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
While we’ve grown used to hearing porn blamed for society’s ills, it’s now the medium’s comparatively matronly cousin – romance novels – that have come under scrutiny.
Comicbooks sell us the fantasy of larger-than-life superheroes, the victory of good over evil, the promise of fighting for a better, inclusive world. But alas, when it comes to the characters themselves, this very inclusivity is often nowhere to be found.
Even in a country obsessed with anime, Kondo’s wedding shocked many. But he wants to be recognised as a “sexual minority” who can’t imagine dating a flesh-and-blood woman.
And so, in the mid-month issue we have Shweta Krishnan examining the place of political incorrectness in stand-up comedy, Rohini Banerjee talking about how fanfiction allowed her to delve into alternative worlds, and…
While pop culture will continue to exist in the mainstream, it also provides us the scope to create alternative narratives and/ or counter-narratives that question, challenge and unpack the existing stereotypes and norms.
Deena Mohamed, Egyptian artist, illustrator and designer, speaks to us about her art and her perspective on politics, patriarchy, feminism, and gender and sexuality.
BDSM has been existent in discussion all the way from the time of the Marquis de Sade. However, the only thing that ’Fifty Shades of Grey’ seems to have done is shine the spotlight on a lifestyle that has existed and been judged for quite some time now.
The discursive power vested in audio-visual media can prove to be emancipatory if it seeks to re-write the scripts of love, to expand it to include various subjectivities, disturb the patriarchal gendered dynamics that it is based on by introducing a story that allows the audience to imagine it in various different ways.
When Deepa Mehta’s Fire came out in 1996, violent protests roiled India over the depiction of romance between two female leads. There is no homosexuality in India, demonstrators declared while burning effigies in the Capital. In contrast, when Margarita With A Straw came out in 2014, it received accolades for its sensitive portrayal of queer desire in a woman with disability.
Fanfiction was more than just writing your own stories about the characters or the setting of your favourite book or TV show; it was a questioning of the dominant mainstream pop culture narrative as a whole.
Using silent actions and secret fulfillment of what society considers as sin and the law condemns as illegal, the text offers an example of the silence of resistance.
In fact, once when I referred to Sheriff Callie (a cartoon character) as a man, I was sternly told she is a woman. Doc McStuffins, another of their favourite cartoon characters, is a smart girl who can fix anything. She inspires my nieces to think boldly.