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
“‘Dhandewali’s must smoke; paan is a must; a ‘dhandewali’ can never escape her identity; ‘dhandewali’s must dress ‘differently’… Spanning over 6 decades of Bollywood cinema, ‘Zinda Laash’ highlights how very little has changed across the ages when it comes to the industry’s representation of women in prostitution. Humorously drawing attention to stereotypes, while poignantly highlighting myths, ‘Zinda Laash’ is a tribute to every sex worker who is not recognised as a woman or a human being.”
A short movie with a twist ending, Belle de Jour (meaning ‘Beauty of the Day’, and this one is not the 1967 film by Luis Buñuel) begins by showing a stereotypical middle-class Indian woman who goes to work after taking care of her household.
In times of trouble, when all members of the family come together, there’s nothing that cannot be solved by an Indian family, including marital rape. Take a look at this satirical sitcom.
A short documentary on India’s menstruation man, Arunachalam Muruganantham, who wore an artificial uterus, was left by his wife for five years, and was called a pervert by the neighbours – all in his pursuit to create cheap yet effective sanitary napkins for women who cannot afford safe menstrual hygiene products.
Take the befuddled protagonist of this insightful short film. In an attempt to pamper himself for a special occasion, he decides to enter the precincts of an upscale salon. See what happens next.
What follows, in the short film Chutney, is a conversation – full of eerie, evocative storytelling – which not just sheds light on the class hierarchies in the middle to upper-middle class Indian household, but also the anxieties surrounding sexuality and sexual repression within it.
DarkMatter is a trans South Asian performance duo from New York. Watch them perform their spoken word poetry and chat about their trans politics, traversing issues of gender, race, desire, migration and more that connects to it.
When a literary canon is created and upheld, which are the voices that are amplified and which are the voices that are lost in the fray? Can marginalised bodies and experiences truly find representation in such a canon?
While the video’s message of women finding self-worth through beauty can be construed as sexist (our worth can’t be reduced to mere beauty and looks), and it also has the token ‘fat’ woman that one can criticise it for, one also can’t deny that the loving and acceptance of one’s body remains a universal, daily struggle of probably every woman the world over.
This video encapsulates five simple tips for those in social work to avoid an exhaustion of energies, although they are equally valid for anyone doing any kind of sustained work.