community

Editorial: Sexuality and Self-care
A photograph of a rocky landscape with a tabby cat sitting atop a grey rock, lined with green-brown grass, licking itself.

Continuing with our theme of self-care being about sustaining ourselves, our work, our movements, keeping the fires lit, and relating with love to ourselves, in our mid-month issue we bring you more articles looking at self-care from different perspectives – individual, queer, activist, collective, organisational, not necessarily separated, or in this order, of course.

By TARSHI
July 19, 2021
Editorial: Sexuality and Self-care
Editorial: Fandom and Sexuality
A colourful pattern of distorted concentric circles

Members of a fandom are not just passive consumers but active co-creators who imagine and build new worlds around their objects of adoration. Fandom communities offer fans the freedom of being able to imagine, create and share all sorts of scenarios, including romantic, erotic and sexual ones.

By TARSHI
November 15, 2021
Editorial: Fandom and Sexuality
Interview: Shruti Arora
A photograph of a woman’s face with a mural in the background. The woman has short black hair and a nose piercing. She is smiling.

There may already be another organisation in the community to share resources with but for community-led initiatives, a shared perspective on Safe, Inclusive, Sexuality-Affirming (SISA) spaces is also important. Sometimes when the shared perspective is not there, that becomes a challenge.

By Shikha Aleya
January 3, 2022
Interview: Shruti Arora
Editorial – Sexuality and SISA Spaces
Close-up of a sunflower field and the sun rising over hills in the background.

We envision SISA spaces as non-judgmental, inclusive, rights-based and affirming spaces wherein people’s sexuality, their identities, wellbeing, choices, desires and pleasure are respected.

By TARSHI
January 3, 2022
Editorial – Sexuality and SISA Spaces
Negotiating Expression
An abstract painting of teal squares with splashes of orange, white, blue and yellow.

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
Negotiating Expression
Locating the ‘Nagar’ in ‘Nagarkirtan’: Identifying the feeling of socio-sexual rootlessness in the Transgender community
Poster of the movie Nagarkirtan. A woman with short hair is leaning her chin on the shoulders of a man who is playing a flute. The name of the movie is written in Bengali, followed by its translation in English that reads “The Eunuch and The Flute Player”. Below it is the text that reads, “A Film by Kaushik Ganguly”, following which is a list of awards won by the movie at the 2018 National Awards.

The plot of the movie narrates the tale of the love that grows between two people who are struggling to survive in a world of rootlessness and are continuing to make a cosy home for themselves. The love between Madhu, who works as a food delivery boy, and Puti, who survives by singing at traffic signals, blossoms while they cross paths everyday at the traffic signal and the look that they exchange appears to us as if each of them is trying to find a home in the other.

By Ria Basu
April 18, 2022
Locating the ‘Nagar’ in ‘Nagarkirtan’: Identifying the feeling of socio-sexual rootlessness in the Transgender community
Interview – Raj Mariwala
A photograph of MHI director Raj Mariwala; she is playing with a grey-brown dog, squatting in grass.

Self-care is influenced by the environment we inhabit, the way we relate to others, the way we negotiate with other living beings or structures. Self-care is also interlinked with other types of care – whether that is in community resources, psychosocial support, engagement with medical and health care institutions, and of course in collective agency and solidarity.

By Shikha Aleya
January 3, 2023
Interview – Raj Mariwala
1 2 3