This story contains mentions of self-harm and abuse.
In 2019, I attended a Diwali party at Saloni’s* house near Delhi. Dressed in an elegant saree that belonged to her mother, she refused to rest until every plate was full and every stomach fuller. Feeding was her love language, and she had a way of drawing everyone in—gently nudging, laughing, coaxing—until even the shyest joined with a smile. Later, she danced the night away with us.
That evening, amidst the revelry, I noticed multiple faded lines on her left wrist. I wanted to ask about the story behind them. They looked different from my own, but they were unmistakably scars that had been caused by self-harm.
Every time I see such scars on someone else’s body, they remind me of my own, the pain I endured to build a stable, peaceful life. Her scars weren’t just marks on skin; they were echoes of a language I spoke too.
Almost everyone has a scar somewhere on their body. But queer bodies are uniquely placed in this context. The body is the only site where queer people exercise full control. In literature and film, too, this theme recurs: The American professor and historian Susan Stryker famously compared her trans body to Frankenstein’s monster in her landmark essay My Words to Victor Frankenstein above the Village of Chamounix. In the Palme d’Or–winning film Titane, the protagonist, who is not explicitly queer, is a woman with a titanium plate in her head. After a traumatic incident, she takes on a new identity, binding her breasts and pregnant belly, and living as a man. Across such stories, one truth emerges: when queer people cannot control their world, they reclaim the body. Scars, then, become not just traces of pain but marks of agency and ownership.
Healing and hurting together
Queer folks, particularly young ones, are often more likely to end up with scars than others—either due to self-harm or gender affirming procedures. A 2019 study published in the journal Psychiatry Research found that adolescent queer individuals who were at risk of suicide reported significantly higher rates, severity, and variety of non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI), along with greater suicidal ideation than heterosexual peers—differences that remained even after accounting for abuse and victimisation.
And these scars are symbolic of the heavy emotional burden that many queer folks carry around as an outcome of choosing to live life their way. A 2025 study published in JMIR Dermatology showed that scarring from gender-affirming procedures causes major psychosocial stress for transgender and gender diverse individuals, linked to visibility, dysphoria, stigma, and inadequate clinical support.
The Oxford dictionary’s definition of a scar—“a mark that is left on the skin after a wound has healed”—doesn’t encompass the dimensions of scarring that are unique to queer people. For Saloni, the healing and the opening up of new wounds happened simultaneously. While she was healing from the rejection of her body, she was also inflicting wounds on it as a coping mechanism.
“I struggled with differentiating between abusive and romantic sex for a very long time, even in adulthood,” she told me when I interviewed her for this story recently, more than half a decade after I first met her during that memorable evening of song and dance.
Assigned male at birth, Saloni, now 32 years old, is a transwoman who grew up in a small town in West Bengal and attended an all-boys school. “I was very feminine from the beginning,” she said. “Not just in my mannerisms but even physically, I looked different. Softer skin. No body hair. The boys at school could tell the difference.”
Her body became a site of scrutiny early on, and her femininity—unprotected, unspoken—made her a target. Growing up as a teenager, Saloni was exploring womanhood in a body that was failing to reflect how she felt inside. While she had no space to explore her femininity openly, Saloni received attention from her male classmates in school for her feminine body language. “They were boys. They were curious. There were no boundaries. I was the only girl, even if no one said it out loud,” she explained.
The attention, however, came in the form of abuse. Still, Saloni said it felt validating. “Even when it was wrong, I felt seen. My parents, by default, didn’t see me, because I was their son; there was no question of them acknowledging my gender and sexuality back then. Society didn’t. It made me feel like I existed,” Saloni said.
Her first experience of sexual intimacy as a teenager, she recalled, was shaped by the abuse she faced from boys at school. Saloni believes the scars from those days still interfere with her romantic and sexual relationships. “Every compliment from a man feels sexual, and it doesn’t help that transwomen are mostly seen as objects for sexual pleasure and no one wants to settle and have a family with them,” she said.
Those invisible scars never faded, and the abuse followed into adulthood. But therapy gave her the language to recognise and describe what was happening to her. Saloni said her healing began there. Since then, she has been successful in not approaching sex as a coping mechanism. But romantic relationships continue to remain elusive. And it was this vacuum that self-harm began to fill. For Saloni, “every cut meant a little less emotional suffering.” Those fading lines I’d glimpsed on her hand at the Diwali party were witness to the pain of her loneliness and yearning for love.
Between survival and self-erasure
Saloni’s story is not an isolated one; it is the story of many queer individuals whom society has failed to support. As the seasons change, their older scars give way to newer ones, and the cyclical process of healing and hurting continues. Scars, then, become not just traces of pain but marks of agency.
Tara M. Rai, a queer affirmative counselling psychologist based in Delhi, explained that queer folks often dealing with the emotional burden of being queer in a society that doesn’t accept queerness “is a long, slow process. And sometimes the emotional struggle becomes too much to bear, the internal pain feels overwhelming.” In such cases, there is a desire to feel something tangible or find a way to release it. Here, some people might turn to self-harm. It can become a way of expressing or relieving emotional pain when nothing else seems to work.
Tara explained that viewing self-harm as ‘attention-seeking behaviour’ is a misplaced outlook. While she pointed out self-harm is not a sustainable or healthy coping strategy, she also acknowledged that it is a very real and complex response to being emotionally overwhelmed, one that deserves understanding rather than judgment.
In Tara’s view, there is significant overlap between queerness, chronic health conditions, and experiences like self-harm —“not because queer people are inherently fragile or unable to cope, but because a harder life often brings more frequent encounters with mental health struggles,” she said.
Tara emphasised the importance of understanding these experiences through an intersectional lens—one that takes into account the complex interplay of biological, psychological, and social factors shaping queer mental health. “It’s not just about how your body looks or what it carries, but about who surrounds you, what kind of care and community you have access to. Caste and capital, especially, deeply influence the kind of community you can build, who will support you, and how safe you feel, not just emotionally, but physically and materially,” she added.
Aamir*, a 25-year-old transman and illustrator, began self-harming at the age of 14. “It started as a way to release what I couldn’t say. My parents were strict. There was no space for any kind of communication,” he said.
Growing up trans, Aamir lacked a circle of friends he could confide in—there was no outlet, no one to turn to, and no space to be heard. He directed his loneliness towards his body.
By age 16, he recalls the self-harm had become more frequent. He began to wear full sleeves even in summer to hide them. The cuts weren’t about dying, nor were they about being seen. “When your pain is invisible to everyone else, you make it visible to yourself,” he said.
Today, Aamir doesn’t self-harm anymore. But he has to live with his past: “I wear full sleeves sometimes. Not to hide. But because I don’t want to explain,” he said. “I don’t want them erased. But I don’t want them to be my whole story either.”
Aamir often includes scarred bodies in his art. One of his illustrations features the following words: “sleep isn’t a relief either, dreams are exhausting.”
“I draw what I know. This skin, these lines,” he said. When violence is inflicted by systems or institutions, queer and trans individuals often internalise that cruelty. The body becomes both the target and the archive. Scars, whether visible or invisible, become the physical and emotional traces of this embedded violence. They do not simply signify trauma; they mark the ongoing negotiation between survival and self-erasure.
The body as canvas
Visible self-harm scars carry social stigma and compel many—especially young people like Aamir—to cover up. Cishet people face this pressure too, but its effects are more pronounced for queer and trans individuals whose gender expression is already closely monitored. For them, hiding scars often means suppressing comfort and identity to avoid judgment.
Saloni said she is very conscious about her visible scars. She fears loose comments from strangers and that her friends and colleagues might distance themselves from her: “After all, someone with scars is seen as high risk,” she said.
Scars are not always a negative experience for queer individuals. For some, they mark defining moments of acceptance and agency. While Aamir and Saloni choose to hide their scars, for Vihaan, a development sector professional based out of Bengaluru in his late twenties, scars were the beginning of a chapter in life he’d always looked forward to.
As with many transmasculine individuals, Vihaan had always hoped for a keyhole top surgery—a surgical method of masculinising the chest that leaves minimal scars. “But I’m fat,” he said plainly. “The doctor took one look at my weight and said this will need a double incision.” The double-incision method leaves behind considerably more scarring compared to keyhole surgery.
Vihaan worried about the possibility of scars, their longevity, and the possibility that they’d affect his relationship with his partner. But after the surgery, Vihaan said he felt a deep sense of peace with his body. He was unaffected by the scars. “I wear them like a crown,” he said. “Whenever I look at my scars, I feel they are saying: Vihaan, you took good care of yourself. And they are proud of me.”
For some queer folks, scars can even become a part of their creative expression. Vihaan tells me about a transmasculine friend who chose not to conceal his top surgery scars, but also didn’t want to be compelled to explain them. Instead, he had a tattoo inked across his chest: a lion and a tiger facing one another. To the unknowing eye, it was simply art. But beneath the surface, it was a shield. “The lion is on the left,” Vihaan recalls his friend saying. “If that ever falters, the tiger will rise. Both are protectors. That’s what masculinity means to me.” Vihaan smiles at the memory. “I tease him sometimes—why all the aggressive animals? But the symbolism is striking. It’s his way of reclaiming power.”
Saloni’s invisible scars are often reflected in her artwork. Most of her creations feature a young woman in her mid-20s, who invariably looks melancholic. I remember one drawing in particular, framed on her bedroom wall: A woman clad in traditional ghagra-choli sitting in a palace-like structure and staring into the nothingness, as if she is waiting for someone, but devoid of hope.
“Drawing has always been one of my ways of expressing emotions,” Saloni told me. She explained that the lingering anxiety from the abusive romantic relationships of her past, the fear that someone might only be interested in her for sex, and mistrust towards people still affect her deeply. “I think these emotions show up in the women characters I draw, even though I don’t do it consciously,” she added. Saloni believes her scars are the result of systemic failures. In her view, young people who are growing up trans are being set up for lifelong scarring because of a lack of support and guidance.
These burdens have made her journey as a trans woman in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) extremely challenging. Despite all the hurdles, Saloni recently submitted her PhD and is now pursuing a post-doctorate at a top institution in India. She is working on herself, making slow, but steady progress: Not trusting blindly, not letting people have access to her body and mind when she is at her most vulnerable, learning to derive support from therapy and medication.
“I love my work,” she said, “and I am committed to it. I have identified my scars now and am taking steps to heal them.”