"Are you a degenerate," asked the security officer interrogating a young bisexual woman arrested during the recent anti-government protests in Iran.

The interrogator had searched the woman's phone and come across her intimate conversations with her girlfriend.

Warning: This article contains language that some readers may find offensive.

"What the hell are these chats? Are you a degenerate?" repeated the interrogator, his voice laced with disgust and using an offensive and derogatory Persian word which describes any form of same-sex attraction.

Now out of prison on bail, the woman, who is in her 20s, tells the BBC that she dodged the question by describing the conversation as "jokes that are common between girls".

She says that the officer appeared to be focused on pressing charges related to the protests and therefore did not pursue the allegations of homosexuality.

Iranian law, which is based on Sharia, considers same-sex relations as crimes that carry a maximum penalty of death.

"But he kept pounding me with that question: 'Are you a degenerate?' He also mentioned my girlfriend's name here and there, asking questions about her sexuality," she says.

She had planned to make a rainbow-coloured LGBTQ Pride flag and take it to protests. "But I got arrested and a lot has happened since," she says.

Pointing to the defiant spirit of the younger generations in Iran, she says that it came as no surprise that the LGBTQ community was "more visible during the recent protests", especially since the movement "has roots in the struggle for human rights".