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
Invitation cards had been printed. Her parents wanted to get the best of everything for her. She knew that all this generosity came more out of them trying to put up appearances than out of their love for her. Instead of trying to make sense of it all, or to reason with them, she was told to just enjoy this special life event. Once the whole family had arrived, all of her father’s financial worries and her mother’s emotional ones got drowned in the festivities that took place each night. The bright strings of lights flickered all around the house, announcing the upcoming marriage to the world.
Through our discomfort, shame, and often stubborn refusal to rise above heteronormativity, we unpacked a lot of these negative emotions by critically analysing texts that were neither the Kamasutra nor discourses such as Foucault’s on sexuality.
There is no singular way of being queer or performing queerness. We are all products of converging and diverging histories and our queerness is shaped by forces tangible and intangible in the everyday.
Many among us are called names, are greeted with aggressive taunts and jeers on the very streets we boldly occupy at least once every year,so we go on living docilely until the next Pride, when performative reclamation of spaces becomes possible.
Every year we participate in an international campaign known as “The 16 Days Campaign” which runs from 25 November (International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women) to 10 December (Human Rights Day). It is an organising strategy by individuals and organisations around the world to call for the prevention and elimination of violence against women and girls.
Abortion and sex work share the distinction of being topics on which even feminist activists sometimes find it difficult to remain non-judgmental, confronting feminists with the question: to what lengths are we really willing to go to respect and enable women’s choices and bodily autonomy?
Erotica, which according to statistics is largely a women dominated genre, often creates a platform where women across space and time can connect and don’t feel alienated in their sexual needs when they find a heroine with the same desire, or when they read about a plot situation which resonates with their own.
Most parents, teachers, and caregivers feel embarrassed when talking about sexuality with children and imparting sexuality education. Is there a way to overcome this by using humour?
Sex work remains a highly contested issue. In most places in the world, societies and laws impose horrendous stigma and abuses on sex workers. But even within human rights movements there are disputes about whether sex work should be seen as labour or as exploitation…
What exactly does being ‘comfortable with your sexuality’ mean? From a young age, all children, especially girls, are taught about specific ‘values’, and how we all need to behave in a certain manner or else we’re being ‘inappropriate’. However, I think the term ‘inappropriate’ simply means, “You should be ashamed of your body and should only think about concealing yourself”. And then our teachers and elders and others around us expect us to be automatically comfortable with our sexuality and with how we look, all the while trying to control us and impose their ideas on us.
What does it mean to hold space and extend compassion to ourselves and our communities? Rachel Cargle reminds us to ask ourselves: who would we be if we weren’t trying to survive? Similarly, what would care and vulnerability look like if we weren’t trying to survive? The anarchy of queerness constantly and necessarily resists the capitalist engineering of the Survival Myth: one that wants us to endure an isolated life instead of embracing it with the radically transformative joy of togetherness. Caring for yourself precedes, succeeds, and exists alongside caring for the collective.
Marking the genitalia as ‘private’ is somehow expected of parents who want to make sure that their kids don’t allow predators in. However, this duty should be followed at the right time with a conversation about sex, which will open the door to speaking about sexuality