Voices
Keeping It All Secret
In a society that restricts one’s expression of sexuality and perpetuates patriarchal gender norms, there is little room offered for open exploration. With no Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) in schools and no conversation about sexuality with parents, children are ill-equipped to navigate their puberty as adolescents, and dating and relationships as young adults.
By Shubhangi Kashyap
September 2, 2019
Keep it Light
I tell them to laugh freely but question as much too. This gives them a sense of sheer relief to be able to ask, talk, question, because, even if it is ‘really bad’, after all, it’s being said in ‘lightness, is it not?
By Gunjan Sharma
May 17, 2023
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
Journey from Stigma to Pleasure
For a long time, female bodies were considered similar to male bodies, just shorter, and most research and medical trials focused primarily on the male body with the assumption that the same would work on the female body.
By Pooja Singh and Ramneek Banga
August 14, 2020
Job Description: Break into the Boys’ Club
I was recently speaking to a senior PSU (Public Sector Undertaking) official who has worked in the same office for…
By Gitanjali
August 20, 2024
Jessica Singh’s Poetry
SPREAD. BUT NOT READ I feel like you walk over me, all over me, Your gait was long and…
By Jessica
April 5, 2021
Jasmine Stains
My hair smells like jasmine / From the wedding I went to last night / When I tethered my untameable hair with flowers,
By Malini Gopalakrishnan
August 1, 2018
Jasmine Stains
Desire is a man’s turf, right up there with moustaches and Adam’s apples / I’m the apple, I am the snake, I am Eve / I am the vibrator nestled between flimsy, cheap lace underwear / I am the shame, of saying I came
By Malini Gopalakrishnan
January 2, 2019
I’m a Fennel for Now
“I’m afraid because I bring to bed more than just one soul of a scared conflicted boy. I’m bringing to bed a whole army that not only runs the streets within me but also spills out over my body and the body of the boy next to me.”
By Abdullah Erikat
September 4, 2018
Is This The Best A Man Can Be?
In a patriarchal society, masculinities manifest or show-up as a very particular set of behaviours such as being controlling and dominating, often in violent ways. In fact, the root of masculinities in a patriarchal society emphasises practicing this violence and control.
By Saswati Chatterjee and Pauline Gomes
October 1, 2019
Is POCSO Failing Adolescent Sexuality?
Age of consent deems sexual activity with persons below the set age as statutory rape, which POCSO has set at 18 years. However, the law in practice faces some unintended consequences, in relation to who it prosecutes and their ages.
By Mrinalini and Udita
September 1, 2020
Intersections between Mental Health and Human Rights: The case of transwomen and transmen in Malaysia
Last week, I was at The Third International Conference on Human Rights and Peace and Conflict in Southeast Asia organised…
By Vizla Kumaresan
India’s Daughter: When Men Come Together, But Women Stand Divided
Two weeks before India’s Daughter made it to the headlines, I came across this new pledge for Delhi school kids,…
By Shweta Krishnan
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
In the Name of the Mother….
A basic analysis of the most powerful swear words reveals that the vast majority are somehow related to sex (as in the act) or sexuality.
By Suchitra Dalvie
May 1, 2018