Gender
Aria walked into her school’s auditorium, giggling with the rest of the girls, because they were about to have their very first Sex Ed workshop.
It’s clear Ms. Nisha is not here to shame them or lecture them. She’s here to give them words when they have none.
We spoke about everything and nothing at once, her presence like a balm to an ache I hadn’t realised I carried.
Gender and sexuality are like constituent parts of a jigsaw puzzle that keeps morphing in such a way that nothing ever ‘fits’ for long, and the game begins anew each time.
Here’s to some quiet time listening in to what people are saying, and consuming, on the Internet, particularly on social media, on the subject of gender and sexuality.
चूँकि दुनिया हाशिये में जीने वाले लोगों के प्रति इतनी प्रतिकूल रही है, इसलिए वे लोग हमेशा से, हर जगह ‘सुरक्षित स्थान’ बनाने की कोशिश करते आ रहे हैं।
Safe spaces in the way that they often circulate are depoliticised and the assumption is that there won’t be any conflicts, but there can be no safe space without an exchange of ideas, which will create some bad feelings leading to conflict.
What does belonging, then, look like in urban India for people from different social, economic and political backgrounds?
The data continues to misrepresent the realities of transgender persons, reiterating the existing confusion about transgender individuals.
Everyone talks about how nobody can put a price on how much homemakers do for us, but nobody talks about the kind of behaviour they are subjected to almost every day.
That little baby born in spring,
Shall “he” identify as Queer?
Regardless, Polaris feels queer!
This exhibition covered themes such as gender roles and division of labour, migration and belonging, disability and queerness, and the lived experiences of women artists.
Do you know what it feels like to be seen? I also don’t know what it feels like to be properly heard, but that’s a question for another time.
The morning was heavy, laden with the weight of expectation, with the unsettling realisation that something was about to shift.
As we grow and experience intimate relationships, pleasure becomes taboo or is only okay as a performance for another person, rather than our right as human beings.