Cliques reveal our desperate need for belonging while exposing the cost of gatekeeping.
If you’ve ever attended one of those giant queer meet-ups, joined yet another queer solidarity WhatsApp group or loitered at a Pride march long enough, you’ve probably spotted them: queer cliques. They’re the ones exchanging inside jokes, sharing memes only they find funny, name-dropping oh-so-after-hours stories about urban queer bigwigs to new, unsuspecting baby queers, and radiating an air of exclusivity that makes you wonder what gay memo you missed your entire life.
Cliques are a cornerstone of urban queer culture—equal parts sanctuary and chaos generator. They’re where you might find your people but also where you might get side-eyed for wearing the wrong kind of shoes (whatever that means).
In their seminal work, The Social Psychology of Groups published in 1959, American social psychologists John W. Thibaut and Harold H. Kelley describe cliques as subsets within larger groups that form based on shared interests or characteristics, which can result in selective inclusion and exclusion dynamics.
Cliques thrive everywhere—in schools, families, even office canteens that turn into early seasons of Koffee with Karan. But in queer spaces, they carry extra weight.
Cliques dangle the carrot of safety, comfort, and, most importantly, people who—at least on the surface—appear to “just get it.” It’s why Sri Lankan-Canadian queer author Shyam Selvadurai’s Funny Boy lingered for its exploration of fragile belonging in tight-knit spaces or even why we rooted for the Plastics in Mean Girls, even if it meant being a delulu queer kid pretending to like high school.
Queer spaces are hard-won, and leaving them can feel like leaving queerness itself. As sociologist Adrienne Rich observed in Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence, queer connection is often political as well as personal—a way to resist the isolation imposed by heteronormative structures.
It is contentious and complicated, if not impossible, to clearly demarcate a group of friends from a clique. After all, any group is built on the principle of excluding some people while including others.
This is why cliques deserve our attention: are they a safe haven, a toxic trap, or a bit of both?
In a clique, power is centralised, usually with one or two de facto leaders whose behaviours and interests control the dynamic.
Rohini Malur, a writer and the founder of Queer Reads Bangalore, a queer book club that currently has 176 members, told me that she was once a part of a group in Bengaluru that started as a space for queer women and tried to be inclusive of trans people. “There, a charismatic leader, let’s call her Shalini, played a big role in shaping the group,” shared Rohini. “Her approval carried weight—when she liked you, you felt validated and cared for. But Shalini’s power created a clique where loyalty and conformity mattered, and those who didn’t fit her idea of queerness were quietly sidelined. She focused on regulating female queerness—femme or butch—while rarely involving men.”
Friend groups contain power dynamics too, but perhaps it’s easier with some friend groups to voice disagreements, shift and balance this dynamic, and offer pushback. The same, according to Rohini, is often challenging in spaces that feel cliquey.
She said, “I remember a trans woman who didn’t conform to Shalini’s expectations—specifically her lack of medical transitioning to fit Shalini’s idea of femininity—being excluded in ways that felt deeply transphobic, but because of the influence Shalini exerted in that group it was difficult to stand up to her even in the face of her transphobic dogwhistling.”
This isn’t unique to Bengaluru—or even to queer spaces. Think Poo from Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham setting the rules of cool through sheer force of personality.
As one queer friend put it, “We don’t always seek power. Sometimes, power just happens because others see in you what they want to be.”
Friend groups and cliques both rely on shared language, common experiences, and a need for connection, but the distinction often lies in perception and power. Cliques curate; friends connect.
If you’ve ever attended one of those giant queer meet-ups, joined yet another queer solidarity WhatsApp group or loitered at a Pride march long enough, you’ve probably spotted them: queer cliques. They’re the ones exchanging inside jokes, sharing memes only they find funny, name-dropping oh-so-after-hours stories about urban queer bigwigs to new, unsuspecting baby queers, and radiating an air of exclusivity that makes you wonder what gay memo you missed your entire life.
Cliques are a cornerstone of urban queer culture—equal parts sanctuary and chaos generator. They’re where you might find your people but also where you might get side-eyed for wearing the wrong kind of shoes (whatever that means).
In their seminal work, The Social Psychology of Groups published in 1959, American social psychologists John W. Thibaut and Harold H. Kelley describe cliques as subsets within larger groups that form based on shared interests or characteristics, which can result in selective inclusion and exclusion dynamics.
Cliques thrive everywhere—in schools, families, even office canteens that turn into early seasons of Koffee with Karan. But in queer spaces, they carry extra weight.
Cliques dangle the carrot of safety, comfort, and, most importantly, people who—at least on the surface—appear to “just get it.” It’s why Sri Lankan-Canadian queer author Shyam Selvadurai’s Funny Boy lingered for its exploration of fragile belonging in tight-knit spaces or even why we rooted for the Plastics in Mean Girls, even if it meant being a delulu queer kid pretending to like high school.
Queer spaces are hard-won, and leaving them can feel like leaving queerness itself. As sociologist Adrienne Rich observed in Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence, queer connection is often political as well as personal—a way to resist the isolation imposed by heteronormative structures.
It is contentious and complicated, if not impossible, to clearly demarcate a group of friends from a clique. After all, any group is built on the principle of excluding some people while including others.
This is why cliques deserve our attention: are they a safe haven, a toxic trap, or a bit of both?
In a clique, power is centralised, usually with one or two de facto leaders whose behaviours and interests control the dynamic.
Rohini Malur, a writer and the founder of Queer Reads Bangalore, a queer book club that currently has 176 members, told me that she was once a part of a group in Bengaluru that started as a space for queer women and tried to be inclusive of trans people. “There, a charismatic leader, let’s call her Shalini, played a big role in shaping the group,” shared Rohini. “Her approval carried weight—when she liked you, you felt validated and cared for. But Shalini’s power created a clique where loyalty and conformity mattered, and those who didn’t fit her idea of queerness were quietly sidelined. She focused on regulating female queerness—femme or butch—while rarely involving men.”
Friend groups contain power dynamics too, but perhaps it’s easier with some friend groups to voice disagreements, shift and balance this dynamic, and offer pushback. The same, according to Rohini, is often challenging in spaces that feel cliquey.
She said, “I remember a trans woman who didn’t conform to Shalini’s expectations—specifically her lack of medical transitioning to fit Shalini’s idea of femininity—being excluded in ways that felt deeply transphobic, but because of the influence Shalini exerted in that group it was difficult to stand up to her even in the face of her transphobic dogwhistling.”
This isn’t unique to Bengaluru—or even to queer spaces. Think Poo from Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham setting the rules of cool through sheer force of personality.
As one queer friend put it, “We don’t always seek power. Sometimes, power just happens because others see in you what they want to be.”
Friend groups and cliques both rely on shared language, common experiences, and a need for connection, but the distinction often lies in perception and power. Cliques curate; friends connect.
With great power comes great gatekeeping. Gatekeeping in queer cliques is the unspoken rulebook that decides who’s “queer enough” to sit with the cool kids. It often prioritises the comfort of conformity over the effort of inclusion. And yet, in doing so, it can reinforce the very hierarchies queer spaces are meant to dismantle.
However, gatekeeping can also serve an important purpose in queer circles, offering safety by keeping at bay those who don’t understand the stakes.
But if being included, seen, and heard is what we all desire, can all-inclusive, non-gatekept groups truly offer the attention needed to feel that way? I usually can’t decide what to order for myself, let alone represent every palate at a table of diverse people. Gatekept spaces, for those within them, can offer the clarity and care that all-inclusive groups may struggle to deliver.
Still, the line between gatekeeping and exclusion isn’t always clear. My own group of queer friends might feel like an open potluck—where individuality thrives—but could appear as a clique to someone struggling to gain access or navigate its norms. Even in inclusive groups, privileges around language, caste and religion can leave some feeling unseen despite everyone’s best intentions. My friend Ali, whose name has been changed to protect his privacy, fluent in both English and Kannada but more comfortable in the latter, participates less enthusiastically when conversations default to English. It’s not that he isn’t welcome or fluent in English; it’s that the dynamic subtly shifts, making full participation feel slightly out of reach.
And yet, often, gatekeeping is little more than just exclusion with a rainbow filter; it can be used to protect the inherent bias in certain queer cliques—we’re talking South Delhi gays hosting house parties or queer groups for trans folks that don’t allow non-binary transpersons in.
The exclusivity and gatekeeping of cliques can sting. Rohini said, “I’m in my 40s now, and have been out [about my sexuality] since 2010. Queer spaces can be lonely, and that’s something we don’t talk about enough. I’ve seen people come into queer spaces hoping for connection, only to leave wondering, ‘Why am I still lonely?’”
I’ve experienced that once you’re in a clique, something magical—and very dystopian—happens: groupthink. With groupthink you don’t think about how you function; you just function the way the clique does, bound by its unspoken rules.
Groupthink keeps cliques cohesive but also stifles individuality. It’s why you suddenly find yourself using words like “yasify” as an adjective even though you’d never say it to yourself, alone, in front of a mirror, facing the consequences of who you’ve become.
But cliques are, at their core, human. We form them because we need connection, because we don’t want to die waiting for a hand to hold.
So, breaking free from this dynamic isn’t as simple as ghosting a movie or a book club. With such clubs, you can quit, find a new group, and nurture the same snooty taste in cinema or literature with a whole new circle of people. But with queer cliques, it’s different. Rohini mused, “If you leave a [queer] group, it often feels like losing all your queer connections.”
This is especially true if you don’t have the privilege to start over. “For those with money, space, or social capital, leaving might be easier,” Rohini said. “But for others, it can feel isolating, like stepping out into a void.”
In her 1994 book Teaching to Transgress, bell hooks described how black students in her classrooms sometimes expressed scepticism about the relevance of feminism. Considering the dominance of white women in shaping mainstream feminist thought and movements, this scepticism was not entirely misplaced. However, hooks writes that it was regarded contemptuously by fellow [white] students. She wrote: Suddenly, the feminist classroom is no longer a safe haven, … , but is instead a site of conflict, tensions, and sometimes ongoing hostility. Confronting one another across differences means that we must change ideas about how we learn; rather than fearing conflict we have to find ways to use it as a catalyst for new thinking, for growth.
hooks challenges us to question the structures we participate in, especially the ones that provide comfort at the expense of growth. Queer cliques, with their inside jokes and unspoken hierarchies, often reflect our inner need to belong rather than our desire to build something radically inclusive. They’re not necessarily always bad, but they’re rarely spaces where we confront the discomfort hooks sees as central to liberation. Instead, they’re more like safety blankets: warm, familiar, and designed to shield us from the awkwardness of difference.
Perhaps the task at hand for us queer folks isn’t to dismantle all cliques immediately or make them into something they’re not, but to question why some of us crave them so deeply. To ask ourselves what it means to want a place in a group that might not want everyone. I’m less interested in fixing cliques—I wouldn’t trade the drama for the world—and leaning more towards learning from what they reveal about our need for connection, belonging, and power.
Shruti Sunderraman (she/her) is a writer, editor, and strategist who splits her time between Bangalore, Bombay, and Goa.
Jose (she/they) is a non-binary illustrator from Kerala whose work highlights personal stories marked by gender, body experiences and their south-Indian heritage. While not lost in their sketchbook, they can be found devouring all things camp and horror.
Visvak (he/him) is a writer, editor, and teacher based in Goa.
