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Editorial – Movement and Sexuality
An abstract photo of blurred blue and white vertical lines that are spanning outwards

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.

By TARSHI
May 19, 2022
Editorial – Movement and Sexuality
Interview – Tishani Doshi
Photograph of a woman with long hair in red sari, sitting with a brown dog against a background of bushes with vines and pink azaleas. The woman is resting her chin on one hand and petting the dog with the other.

I’ve essentially thought of movement as a kind of freedom, but one that has the capacity to destabilise you in some way. My most creative moments are when I’m not moving, when I am in fact rooted and still.

By Shikha Aleya
May 3, 2022
Interview – Tishani Doshi
The Birds and the Bees: On Play and Sexuality
A screengrab from the Hindi movie Padosan showing a man holding a pillow.

How would we see the world really, if we were open to the idea that it is not purpose but play that drives us to seek companionship, be it an orchid seeking a pollinator or a human seeking another?

By Shweta Krishnan
December 1, 2021
The Birds and the Bees: On Play and Sexuality
A Manifesto for Single Women 
Picture of a white flower on a blue background. Two hands can be seen touching each other behind the flower

Singleness represents eschewing all that patriarchy imposes on us in the name of emotional and financial protection. Women who decide not to marry defy age-old ‘wisdom’ mixed with terrible psychological and biologically-backed explanations.

By Sonia Soans
February 1, 2021
A Manifesto for Single Women 
Poem: ‘A debauchee’s ode to self-love’
A black and white picture of a person’s legs folded in the form of v

All I have known of loving men is emotional labour, And by that, I mean back-breaking, soul-sucking toil, Oh, the relief of carrying nothing but yourself, Oh, the relief of taking nothing but pleasure from their sex

By Malini Gopalakrishnan
February 1, 2021
Poem: ‘A debauchee’s ode to self-love’