A digital magazine on sexuality, based in the Global South: We are working towards cultivating safe, inclusive, and self-affirming spaces in which all individuals can express themselves without fear, judgement or shame
If sharing was a proverbial coin at the rehabilitation facility, connections were one side of it, and sexuality was the other. Men and women were not allowed to touch one another – no handshakes or hugs or an eager slap on the back.
Questions, questions and inevitably more questions! That seems to be the human condition when it comes to connections, especially our connections with other people. It’s complicated, right?
Digital entanglements transcend bodies, time, geographical borders and boundaries, influencing – and perhaps fundamentally changing – the ways in which we understand, explore and express our sexuality.
This issue of In Plainspeak while inviting us to embrace the joys and pleasure in movement, also questions the ways in which movements are facilitated or obstructed, visibilised or invisibilised, and the spaces that we must envision to find freedom in/to movement.
Coupled with the tendency to approach sexuality with seriousness, play often remains absent in discussions of sexuality. Sexuality shares the elements of fun, pleasure and spontaneity that are found in play.
“I feel that connection is the survival language of the LGBTQIA+ community. The sense of a common struggle makes way for developing quick yet lasting connections among the community…”
So I am realising now that for me the space of borderlessness applies to everything. It applies to the physical and topographical border as it does to the borders we create between gender and their expressions. I think I would like to argue for a truly borderless understanding of the world.
Companions take many forms. Using the word very loosely here, a companion is anyone the self is connected to, anywhere, at any point in time, from a family member, to a stranger on a train.
To chase down our own vulnerabilities around sexuality is a short run around the corner, five minutes ago, last night sleeping alone, with a lover, a partner who lost interest, the Insta post that leaves you feeling you’re not good enough for the hug, the kiss, the cuddle and are you perhaps the A of LGBTQIA+?
Play is not only about cocks, balls, vaginas, paddles, or anything that happens between two consenting adults in the bedroom. It’s also about what goes on in a masochist’s mind before they submit to a cane, or a whip, and before they orgasm from the pain.
Four More Shots Please! moves in the right direction when it comes to women (of a particular social stratum), their lives, and feminism at large – even if it takes small, stumbling, baby steps towards it.
That offline patriarchal norms are travelling online – lock, stock and barrel. Digital technologies may appear to be gender-neutral, but floating below their waters is the whole kit and caboodle of patriarchy.