A digital magazine on sexuality, based in the Global South: We are working towards cultivating safe, inclusive, and self-affirming spaces in which all individuals can express themselves without fear, judgement or shame
In the Chinese province of Yunnan, ‘early marriage’ is a common phenomenon. Dearth of employment opportunities compels parents to marry off their children before leaving for work in bigger cities. The cultural trend favours early marriage, so there is no social stigma attached to it.
Mahinder Watsa is a 92-year old gynaecologist and sexologist, famous for his Ask the Sexpert column in Mumbai Mirror for the past 10 years, and is an author of It’s Normal, a book that explains human sexual anatomy, defines complex notions such as love, partnership and consent, and takes on popular myths. He has spent a lifetime dispelling sexual ignorance and is known for his wry humour and blunt answers.
Why are certain privileges only afforded to couples? Why can we not share them with others outside of a romantic or sexual paradigm? Why is intimacy seen as being the purview of lovers? In actual fact, we may often share a greater intimacy with our friends than we do with our lovers.
My sexual desires may not be what certain people called ‘normal’ and I could not share this with my so called friends as I thought they would consider me weird. Surprisingly a woman in my hometown introduced me to the world of Kink. She was a regular housewife and with her for the first time I got to know what I actually needed and wanted and it went on for a good amount of time till I moved out of that place for many reasons.
In the debates around the need to expand the rights that accrue through marriage to same-sex couples, what is often lost are the forms of legal recognition of relationships not in the nature of marriage or blood. As the nature of traditional relationships changes across India, with more people opting to live singly or with friends, we really need to begin thinking seriously about new forms of legal recognition.
Often when we speak of families and family history, we talk genetics, traditions and inheritance of all kinds. Somehow our relationship by blood or otherwise to a clan is supposed to help us identify our place in the universe. So there’s family medical history, family culture, family traditions of food and career. But sexuality? A family history that focuses on sexuality? What would that even mean?
It could be your best friend, a partner, a sister or a parent. Hurting and getting hurt seem to form the basic universal nature of relationships. I have always wondered about why we like creating these connections, and why we need this social network.
True were his words that people will always talk, but why? What was so wrong with us? Was it because he was shorter and I was taller? Or was it because that when we hugged he was more in my embrace than me in his? Or was it that I had to bend a bit to kiss him? Strange how perceptions work about couples – no matter which identity one conforms to.
Is there a relationship at all that cannot be defined by love? And, if we were to begin talking of relationships other than romantic love, how would we speak of sexuality? Upon this deliberation, we realised that our Love and Sexuality issue seemed to revolve around romantic love and sex. The departure this issue on Relationships and Sexuality makes is to try and incorporate forms of relationships that might not be about romantic love but have their own kind of romance, and facets of sexuality that might not be about sex per se but will place its interest in alternate relationships to it.
A multitude of views are recorded when couples are interviewed about their sex lives and relationships. It is often found that while women are more concerned about the way they look and how they react to their partners’ moves (including women’s need to fake orgasms), men worry more about things like performance. It is safe to assume that all of us have sexual insecurities.
Mainstream media is beginning to pay attention to men’s relationship with abortion – a welcome counterpoint to the anti-woman, anti-abortion rhetoric Men’s Rights Activists (MRAs) spew on the topic.