Body
Brushstrokes: 11 Assumptions About Being Butch – And Why They Need to Stop
The misconceptions associated with the varied manifestations of femininity can be exceedingly deleterious and reinforce gender roles, traditional patriarchal ideas, and stereotypes related to bodies, expressions and the way we experience our sexual and romantic relationships.
By Curated Content
Interview – Indu Harikumar
I was watching something recently that said it was a bad thing to be vulnerable, but I don’t think it is a bad thing. I do see that there is a certain amount of power in vulnerability, it also needs courage, in my experience.
By Shikha Aleya
April 5, 2021
QUEERNESS AND PRIVACY[1]: BABY I LOVE IT WHEN YOU NEVER HOLD BACK FROM ME
For so long, private has meant a place that I was forced to create, claim and carve out to hide away from the public violence. And if I’ve been allowed to further wallow in it then I don’t want to – thank you very much.
By Curated Content
Reclining Vulnerability
Through multiple maquettes, I finally came across (since I myself did not know what the result of the form or figure would be) the Reclining Lady. She represents confident femininity and vulnerability. The feeling one has after taking a bath and sitting in the nude, drying oneself in unabashed nakedness.
By Noella Fernandes
April 19, 2021
Haunted by Shame: The Struggle of Being Rendered Invisible
Where did my body go? This is a question I have asked myself repeatedly over the last two years. My…
By Reva Puri
September 1, 2021
Navigating love, loneliness and singlehood
The desire for intimacy might rob one of the intimacy that one shares with oneself and thus, being with the beloved can leave one feeling even lonelier because of the continuing struggle for validation and comfort.
By Anonymous
January 3, 2022
Book Review: Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows
The story is so well told and is written with such a light, deft hand that it is almost easy to miss what makes it so quietly radical. To review it within the scope of exploring the coming together of literature and sexuality we must begin with its central cast of characters – the widows.
By Sheena D'Lima
January 3, 2022
Between Fear and Freedom
We are led to question what ‘safety’ really is: Will it be guaranteed by going gently, if at all, into that good night? Is it at all possible to freely and safely explore who we are and the world in which we live?
By Anjali
January 3, 2022
The Loves of Others
Both rejections and affirmations of the couple are skewered on this doubleness: It is the fullest expression of love and proximity available to us, and it bears all the insufficiencies of present social relations. Monogamous romantic commitment, like infallible lifelong attraction to only men or only women, is surely a minority tendency expediently elevated to a general social principle.
By Curated Content
February 15, 2022
Brushstrokes – Celebrating Sexuality
Taboos in relation to female desire, sexuality and the body are often addressed in my work. My recent artistic interest focuses on rituals that are primarily centred on agricultural communities in Bengal that involve the veneration of fertility symbols and celebration of feminine sexuality.
By Mitali Das
March 1, 2022
Negotiating Expression
I am still coming to terms with my own femininity, as with new learnings I find myself regaining many facets of my personality which were lost while trying to ‘act like a man’ and ‘act tough’.
By Ambica Naithani
March 1, 2022
Interview – This is what you bring to the table!
In this write up, we’d like to share a sense of what emerges from a compilation of these responses. This is based on the thoughts and feelings that come through for those of us here at In Plainspeak who have had the joy of reading the original responses as they came in to us. (Some of the quotations that follow have been slightly edited for flow and to help connect themes.) We know that most things in the realm of art, information and ideas lend themselves to a wide range of inferences and insights depending on the individuals making the inferences.
By Shikha Aleya
March 1, 2022
Loving My Dysfunctional Body: Lessons In Self Love After A Decade Of Self-Loathing
My body presented to me the first paradox in my feminism that I would encounter. How could I claim to be a feminist if I was not proud of the body I was born in? My advocacy as a sixth grader seemed to fail when it came to my own self.
By Feminism in India
High Heels and Loose-fitting Clothes: Movement Unfettered
How should I walk, what should my gait be like, what kind of clothes can I wear that will sort of cover me up…? This indecisiveness and the burden of, “What will others think?” are some of the worries, that I carried for a long time while making decisions like: “Is this going to expose too much skin?”, “Is this going to look a certain way that I may not like to present myself as?”
By Taniya Mondal
Dissociation
Who is this that works my hand?
Who is this that moves my pen?
Touch is a beetle creeping on this foreign thing
That wears my body like an evening.
By Jhelum Mukherjee
February 2, 2023