation across caste, class, gender and religion rather than interior coherence. Drawing on queer phenomenology and critical intersectionality within an interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA), this study examines the experiences of sexual minority women in Kerala as they negotiate their identities through sociospatial regulation. Semistructured interviews revealed identity negotiation as a constant interplay of disorientation, reorientation and subversion articulated through three major themes: (a) spatially induced dilemma, which includes dilemmas about self-expression, dissonance in corporeal schema and out-of-sync temporality; (b) navigating spatial constraints, marked by layered and anticipatory shame, religious and ideological tensions, disembodiment shaped by structurally embedded shame materialising as internalised homonegativity, contested queer authenticity and affective negotiations around normativity; (c) embodied everyday acts of subjective subversion, involving flexible reorientations, agentic reworkings of failure and reimagined futures beyond dominant hetero-coherent narratives. By foregrounding nonlinearity and situated subjective subversion, this study critiques essentialist psychological models and emphasises the precarious, situated practices of queer becoming. The Author(s) 2026
Source
Feminism and Psychology;
Date
01-01-2026
Publisher
SAGE Publications Ltd
Subject
identity; India; intersectionality; queer phenomenology; sexual minority women; subversion
Coverage
Chacko D.M., Christ University, India; Chakraborty R., Christ University, India
Rights
Restricted Access; Hardcopy may be available in the library
Relation
ISSN: 9593535;
Format
online
Language
English
Type
Article

Citation

Chacko, Diya Mariam; Chakraborty, Rituparna, “Navigating Queer Subjectivities: Identity Negotiation and Spatial Constraints Among Sexual Minority Women in Kerala, India,” CHRIST (Deemed To Be University) Institutional Repository, accessed June 17, 2026, https://archives.christuniversity.in/items/show/23122.

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