Gender
Community and Sexuality: Learning a Politics of Unbelonging
After writing the words “Community and Sexuality” as the working title of this piece, I attempted to begin writing many…
By Chayanika Shah
Interview: Pawan Dhall on his own journey of building communities – Part 1
In this issue of In Plainspeak, we interview Pawan Dhall, Founding Trustee of Varta Trust, queer activist, writer and social researcher. He is also the editor of the Varta webzine, promoting and sustaining dialogue on gender and sexuality, across diverse groups of people. As Pawan says, “We are all strung together on a spectrum of gender and sexuality, and we don’t have to be fixed at a single point on the spectrum throughout our lives.”
By Shikha Aleya
The Paradox of Principles
I do not feel the need to fight the feminist war within these spaces all the time, now that it has become my home. I have come to terms with the idea that certain contradictions can co-exist peacefully like the yin and yang. But still, sometimes, my mind is roiled in conflict, with me cautiously trying to balance my two identities – the feminist and the army officer’s wife. Nevertheless, I am unwilling to give up one for the other (even if I might be perceived as being less of one of them). So I continue to be an individual with two seeming contradictions: a feminist army-officer’s-wife!
By Ramya Anand
July 1, 2017
The Editorial: The Internet and Sexuality
Our desire to connect is perhaps one of the human aspirations that both Sexuality and the Internet serve. And with the Internet we now have new ways, unthought of even twenty years ago, of connecting with each other, and even at times with ourselves, finding aspects of our selves that we did not know existed.
By TARSHI
June 15, 2017
Interview: Dr. Anja Kovacs of the Internet Democracy Project
Anja speaks with Shikha Aleya about the spread of digital surveillance into almost every aspect of our lives, its implications and what we need to do about it.
By Shikha Aleya
Issue in Focus: Money, Money, Money – Must be Funny
A few days ago, we were doing a self-reflective exercise at work on what gives us power, how we demonstrate power, and what (or who) has power over us. Surprisingly, but not much, I found money featuring across the board for me: be it through financial independence or financial constraints. Power, as exercised by me or as exercised over me, has been intricately tied with my sexuality – ranging from job options to travel decisions to reproductive choices – and money seemed to lord over it all. It wasn’t the only lord, but it was quite a powerful lord.
By Vani Viswanathan
Snippets from the Indian LGBT Movement: Extracted from Records in SAATHII Calcutta’s LGBT Support Centre Reference Library
As an organized political movement the Indian LGBT movement is still quite young, having taken its first steps only in the early 1990s. However, it is not as if the movement started overnight. Rather it was a result of several visible and invisible developments taking place over the years in the world and Indian contexts.
By Curated Content
To the Beat of Activism on Gender and Violence in India
As someone who was surrounded by the sounds of music at home from my early childhood and with a parent who worked in rural education programmes, forming connections between art and (social) change wasn’t too difficult, albeit extremely challenging to explain to many other people who didn’t necessarily see the power that art has to deliver a message or be used as a tool for change.
By Pattie Gonsalves
December 5, 2016
एक नारीवादी माँ के रूप में जेंडर और यौनिकता पर बात करना : मामले को और भी पेचीदा कर देता है
सामान्य तौर पर एक नारीवादी माँ का काम, जो रोज़मर्रा की चर्चा में यौनिकता के बारे में बात करने के लिए दृढ संकल्पी हो, अनिश्चितता से भरा है। अन्य नारीवादी दोस्तों के साथ बातचीत और संसाधनों जैसे तारशी की अभिभावकों के लिए लिखी गई उत्कृष्ठ किताब द यलो बुक से उत्पन्न मेरी रणनीति है कि सवालों का ठीक-ठीक जवाब देना, जब भी वे पूछे जाएँ। हालाँकि, मुझे उम्र के हिसाब से जानकारी देना सीखने में समय लगा।
By Shilpa Phadke
Book Excerpt: ‘No Outlaws in the Gender Galaxy’
The book explores how gender plays out in public and private institutions like family, educational institutions, work and public spaces. It illustrates the multiplicity of ways in which people live gender and testifies that even if there are gender laws, in a just world there can be no gender outlaw.
By Shah-Merchant-Mahajan-Nevatia
September 15, 2016
Why Did Men Stop Wearing High Heels?
It was the beginning of what has been called the Great Male Renunciation, which would see men abandon the wearing of jewellery, bright colours and ostentatious fabrics in favour of a dark, more sober, and homogeneous look. Men’s clothing no longer operated so clearly as a signifier of social class, but while these boundaries were being blurred, the differences between the sexes became more pronounced.
By Curated Content
August 16, 2016
Of Braille, Fighter Pilots and a Sexuality-Informed Approach to Science
I spent time reading up the basics of gender-neutral design to understand the connect between science, society and gender. Sometimes, some people try to prove that there are ‘scientific’ reasons for inequality and injustice, for depriving one set of people of the same choices and opportunities that another set of people enjoy. This is not true. Times are changing. ‘Biased technologies’ are being altered.
By Shikha Aleya
Marked Women, Unmarked Men
If a woman’s clothing is tight or revealing (in other words, sexy), it sends a message — an intended one of wanting to be attractive, but also a possibly unintended one of availability. If her clothes are not sexy, that too sends a message, lent meaning by the knowledge that they could have been. There are thousands of cosmetic products from which women can choose and myriad ways of applying them. Yet no makeup at all is anything but unmarked. Some men see it as a hostile refusal to please them.
By Curated Content
June 17, 2016
Issue in Focus: Hackers and High Heels
Adeanna Cooke:
International model, featured in Playboy,
Established hacker and amateur computer programmer.
By Shikha Aleya
June 5, 2016
Review: Art in the Age of Maintenance Work
Written in one sitting in Philadelphia, Ukeles’ manifesto was a manifestation of the rage she felt when she was pregnant with her first child and a male mentor proclaimed, “Well, Mierle, I guess you know you can’t be an artist now.”
By Niyati Dave
June 5, 2016