HIV and AIDS

A photo of Anjali Gopalan, who has short black and gray hair and dark eyes. Anjali is smiling, wearing a light pink dupatta. Source: Naz Foundation

INTERVIEW: ANJALI GOPALAN

·December 15, 2015
·Anisha Dutt

In October 2013, Anisha Dutt from TARSHI interviewed Anjali Gopalan, Founder and Executive Director of The Naz Foundation (India) Trust, an NGO dedicated to the fight against the HIV and AIDS epidemic in India, for the inaugural issue of the blog. During our interaction with her, she shared with us some of the challenges she…

Newspaper clipping of the first known protest by the AIDS Bhedbhav Virodhi Andolan (ABVA) in 1992. People gathered around, carrying placards.

HIV and AIDS Prevention, LGBT Rights, and the Law

·December 1, 2015
·Siddharth Narrain

As someone who has worked on sexuality and gender related issues, HIV and AIDS has been part of the larger canvas of issues that I have been concerned with. There is an interesting tension between health and service delivery, especially around HIV and AIDS, primarily focused on so-called ‘populations at risk—the sexworker, intravenous drug user,…

Photo of gay activist Debanuj Dasgupta. He is wearing a brown sweater and cap, and has a thick beard.

Interview: Debanuj DasGupta

·November 1, 2014
·TARSHI Team

Debanuj DasGupta’s current activism and research travels take him through India, UK and the US focusing on issues of national security, migration, and embodied justice. A Doctoral Candidate in Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies at The Ohio State University, Debanuj co-founded the first HIV and AIDS prevention project among men-who-have-sex-with-men and gay men in Kolkata in…

A photo of Anjali Gopalan, who has short black and gray hair and dark eyes. Anjali is smiling, wearing a light pink dupatta. Source: Naz Foundation

Interview: Anjali Gopalan

·December 1, 2013
·Anisha Dutt
·0 Comments

A photo of Anjali Gopalan, who has short black and gray hair and dark eyes. Anjali is smiling, wearing a light pink dupatta.

In Plainspeak publishes two issues with a theme every month.
A cross-cutting theme across all forthcoming issues in 2021 is how we can expand safe, inclusive sexuality-affirming spaces.

THIS ISSUE:

July – Sexuality and Self-care, II Issue – July 19, 2021
People in caring roles, people like us, activists, human rights defenders, home care providers, health care personnel, amongst many other care-givers, tend to work tirelessly. Immersed as we are in the immediate demands of care-provision, we often have very little time and energy to take care of ourselves. Public health emergencies like the current COVID-19 (and HIV and AIDS forty years ago, and still counting) and socio-political, human-made and natural disasters add to our already heavy burden. For those of us who work on fraught issues of sexuality and sexual rights, with the very nature of our work looked askance at, self-care can seem like an indulgence, a frivolity, especially given the current capitalisation of the ‘wellness industry’ (an oxymoron, to begin with). However, self-care, in its truest sense, is not a commodity, but a radical act rooted in the politics of inter-connectedness. If in doing the work that we do, we flounder in eddies of tiredness, hopelessness, dejection or apathy and consequently have nothing joyful left to offer to ourselves or to another, what’s the point? What’s the Point of Revolution, if We Can’t Dance? ask Jane Barry and Jelena Djordjevic in their 2008 book on sustaining the wellbeing of women human rights activists.
What is it that we do for ourselves to keep going, to take care of ourselves, to practice intentional self-care? Exercise? Meditate? Get enough sleep? Reach out to our friends? Practice saying ‘no’? Build solidarity with others? Enjoy the pleasures that our body gives us? What else? The July issue of In Plainspeak dares us to dance, to transmute dejection to delight, and to tell our stories of how in caring for ourselves we expand the possibilities of caring for others and realising our vision of a world where all people enjoy their rights.

August – Disability and Sexuality – I Issue – August 2, 2021
In most of the world, if we fall to the left of the bell-shaped curve of statistical normalcy in terms of our physical, cognitive, emotional, social and/or relational functioning we are regarded as being disabled. In mainstream discourse, sexuality is mainly understood through the experiences of non-disabled people, overlooking the rich and complex sexual lives that people with disabilities can and do enjoy. Socio-cultural stigma around disability poses challenges to people with disabilities in being recognised as sexual beings with desires, fantasies, feelings, and expectations, and in having their sexual and reproductive health care needs met and their rights upheld. Compounding factors such as gender, socio-economic location, gender identity, and sexual orientation, amongst others, influence access to resources in material terms as well as to resources in terms of choices and opportunities. Expressing one’s sexuality in the face of such odds is an assertion of agency and bodily integrity as well as of the right to experience a self-affirming and enjoyable sexuality. The August issue of In Plainspeakexplores the intersections between disability, sexuality, and rights, and how people with disabilities may experience sexual wellbeing.

For future issue themes, click here.

Would you like to contribute? Send an email to blogeditor@tarshi.net with your idea. Do take a look at our submission guidelines!

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