The difference in pressures on men in heterosexualised spaces and men's spaces is stark in India right now.

In India one can easily see the strong mechanisms and pressures built by the heterosexual spaces as in India while the heterosexual spaces are spreading fast in urban spaces, men's spaces still survive in small pockets. And the same straight men who hang out in both these spaces behave in two very different ways.

In the men's spaces they become themselves while in the heterosexual spaces, they live under intense pressures from which there is no escape and they are forced to give up everything that matters to them and go through the stress of doing things that does not come naturally to them.

To take an example, two guys (for western readers, straight guys) Tarun and Lalit who are in college came to work in our office during their summer internship. They had come from an extremely heterosexualised environment. Where boys and girls hold hands in public, kiss each other in public, girls wear revealing clothes to entice men, and men are expected to submit to that enticement if they are not to be called 'gay', and in fact there is an intense pressure on men to date girls, without which they would be under the threat of being considered 'gay'. Of course, some men do fit in well in this scheme of things and they get all the social power, which they use vehemently as part of the peer pressure, from which boys have no escape now, because there are no spaces that are free of girls, where men can be themselves, even if without saying anything.

But when they came to our office -- which was also heterosexualised, but to a lesser extent. I developed a friendship with both of them, along with a third guy in my office who did have a girlfriend and is in love with her.

First, it was only the three of us, Tarun, me and Lalit. We created our own men's space and grew very intimate in it. Actually, I and Tarun developed a strong bond secretly between us, which had an intense sexual attraction, although like all other such bonds between straight men, it was still hidden.

The bond really flourished in that small men's space we had created. And Tarun in fact stayed on in the office, inspite of bad working conditions, only because of our special bond.

then the fourth guy who had a girl friend came and things changed a bit. He started exerting pressure on us, to talk about girls and to bring girls in the group. When he did that Tarun responded to that pressure as he does in his college by expressing publicly his interest in a particular girl who was invited to the picnic by an office colleague.

This strained our special bond, because i became extremely jealous. i was not used to this pressure as there was no pressure to make girlfriends in my time. All you needed to do was talk about girls in the boys' spaces -- no need to prove the interest practically.

The fourth guy exerted more pressure, and Tarun started to get too close with yet another girl straining our relationship further. But quietly he tried to tell me that he is doing it only out of the pressures. He couldn't tell it to me directly because straight men just dont do it. however, i couldn't understand what he was saying and just went ahead and broke our sacred bond when he went out in the night with that girl.

However, I later discovered that he was actually maintaining a distance from the girls, even when he was dating them. It was all an eyewash for the others. He did not need the girl friends at all, especially when I knew that he cared for our bond so much. Since, I have been working on masculinity, I could easily see all this, although others were fooled.

He said, he is not going to have sex till he is married. He will just have an emotional relationship with girls. I thought, at least men have that much freedom in India today. But tommorrow when the forces of heterosexualisation take away even that leeway from men, men will have no space but to give in to sexual exploitation at the hands of women -- because that is what it is. Sexual exploitation, against the will of men.

the other guy, Lalit, also was under intense pressure to prove his interest in girls. And he too didn't want girl friends. So, what he'd do is to stick around with girls all the time. And, he always chose girls that were not interested in him sexually. And then behave in such ways as he is one of the female friends (not girlfriend). This would make sure that the girls don't get involved with him sexually. But, he would pretend as if he is intensely attracted to one of the girls, who is dead sure is not interested in him. This worked for him, and he needed that pretension badly. But how much stress it was on him. Who cares in our society for what he is going through. there's one thing that all these straight men know for sure. They would do anything to avoid being called 'gay'.

But, its only a matter of time when these small pockets also vanish, if we don't do anything to save men's spaces.