Voices
“You Will Never Learn!” – Conversations Between a 17 Year Old and a 53 Year Old
As if the challenges of parents bringing up adolescents in a world dominated by social media is not enough, the addition of teaching these parents to accept different sexual orientations and the fluidity of gender in a gender-binary world can be daunting.
By Dr Jai Ranjan Ram
The Politics of Politically Incorrect Jokes
Somewhere in the middle of Nanette, as I was crying and laughing, I thought about how political incorrectness is the soul of stand-up comedy.
By Shweta Krishnan
December 15, 2018
Queer Fanfiction and the Possibility of Queer Happy Endings
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.
By Rohini Banerjee
December 15, 2018
A Tale of Four Theme Songs
Any narrative that we construct, any single word that we use to describe a person, a relationship, an individual is bound to be incomplete.
By Danish Sheikh
December 15, 2018
Growing Up With Bollywood
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.
By Pauline Gomes
December 3, 2018
Sheriff Callie, Doc McStuffins and Barbie Dolls
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.
By ElsaMarie D'Silva
December 3, 2018
Some Contemporary Hindi Films that Changed the Way We Perceive Sexuality
When representing sexuality, these stories went beyond dramatic and one-dimensional representations of sex and sexual orientation.
By Breakthrough Media Team
Androgynous Divinity: Celebrating Transsexuality in the Kolkata Durga Puja
The replacement of the traditional Durga idol by that of the Ardhanarishwara, without any obdurate protest, highlights the true carnivalesque spirit of Kolkata’s most looked-forward-to festival.
By Kaustav Bakshi and Arnab Adak
Kinky Sex, Does it Always Have To Be Penetrative?
Combine sexuality, not sex, with LGBT, Polyamory, and BDSM and there’s a vast array of non-penetrative arousal, activity and sexual frameworks.
By Asmi
November 1, 2018
Sexuality and the Single Woman
I am confident in my sexuality and know what I want from life. I definitely do not want to be joined at the hip with a man to feel fulfilled. But I do know what I want from a man and I can enter a relationship from a point of equality rather than subservience.
By ElsaMarie D'Silva
November 1, 2018
The Binary That Matters
So, yes, it is “just a step”. If sexual minorities are to exercise bodily autonomy and sexual orientation as fundamental rights, laws need to written, rewritten and read down, even if one step at a time.
By Alankrita Singh
November 1, 2018
Too Beautiful to be Faithful
“It’s fascinating Yasmina, but also scary how sex or sexualising something can be ignited from our need for beauty that probably stirs positive emotions that we consider beautiful, such as feeling pleasure. But you know as well, desiring what we think is beautiful can generate fluidity: I can never know what I am exactly. All I know is that I was with men, and I was with women, and all of them tickled something within me. “
By Abdullah Erikat
October 15, 2018
A Knife that Cuts Skin and Soul
Beauty – a word that often haunts me, and ironically also a key idea in the process of my own…
By Pavel Sagolsem
October 15, 2018
Sense and Sensibility
As Sontag points out, camp is a mode of enjoyment, not judgment. It is intrinsically generous, and is a form of love for human nature, it relishes the awkward intensities of character. Central to camp is a tenderness of feeling and love that has gone into certain objects and personal styles.
By Siddharth Narrain
October 1, 2018
In Transit
I could have called it transformation instead of transitioning. But it became clear to me that transitioning does not necessarily imply a caterpillar-butterfly story but that it means a gradual acceptance of the self (and the self is ever-transitioning); of being comfortable in your own skin (even if it means shedding skin); of perfecting your act (even if it means learning a few new things).
By Rishit Wishit
September 17, 2018