title: Siraat-e-Mustaqeem or the straight path.
abstract: This article focuses on conversations the author had with a middle-class, urban, working Muslim lesbian and her partner in Karachi, Pakistan. The couple discuss their lives within the framework of Islamic culture of South Asia. The author attempts to explore how women-loving- women define and construct knowledge about their sexuality, about non-normative forms of sexual relations/preferences, and how they negotiate the imagined and real restrictions placed on their sexuality by religion, society, and family, and the impact of such control mechanisms on women's health and emotional well-being, mobility, education, livelihood, sexual behaviors, and expression of desire.
authors.affiliation: nighat.gandhi@gmail.com
authors.forename: Nighat M
authors.initials: NM
authors.lastname: Gandhi
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001294:Attitude to Health / Q000208:ethnology; D005260:Female; D018452:Homosexuality, Female / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D007514:Islam; D010154:Pakistan; D012071:Religion and Sex; D012649:Self Concept; D012747:Sexual Partners / Q000523:psychology*; D012934:Social Isolation; D012938:Social Perception; D012945:Social Values / Q000208:ethnology*; D016387:Women's Health