LGBTQ
There is no singular way of being queer or performing queerness. We are all products of converging and diverging histories and our queerness is shaped by forces tangible and intangible in the everyday.
From my experiences, I find that diversity is not an end unto itself. Instead, it is a tool for reflection, a mirror that shows not only who we, and the society we live in, are in the present, but what we aspire to be in the future.
The Indian family is changing. There’s no ‘ideal family’ defined by children or lineage. It comes in different shapes and sizes.
Fanfiction was more than just writing your own stories about the characters or the setting of your favourite book or TV show; it was a questioning of the dominant mainstream pop culture narrative as a whole.
The replacement of the traditional Durga idol by that of the Ardhanarishwara, without any obdurate protest, highlights the true carnivalesque spirit of Kolkata’s most looked-forward-to festival.
While sex sometimes can be fun, and at other times complicated and frustrating –is always love, lust or desire: which one you are signing up for and which one did you want to actually explore?
I could have called it transformation instead of transitioning. But it became clear to me that transitioning does not necessarily imply a caterpillar-butterfly story but that it means a gradual acceptance of the self (and the self is ever-transitioning); of being comfortable in your own skin (even if it means shedding skin); of perfecting your act (even if it means learning a few new things).
In the short film, Baby Steps, a seemingly mundane Skype conversation between a mother and son turns into something more.
In an e-mail conversation with TARSHI, Alok Vaid-Menon talks about both performativity and poetic performance.
In Nanette, Hannah Gadsby’s hour-long Netflix special that transcends the very notions of stand-up comedy, forces of reclamation, protest, and rage culminate to form a darkly hilarious but heartbreaking diatribe against patriarchy, heteronormativity, violence and marginalisation.
The concluding chapter reiterates the aims of the book, i.e., “to start critical conversations within the disciplines of psychology, social work, childhood studies, and family studies in India and to think about exclusions inherent in these disciplines.
Desire is never straightforward, and it cannot be straitjacketed – in fact, there is nothing straight about desire at all. Any issue dealing with desire, therefore, is wasted if viewed through a monochromatic lens.
In Nacher Chhele, a 38 year old Avijit stands outside himself, takes a long look at his past, and writes an intense testimonio, which would resonate with many middle class Bengali queer men who grew up in the pre-global, pre-Internet city of Calcutta in the 80s and 90s.
If your one step – addressed to everyone irrespective of caste, class, gender, religion, and sexuality – is a giant leap for marginalised and oppressed people, Stonewall will not be far behind.
Many queer Indians who converse largely in their respective regional languages find it difficult to put a name to their queer identity in their ‘mother tongue’.