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
The only hitch was that neither the agents nor the landlords who lurked behind those rentable flats were particularly keen on leasing their precious properties to a – what! Divorcee??!! No, no, madam, but this flat is only for families.
Nathicharami takes sexuality and sexual desire away from upper-class, Gucci-clad women and makes its viewers acknowledge its existence in the lives of women (middle-class wives and widows, in the case of this film) who are invisibilised, both in the society they live in and as subjects of popular content.
ऐसी जगहों की बहुत कमी है जहां विकलांगता के साथ जी रहे लोग अपने यौनिक अनुभवों या यौनिक जिज्ञासा के बारे में खुलकर बात कर सकें। खास तौर पर विकलांगता के साथ जी रहे युवाओं पर हर वक़्त निगरानी रहती है जिसका मतलब है कि वे यौन अनुभवों से वंचित रह जाते हैं और अपनी यौनिकता को समझ नहीं पाते।
इस बात के अनेकों कारण हो सकते हैं कि महिलाएँ बच्चे क्यों नहीं चाहती हैं, ठीक वैसे ही जैसे इस बात के अनेकों कारण है कि वे बच्चे क्यों चाहती हैं। बच्चे होने के कारणों को सामान्य करार दिया जाना जबकि बच्चे ना होने की इच्छा को ‘सामान्य से अलग’ माना जाना, शर्मिंदा किया जाना और संदिग्ध की तरह करार दिया जाना, सभी के लिए नारीत्व का ‘एक ही अर्थ’ बनाने वाले है।
प्यार की अभिव्यक्ति कई रूपों में की जा सकती है और इसी तरह यौनिकता और इसे व्यक्त करने के भी कई तरीके होते हैं। हम सच्चाई को अधिक करीब से देख सकते हैं अगर हम इन सभी तरीकों को समझे और समग्र रूप से जाने।
What I am proposing here is to look at being in a relationship and being single together because what is important here is the idea of ‘be-ing’ as opposed to the stereotypes and perceptions attached to our relationship with ‘the One’ or to singlehood.
I believe that queer friendships and intimacies are sheer resistance, which not only swallow the despair and pain that might be perpetrated on gender-nonconforming people by their families, but also recognise all the lies about love that have been sold to us.
I love children and have at various times in my life flirted with the idea of adoption. But I have known since I was a child that I did not want to birth children. I have never been vague or ambivalent about this decision. I have been consistently clear and concise that this is not my calling.
By the end of the evening, the room was suffused with the celebration of singlehood, rather than any explanation or apology for it. It appeared that the solitary life was envied and extolled by those who have opted out of it as well as many who haven’t.
Indian families rarely say “I love you” to each other. Maybe it is an extension of the fact that parents are awkward while displaying any sign of affection to each other around their kids or elders.
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.
Practicing polyamory comes with the struggle of breaking down value systems and non-acceptance that may lead to ostracism not only from the heterosexual world but also from the queer and trans community. Claiming oneself as queer depends not only on how one identifies, but also, in society’s eyes, on who one’s partner is; being single does not qualify and neither does being polyamorous as the latter is considered ‘non-serious’.
Feminist critiques are often critiques of relationship structures: marriage, the joint and nuclear family, monogamy, and heteronormativity. Patriarchy, fundamentally a system of inheritance, finds a natural home in these structures.
This is why I’ve often wondered: how do feminists imagine and navigate romantic relationships? Do they have to constantly be thinking about and watching out for the many ways in which power, privilege, autonomy and entitlement manifest in their relationships and dating culture? It seems rather unromantic to do so.