A digital magazine on sexuality, based in the Global South: We are working towards cultivating safe, inclusive, and self-affirming spaces in which all individuals can express themselves without fear, judgement or shame
Queer cafés are not exempt from the fast changing landscape of Indian metropolitan areas and offer both inclusion as well as exclusion from the promise of a queer utopia.
In a way, Mrs Chatterjee’s worst fears had been confirmed. The hostel was indeed dangerous – not because of “raging hormones”, but because wewere constantly initiating discussions and circumstances which challenged the patriarchal status quo.
In this essay, I revisit my early struggles with AIDS diagnosis during the summer of 2003. The recollections allow me to rethink how the New York cityscape and coming out about my HIV status to my parents in India shapes a racialised experience with HIV and AIDS, family relations, and transnational migration. Such a racialised experience is erased within Tony Kushner’s Angels in America.
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.
Masculinity once upon a time was just a word we studied in school, whose sole purpose was to differentiate binary gender in the society. Now masculinity is a criteria of a certain job that a person has to perceive to be called or termed as one.
Being a woman who loves other women, I realised that women look at me with the same tender gaze I look at them with. And that, more than anything, has made me feel at peace with my body. I hope to one day love it
Puu, an episodic comic (consisting of 92 serialised episodes) created in 2016 by Nabigal-Nayagam Haider Ali – going by Nabi online – is woven together with vast, expansive threads of similar intense spiritual moments and reflections on devotion, faith, and love.
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.
Undoubtedly, LGBTQ+ literature and writing in India has witnessed an ‘explosion’ in the past two decades, and the trends in contemporary publication promise consistent growth in the future too. However, issues of queer representation in existing literature, and especially contemporary literature, need to be continually invested in, for literature is a key marker of society’s outlook on and reception of such sensitive subjects as homosexuality and ‘queer’-ness
After the underwear slips off, does the underwear brand really matter? The underwear may mean different things for different people. It may evoke desire or may hinder access.
Drag is more than a form of entertainment or art form or a form of comedic release, it’s the realization of the fun of being queer or having a queer perspective.
Queering is not about being queer but about doing queer – about going beyond binaries of gender and sexuality, questioning accepted perspectives, and challenging and upending normative ways of being in the world.
As we move into a new year and a new decade we hope to be moving towards a more just and peaceful world, especially given the troubled times that people all over the world have been and are currently experiencing. And so, in this new year, we wish you lots of SISA spaces through 2020 and beyond!