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The Editorial: Anniversary Issue

We are one year old! Yes, In Plainspeak has been publishing articles from around the Global South, especially India and the South and South East Asia region for a year now.

In our first anniversary issue and to commemorate Human Rights Day we bring back some articles on sexuality and rights that were published over the year…

The Issue in Focus section has three articles: Oishik Sircar’s ‘Desire against Desire’ featured in the Law and Sexuality issue, emphasises the role played by law in the development of nuanced thinking around sexuality. ‘Sexual Rights’ featured in the issue of the same name and written by Radhika Chandiramani highlights why sexual rights matter. As we head into 2015 and discussions on the post-2015 agenda, we also feature Shweta Krishnan’s article, ‘Beyond the Simple Formulas’ on Family Planning and sexual rights, featured originally in the issue on Women.

In the interview section read Payoshini Mitra’s experience working as a researcher and activist in the area of Gender Issues in Sports, originally featured in the Sports and Sexuality issue,and watch Pramada Menon talk about her inspiring work and life as well as her stand up performance ‘Fat, Feminist and Free’ in her interview from the issue on Body Image.

Talking about body image we also have from the same issue the I-column written by Ekta Oza about being the ‘wrong size’,and a personal account from Malini Chib who has written about sex, love and relationships for a woman living with disabilities published in the ‘Disability and Sexuality’ issue.

We revisit Bishakha Datta’s review of the film ‘Blue is the Warmest Color’ from the issue on Women and Neha Naqvi’s review of the exhibit ‘Bound to be Free’ featured in the Queer Rights issue.

The Voices section relooks at the articles ‘Providing sexual services to persons with disabilities’ by Rachael Wotton, featured in the Disability and Sexuality issue, the Dove campaign by Parigya Sharma featured in the Body Image issue, and Sheema Kirmani’s interview  featured in the Art and Activism issue.

Brushstrokes features works of Shilo Suleman as seen in‘The Fearless Campaign’. The Video section has the short film ‘Lost and Found’ by Shrenik featured in the Queer Rights issue. Gazal’s interview from the same issue, ‘Women we are proud of’ from the issue on Women and an article on consent from the Consent and Violence issue are in the Hindi section.

Also, please take a look at the content for the popular posts at our different corners: FAQs, Innovations as well as the Food cornersTARSHI’s corner features a new Manual on Integrated Counselling which is a joint effort of TARSHI and IPPF SARO. We also have the results of a blog survey in TARSHI’s corner this time – thank you to those of you who took the time to respond to the survey last month!

As the year is coming to a close, and we look back and ahead, let’s also begin to think about what we have done this year and what we want to do differently in 2015.