Feminism
Tales delicately yet powerfully draws out the conflict between sex workers and feminism in India,at a time when a lot of feminists thought of prostitution through a SWERF lens[1].
At the now infamous All India Bakchod Knockout roast last year, comedian Aditi Mittal told this joke about her fellow…
Several recent mainstream Hindi films have dealt with issues of sexuality and gender not usually discussed in the intended audience’s drawing rooms.
What is the language, across languages, that we associate with sexuality? Is it healing? Empowering? Does this language comfort and console? Does it lift you up and make you feel good about who you are?
It’s an entire genre of poetry known as rekhti, which was characterised by a female speaker and preoccupation with women’s everyday lives.It is counter posed to rekhta, the “literature narrated in the masculine voice”.
Often when we speak of families and family history, we talk genetics, traditions and inheritance of all kinds. Somehow our relationship by blood or otherwise to a clan is supposed to help us identify our place in the universe. So there’s family medical history, family culture, family traditions of food and career. But sexuality? A family history that focuses on sexuality? What would that even mean?
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.
How we treat each other in our daily lives informs our feminist praxis. How we fail each other in our daily lives through the use of unkind language, dismissal of mental illnesses, making fun of one’s own choices, disrespecting personal boundaries (and so on), also counter our feminist praxis.
… practicing a life rooted in love and a shared sense of oneness with the living world.
The virtual world allows me to challenge the hold of patriarchy on my ‘effeminate’ body; in a sense, it allows me to evade the policing of desire that my body shares with another, its flows and slippages, the messy and the unkempt. While virtual sex offers a window to revisit the sensual, it is also not immune to limitations and insecurities.
The link between women’s clothing and patriarchy is important to acknowledge and understand if we are to address some pertinent questions around women’s agency and ability to exercise control over their choices, bodies and sexuality – questions that feminists around the world, including in South Asia, continue to struggle with.
Despite the lack of a formal Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) curriculum in place in India, there has been a growing interest in providing CSE programmes in schools.
Social media and dating platforms provide new opportunities for connection, but they also elevate the potential risk of harm associated with any online engagement. The anonymity of the interaction can serve both as a source of freedom and potential exploitation.
Unlike many trans-masculine people who identified as lesbians/tomboys/butch pre-transitioning, I refused to abandon my ‘lesbian’ identity post-transitioning. A negotiation that took time to flourish.
One gets introduced to feminism through various modes: through books, through university courses, through parents and sometimes one does not…