Voices
Meanings, Naughty and Potent!
Lots of things, people, and moments have possibilities for stirring the erotic within us. The bible, the dictionary or the stories on nifty.org may become pre-texts to something new within ourselves and others.
By Andy Stephen Silveira
July 15, 2019
Of ‘Kinkfests’ And Forbidden Fantasies: The Subversive Potential of Erotic Fanfiction
In a society where queer sexuality had been demonised in not just mainstream fiction but also mainstream culture, the erotic fanfiction that emerged out of kinkfests became an important source of queer sex-positivity.
By Rohini Banerjee
Why Do We Find Erotica Shameful?
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.
By Tulika Parikh
July 1, 2019
Youth, Class and Sexuality
Class is a very important factor if you want to associate with “smart” company. Your looks, your fashion sense, your taste in music, your knowledge about international issues and celebrity gossip become very important to belong to “that” bunch of people.
By Amit Timilsina
June 15, 2019
When The Stigma Attached to Sex Deprives Women of Worker Status
This stigma of caste, class and sexuality is a pervasive amalgamation of socio-cultural mindsets that take root and function in myriad complex ways, and paint working women in broad, sweeping, agency-less brush strokes.
By Mahika Banerji
Tinder-ing Lessons!
Honestly, there weren’t any specific rules for the game,
Consent basics, a little humour, but no stigma, no shame.
By Shruti Batra
June 1, 2019
Kabhi Class Kabhie Gender: Watching K3G in a North American Anthropology Classroom
Watching K3G with my students brings forward new ways of understanding how concepts like socioeconomic class, gender, sexuality, and diasporic imaginaries are embedded with subtle messages of morality and longing and how these messages are ingrained in our Bollywood viewing experiences.
By Jessica Chandras
Worlds Within Queer Worlds: Presence, Politics and Diversity
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.
By Sohini Chatterjee
The Union of Our Inner Masculine and Inner Feminine
Feminine energy is supposed to be yin, receptive, gentle, intuitive,and fulfilling. Masculine energy is supposed to be yang, active, fast, fierce, emptying, goal-oriented and focused.
By Pallavi Barnwal
Engaging With Diversity and Sexuality in Education
From my experiences, I find that diversity is not an end unto itself. Instead, it is a tool for reflection, a mirror that shows not only who we, and the society we live in, are in the present, but what we aspire to be in the future.
By Dana Burton
Loitering Online: Conditions of Possibility
To claim the public then in arbitrary, messy and oppositional ways, whether on the streets or online is to challenge the neoliberal impulse which is located in the creation of order. To create place, to stake claim, thwarts the desires for the sanitised neoliberal city and is a politics.
By Shilpa Phadke
April 15, 2019
Where Do I Go?
As renowned queer scholar Judith Butler said, “For those who are still looking to become possible, possibility is a necessity.” This is essential but also easier said than done.
By Smita Vanniyar
April 1, 2019
Love, Lust and PDA
Six years later (and out of such an abusive relationship), as I sit in a Gender Studies classroom discussing public and private spheres, being introduced to the feminist ideology of the personal being political, I reflect back and see my experiences as emerging from a complex discursive pattern. The peculiar way in which heterosexual romantic relationships are envisaged and the potentiality of them being disruptive of traditional arrangements of companionship requires them to be manifested outside of the four walls of home and family. Yet, one faces a situation of a pathetic lack of safe spaces within the public sphere and the traditional discourse of love being private and contained within the private sphere…
By Anannya Chatterjee
April 1, 2019
(In)Convenient Choices and Queer Affective Lives: The Story of My Mother and Me
My mother and I have both made certain choices, sometimes inconvenient for me, sometimes difficult for her, but those choices have revealed to me the strength of our relationship and alternative possibilities that she and I can imagine together.
By Sohini Chatterjee