Dr. Tanaya Narendra, widely known as Dr Cuterus, is a University of Oxford trained embryologist, medical doctor, and bestselling author who, through her digital platforms, books, podcasts, and media work, has redefined how health information is consumed in India and beyond. As the creator of Dr. Cuterus, Tanaya has built a trusted platform that has at this time, over 1.9 million Instagram followers and 800K+ YouTube subscribers, breaking taboos around reproductive health, sexuality education, and body literacy. Her debut book, Dr Cuterus: Everything Nobody Tells You About Your Body, was a breakout success and was translated into multiple languages. Tanaya’s work sits at the intersection of medicine, public health, feminism, and culture, and is widely recognised for combining clinical rigour with clarity, humour, and cultural relevance.
Shikha Aleya (SA): It is very exciting to have you here with us for this issue of In Plainspeak on Self and Sexuality, thank you Tanaya, Dr. Cuterus! In fact, to begin, I’m going to request you to tell us about Tanaya, Dr. Tanaya Narendra, Dr. Cuterus – and also Team Cuterus. This is a lot of selves rolling about together, and we’d like to meet them all! Where does it all begin and merge, and what are the kinds of boundaries that shape these selves?
Tanaya Narendra (TN): I don’t know if the boundaries merge or the boundaries are separate. I think I was always Dr. Cuterus. I’ve been doing, you know, myth-busting, almost like sexuality education agony aunting since I can remember. So, I don’t think there’s a distinct Tanaya, there’s a distinct Dr. Cuterus, there’s a distinct identity. It’s all of these rolled into one and I really don’t know if there’s a separation at all.
What I think definitely deserves a separate mention is the team. So Team Cuterus, especially my manager who runs everything and sorts everything out for me including managing literally all the collaborations, all the planning, all the just everything. My editor Shivangi, she does a lot of work for me in making sure the videos are doing beautifully and are conveying the message I want in a quirky way. My other editor Stanley who puts in so much effort into the long videos that I make, and yeah just so many people that keep the show running that I wouldn’t be able to do all of this without. So a huge, huge, huge shout out to Team Cuterus!
SA: You listen to, and speak to a lot of people, including many young people, on subjects that include sexuality, relationships, the body, pleasure and wellbeing. What impressions are you left with when you consider the relationship people build between their own self and sexuality? Are there trends, insights, changes that reveal themselves to you?
TN: I think one of the starkest things that I’ve noticed in having these conversations with people, young and old and middle-aged, is that there’s a very strong difference in the way younger people are approaching relationships with themselves and their sexuality. They’re obviously born in a more open environment so they are able to have those conversations with a lot more grace and a lot more confidence than say my generation ever was – and I’m not even going to get into what it was like for the older generation where it was considered completely taboo to talk about these things. Like even my generation had some avenues, we had shows like Sex in the City even if they were, you know, set in foreign lands. There’s a lot more reservation when it comes to exploring your sex and sexuality for my generation, the older ones, whereas the younger generation, Gen Z, Gen Alpha, they’re all having such nuanced takes at such a young age and so much liberal thought in how they want to choose to explore these things.
What I also really, really love is how much they choose to advocate for themselves especially when it comes to medical care. We already know so much about the rampant misogyny in medicine that leads to misdiagnosis that leads to under diagnosis that leads to just the de-centring of women in women’s health, which is such a sad thing, but these generations have been empowered with information. They’ve been empowered with access. They’ve been empowered with confidence that we were really never taught to have, that really changes their relationships with themselves, their sexuality, and their medical care, which is I think the biggest takeaway that I have from these interactions.
SA: Thank you! Taking that forward into the macro space: Is it important to pause and consider this connection between self and sexuality not just as the individuals we are, but as the families – the personal, professional, business communities – and this interdependent organism we call society? When you wade into the wider public spaces that create and influence life possibilities for us all, you engage with diverse others on larger issues of justice, opportunity and equality. Please share some of your experiences with such engagements.
TN: I think it’s going to be difficult to answer the question in a generalised way, simply because when you work as a medical doctor, the kind of interactions you have are so incredibly diverse, where you’re meeting, say, maybe somebody from the hijra community, who doesn’t have access to de-stigmatised care at all. I’m not even talking about sexual health, just general dignity in their daily interactions in a healthcare space, or their daily interactions overall. Whereas you’re also meeting, say, a 75 year old woman who comes from a lot of privilege, comes from a rich family, comes from good access, comes from money, but still has had her menopausal symptoms and pain with sex dismissed for so, so, so long, because we’re not equipped to deal with sexual health in our country. Or, when it comes to interacting with a young person who, maybe, doesn’t have the luxury of taking care of themselves fully by dedicating more time and energy towards their overall health. So non-communicable issues, lifestyle issues, can really hamper how their life functions and how they’re able to treat their medical conditions.
Obviously, I see this from a very medical lens, given that that’s my main space of work. But between Instagram and YouTube, and then, you know, medicine, what has happened is that it’s really broadened my sphere in understanding the socioeconomic aspects of medicine. The sociology of medicine is not something we’re ever taught. And when it comes to dealing with a branch of medicine as underserved and as stigmatised as sexual health, I think that problem gets compounded several times over. And it also increases the amount of insights we get to see.
So it’s difficult to give a widespread, broad strokes sweeping generalisation. But yes, what it has taught me is that social medicine needs more priority. And we need to integrate better holistic care. We need to see medicine beyond symptoms and treatment, because there’s so much more that influences these outcomes. Access, marginalisation, funds, caste, class, gender identity, presentation, all of these things have such a huge role to play in how we see medicine and how we see public health evolving, that it’s an extremely outsized impact. And we need to prioritise that more.
SA: As a take home – what is your understanding of a world where the self is safe to evolve, in a state of wellbeing, and experiences a positive and self-affirming sexuality? What do you see, and how does it come together?
TN: A world that sees positive and self-affirming sexuality is a world where we are allowed to be just as we are, without necessarily having to fight for it. Maybe that’s an overly optimistic worldview, but to make it very reductive, think of sexuality as food – some people like their food spicy, some people like their food bland, some people like their food sweet, some people like their food sour, some people like their food really salty. There is nobody invalidating anybody else’s choices or preferences in food. When it comes to sexuality, and sexuality is not a preference, it’s an orientation, it’s not something you’re choosing. I like what I like, I do what I do, that’s entirely my business. Just as what I enjoy eating is entirely my business. When nobody invalidates another person’s food choices, how do we go ahead and invalidate peoples sexual orientation or whatever they want/desire/do? No yucking anyone’s yum, that’s my overly optimistic worldview.
I wish there were a utopian world that was as comfortable with different sexualities as we are with different kinds of food preferences. I know this is probably an unhinged utopian and optimistic take, but I wish that just as we have different kinds of food bloggers, we had sexuality bloggers. Where some people are focussing on vlogging about Korean food, some people are focussed on vlogging about vegan food – the same way if we had sexuality bloggers where somebody was focussing on speaking about their experience as a pansexual person, or somebody who’s speaking about their experience about being a straight person, or somebody speaking about their experience with their own sexuality, or somebody speaking about their experience with shibari, the Japanese art of tying up.
Just the diversity has to be celebrated and accepted as is without having to a fight so much for it and without having to make a whole spiel – that is what I hope to see, and obviously I’m speaking purely from a content perspective here when I give that example, but I mean that largely. I wish the world celebrated the diversity of sexuality and our own relationships with ourselves and our bodies and other people in our lives. That would be my utopian, optimistic dream.
Cover image shared by Dr. Tanaya Narendra
