Author: Neel

Wall-art of a face till the bridge of the nose. The face is coloured in peach, grey, and shades of blue. The eyes, green, are lined in black and have spots of yellow, brown, and blue colour around them. Under the left eye, there are yellow dots. The hair is streaked with purple and blue.

Probing the Screen: Pleasure in the Virtual World

·June 15, 2021
·Neel
·0 Comments

The virtual world allows me to challenge the hold of patriarchy on my ‘effeminate’ body; in a sense, it allows me to evade the policing of desire that my body shares with another, its flows and slippages, the messy and the unkempt. While virtual sex offers a window to revisit the sensual, it is also not immune to limitations and insecurities.

All the World’s a Stage

·December 15, 2020
·Neel
·0 Comments

The ways I look at femininity have evolved as I have. Growing up in a space driven by dance and music, my first acquaintance with the adornments a gendered body carries were the performances I did of Gitabitan, a collection of songs and plays by Rabindranath Tagore. To my younger, past self, my gender identity was…

Probing the Screen: Pleasure in the Virtual World

·August 14, 2020
·Neel
·0 Comments

The virtual world allows me to challenge the hold of patriarchy on my ‘effeminate’ body; in a sense, it allows me to evade the policing of desire that my body shares with another, its flows and slippages, the messy and the unkempt.

A sculpture of a woman leaning downwards

Becoming a Womxn: An Autobiography on Pleasure

·February 17, 2020
·Neel
·0 Comments

Pleasure, in the context of the private, defines the parlance of sexual satisfaction. As a womxn, the private is also the public: how I present and play with my gender, is a way of seeking validation of who I am.

In Plainspeak publishes two issues with a theme every month.
A cross-cutting theme across all forthcoming issues in 2021 is how we can expand safe, inclusive sexuality-affirming spaces.

THIS ISSUE:

September – Intersectionality and Sexuality – II Issue – Sept 15, 2021
Distinct and overlapping aspects of our actual and perceived identity, such as gender, age, class, caste, dis/ability, and sexual orientation, to name a few, affect how we are received in the world. In other words, our privileges and oppressions are an intricate network woven on the basis of where we are seen to be located on different dimensions. And so, whether we can assert agency in our sexual lives, access healthcare services, safely express our gender identity and sexual orientation, and in other ways enjoy our sexual and reproductive rights, depends on the interplay of multiple factors. Intersectionality emphasises the interconnections of the freedoms and opportunities we access, and our privileges and marginalisations. The September issue of In Plainspeak considers intersectionality as an evolving and dynamic concept, and explores its potential in not only cultivating safe, inclusive and sexuality-affirming spaces but also in imagining a world organised around shared values of feminist social justice.

October – Labour and Sexuality
What we are expected to do and how, and the compensation and recognition we receive for our labour are influenced by socio-cultural attitudes around gender, disability, caste, class, and so on. And because our parameters to assess labour and to reward it, such as productivity or recompense, do not take into account the infinite permutations and combinations of our unique location in our context and therefore whether or not we can exercise agency, enjoy choice and freedoms, and have access to opportunities, not all aspects of our labour – be it sitting at a desk for eight hours or being in the fields at the crack of dawn, or cooking and cleaning, or even lending a patient ear – are considered ‘useful’, ‘productive’, or ‘work’ at all. The October issue of In Plainspeakattempts to tie together physical, domestic, reproductive, emotional, creative, and other forms of labour with sexuality, and explore its interplay with leisure, bodily autonomy and integrity, interpersonal relationships, and sexual and reproductive health and rights.

November – Fandom and Sexuality
Fandom is a community forged around shared enthusiasm for a particular aspect of popular culture, be it literature, film/television, music, art, sport, and what have you! Fandom is a space of belongingness, of unrestrained expression, of subverting conventions, of exploring the taboo, and of resisting hetero-patriarchy and imagining, in its place, a world vibrant with an array of gender identities, sexual orientations, and expressions. Scaffolded by an interest of its members in the canon, i.e., the original/source material, fandom brims with creative avenues of engagement in fanfiction, fanart, videos, songs, cosplay, and so on, where anything and everything is possible – from the romantic and the erotic, to the spiritual and the magical. In the November issue of In Plainspeak, we explore the potential of fandom as a safe, inclusive, and self-affirming space in the context of gender and sexuality

For future issue themes, click here.

Would you like to contribute? Send an email to blogeditor@tarshi.net with your idea. Do take a look at our submission guidelines!

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