Information is power, and in the control of information lies the control of power. Power over events that impact the whole world and power over our individual lives. We see, everyday, firsthand, how information is withheld, manipulated and distorted. Sometimes it becomes difficult to sift the sense from the nonsense. But try, we must.
Ayesha Susan Thomas brilliantly exposes the nonsense that forms the content of Indian medical textbooks. Here’s a gem: Flabby breasts? That means you are ‘habituated’ to sex. Ayesha invites us to question whether information is indeed fact, and what that means for the ways we see our own and others’ bodies, behaviours and practices.
We search for meaning, even if that meaning is built on shaky foundations. Prarthana Pai learned about bodies, sexuality and relationships “not through honest conversations but through what nobody said.” What is never talked about becomes a huge hole, and that hole gets filled with shame, guilt, half-baked ideas and rigid beliefs that we mistake for facts.
Antara Buzarbaruah compares the flows of information now with those in 2005 when she was growing up. Much has changed, but young people still get most of their information about sexuality from their informal social networks. Young people are not passive consumers of information; they make meaning of the information they access be it through their friends or AI chatbots.
Other people’s experiences can be a source of information and making meaning of what life offers us. Love, Sex and India: The Agents of Ishq Anthology put together by Paromita Vohra gets a glowing review from Anant. A book of essays, poems and personal accounts, for Anant it challenges conventional notions of thinking about the many ways we love, live and have sex.
In Hindi, Imran Khan writes about sexualised deepfakes – images and videos of women made with AI technology that are used as digital weapons against women’s autonomy, dignity and safety. A possible defence? More digital literacy and an awareness of digital rights.
We also bring you a translation of Rohini Banerjee’s article on the issue of responsible representation in the news media and popular culture because whether we like it or not, the media subtly and, increasingly, not so subtly influences how we think about sexuality and much else.
A search for information on making the perfect scrambled egg scrambles the mind, if not the egg! Use a dash of milk. Milk, never. Low heat. High flame. Whisk the egg. Don’t whisk, just mix. And so on. And that’s just information on how to scramble an egg. What happens when it comes to sexuality? To questions more important than eggs?
Information is never neutral. AI is not neutral. The algorithms that AI is based on are not neutral. So, how do we make sense of information? By squinting, suggests Sayantan. Just because AI works to scale – to a scale beyond that of an individual person – does not mean it is devoid of bias. AI is only technology, not an oracle of the future. And that is why Sayantan Datta tells us that we must learn to see differently, to squint at its claims, speed and promises. Mridul writes from personal experience about what AI offers and what it takes away. He cautions us not to pine for a pre-AI era, but to instead ask better questions of the information we receive and be more responsible about what we share. As Mridul aptly puts it, good information about sexuality should make us feel seen, not exposed.
Siddharth Narrain in an interview with Shikha Aleya makes a compelling case for us to be in conversation with other people, not machines. Given the massive explosion of information and technologically-mediated communications, we need to pause, to reflect, and also to preserve our histories and memories to make sense of the information that all of us are swimming in today.
Pause, look around, proceed. That’s good advice to cross a road. A good way to deal with a surfeit of information too. It is not only young people who are confused by a glut of information, but also their teachers. Ayesha Khaliq, Gayatri, Nandhini and Tanvika highlight the fact that teachers are learners too. Teachers themselves require training and nonjudgmental spaces of empathy if they are to create safe and inclusive schools. Ishita Bagchi writes evocatively about how the computer lab (remember those?) had a bell, and the internet doesn’t. Today’s questions, as she points out, are not just what are teens searching for and how do we keep them safe, but what kind of digital world do we want to build for them and what role do we each play in shaping it? Khushi Kansal, Vijaya Venkatesh and Dr. Sangeeta Saksena show us how to demystify sexuality education for every learner. The secret lies not in simplifying content but in designing it by taking learner variability into account from the very outset to create accessible sexuality education.
A surfeit of information is one problem. A lack of information is another. For two and a half years, students Aradhana Phadke Sardesai and Abhishree Tripathi followed up on starting an initiative to spread awareness and information on gender and sexuality in their school. Despite promises from the school administration, it just never happened. Read their account written with Gen Z passion and dark humour.
Noting that her UGC admit card states her gender as female and not woman, Khushi T. reflects on how and from where our knowledge of sex, sexuality, gender, and bodies comes. For Khushi, we must take matters in our own hands, because ignorance is a choice we make. Gurveen Khanuja grew up believing that she had never been taught about sexuality. But the pieces were always there – unspoken rules, gossip, warnings, things that people said and didn’t – she just needed to connect them. Today, as a sexuality educator, she helps young people make sense of information.
And so we must keep asking questions. In Peek-a-Boo, our delightful new column reviewing books for readers of all ages, Riya Parikh reminds us that books offer us the possibility of a slower conversation – read, pause, reflect, return. The two books Riya reviews, Beti Kare Sawaal and Beta Kare Sawaal, may not give us all the answers (truly good books never do), but they reaffirm our right to keep asking questions.
In Hindi, Imran Khan examines how the digital world is both a source of empowerment and harm for queer communities. Digital literacy, inclusive education, platform accountability, and queer-led storytelling and fact-checking can challenge misinformation and build a more inclusive, informed, and equitable digital space.
In translation, read Prarthana Pai’s article about how what we were never told still gets absorbed, solidifies and becomes ‘fact’, shaping us until we are able to loosen it, let it down and finally feel okay.
Go gently. Sift the sense from the nonsense.
Cover image by Olga Mrozek for IPPF x Fine Acts on The Greats
