patriarchy

Shifting the Gaze: How women wish to experience desire
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This awareness of the status ascribed to women – the status of being the objects of men’s desires – affects every aspect of a woman’s life. Desire then, in particular, becomes an aspect of a woman’s life where navigation becomes tricky.

By Gitanjali G
March 17, 2023
Shifting the Gaze: How women wish to experience desire
What we don’t talk about when we don’t talk about kink
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I realise that a lot of men want (and need) to dominate women not because it is mutually pleasurable but because it reinforces patriarchal hierarchies. The taboo around kink, as a larger space of exploration, and BDSM, as a part of it, only furthers the violence, intensifying the apparent mystery of these subjects.

By Trijita
March 17, 2023
What we don’t talk about when we don’t talk about kink
Walks, Braids, Miranda, and Memories
grey concrete surface with patterns of swirls

This was the time we were growing up, learning new things, reading new books and discovering something new almost every day, and this all-women space provided an opportunity to do that without requiring any pretence or catering to the male gaze.

By Ambica Naithani
November 15, 2022
Walks, Braids, Miranda, and Memories
Obedience, the Greater Good and Self-Exploration
On a peach background is the illustration of a girl who is reaching out backwards towards a heart-shaped mirror with one hand. The other hand rests elegantly on her shoulder. Beside her are flowers in different colors, seemingly growing from the ground.
Years of control and suppression made their presence felt emotionally, mentally, and even physically. I would walk hunched up and was extremely conscious of how I should present myself physically, so as not to displease others. Those were very stressful days.
By Taniya Mondal
September 1, 2022
Obedience, the Greater Good and Self-Exploration
‘A Promise to Stand By’: The quiet feminism of Nathicharami
Nathicharami

Nathicharami takes sexuality and sexual desire away from upper-class, Gucci-clad women and makes its viewers acknowledge its existence in the lives of women (middle-class wives and widows, in the case of this film) who are invisibilised, both in the society they live in and as subjects of popular content.

By Srishti Gupta
March 1, 2022
‘A Promise to Stand By’: The quiet feminism of Nathicharami
Of “unapologetically flawed” women and feminism-lite: A review of Four More Shots Please!
The poster of Four More Shots Please, featuring four women in Western clothing, posing, laughing, dancing and having fun.

Four More Shots Please! moves in the right direction when it comes to women (of a particular social stratum), their lives, and feminism at large – even if it takes small, stumbling, baby steps towards it.

By Srishti Gupta
December 1, 2021
Of “unapologetically flawed” women and feminism-lite: A review of Four More Shots Please!
The Nun Within: Reflections on our self-care workshops with activists
A photograph of a woman sitting indoors. She has cropped white-grey hair and is looking upwards. She is wearing a black full-sleeved top and her palms are open outwards. She is wearing a black necklace and is smiling. In front of her, a person is half-visible, clad in black, holding out their palms. There are red chairs on the side, and at the back, a person with black short hair, wearing a white top and mask, using a phone, is sitting.

I know that the lives of many human rights defenders are under continuous threat, that sometimes it is impossible to sleep or to enjoy a moment of peace because of the harassment coming from the outside. What I address in this text is our internal disposition as activists, and the ideas that stop us from taking care of and holding ourselves together.

By Rosa Posa Guinea
July 19, 2021
The Nun Within: Reflections on our self-care workshops with activists
Review: What Does Clothing Have to do with Sexuality in the Media?
A screenshot of an advertisement. It depicts a woman in a red saree with a dark blue blouse. She is wearing necklaces. She is squatting and seemingly washing clothes. Beside her, to the left, is a steel bucket.

Attire and sexuality in the common imagination and approach as represented (and also as received) by the mainstream media tell us a lot about prevailing attitudes to both. Advertisements bombard us with all kinds of representations, negative and positive, of human sexuality, sexual expression and desire. In the creation and marketing of attire and fashion, there is a great awareness of sexual buy-in or rejection by the market – that’s us.

By Shikha Aleya
June 15, 2021
Review: What Does Clothing Have to do with Sexuality in the Media?
Brushstrokes: Dear Sex-Ed Textbook
A screenshot from Robot Hugs' comic. The background is purple and has a figure wearing a darker purple shirt and grey pants. Their hair is green and they are looking curiously and confusedly at the illustration of the female reproductive system to their left. The figure of the reproductive system is coloured in light and dark shades of pink and has a black question mark in the middle. The text, to the right of the figure, says "But I am already whole and complete, and I am not full of empty spaces."

Robot Hugs gives us a glimpse into the doubts and confusions they grappled with while growing up, and unravels the tightly wound preconceptions in culture influenced by, and at the same time, influencing scientific and medical imagination.

By Curated Content
June 15, 2021
Brushstrokes: Dear Sex-Ed Textbook
Video: Kalki Koechlin: The Printing Machine | Unblushed
A screenshot of Kalki Koechlin's rendition of 'The Printing Machine'. The background has a fade-effect of newspaper headlines. To the left is Kalki's face till the beginning of her shoulders. She is looking directly at the camera. Her hair is tied with strands across her face. To the left, in big red lettering: KALKI an underneath it, in black and strikethrough: UNBLUSHED. 'BLUSH' is bold.

Sharp and evocative, Kalki Koechlin’s spoken-word poem The Printing Machine lays bare the cycle of ceaseless and desensitised consumption engendered by the media. Kalki’s short and hard-hitting sentences, keys tap-tap-tapping, and the chrrs and grrs of printing machines bring out the urgency and sensationalism media narratives embody, turning incidents of violence into a stream of headlines that make us gasp and forget, gasp and forget.

By TARSHI
June 15, 2021
Video: Kalki Koechlin: The Printing Machine | Unblushed
Video: How Can Women & Non-Binary People Combat Online Violence?
A screenshot of Feminism in India's video How Can Women & Non-Binary People Combat Online Violence? In the middle is Japleen Pasricha, the founder of Feminism in India. She is wearing a grey-black full-sleeved shirt and her eyes are closed. She has deep brown hair reaching under her shoulders on both sides. Behind her is a wooden cupboard stacked with books, and a poster in blue with a woman holding a sign saying 'SMASH BRAHMINICAL PATRIARCHY'. On her left is an illustration that says, in pink, VOYEURISM and above it, an illustration with white circles on black to denote binoculars and a woman's silhouette at the centre. At the bottom of the screenshot are the subtitles: "(a)nd voyeurism, where someone records you in your private moments without your consent."

Japleen Pasricha, founder of Feminism in India, lays bare the violence women, LGBTQIA+ folks, and historically marginalised communities face in online spaces, ranging from identity theft, bullying, trolling, to having our private photographs and details disseminated without our consent and being blackmailed.

By Feminism in India
May 15, 2021
Video: How Can Women & Non-Binary People Combat Online Violence?
Editorial: Vulnerability and Sexuality
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Vulnerability – is it a condition we find ourselves in? A state of being we choose? Let’s keep it very simple: it depends on the approach we take to defining it. In the former approach, we are ‘done to’, while in the latter we are consciously ‘doing’.

By TARSHI
April 19, 2021
Editorial: Vulnerability and Sexuality
Interview – Indu Harikumar

I was watching something recently that said it was a bad thing to be vulnerable, but I don’t think it is a bad thing. I do see that there is a certain amount of power in vulnerability, it also needs courage, in my experience.

By Shikha Aleya
April 5, 2021
Interview – Indu Harikumar
STAY SINGLE. STAY SAFE.
Image of mannequins with orange and pink ductapes. On one of the mannequins ‘Your body belongs to you’ is written

The largest contingent of voiceless, lonely women with limited agency in the subcontinent must be its married women. If they’re fortunate enough to be born and reach adulthood, a woman’s parents and society make sure she becomes an adult brainwashed into self-alienation and self-loathing.

By Nighat Gandhi
April 5, 2021
STAY SINGLE. STAY SAFE.
Editorial: Ageing and Sexuality
A photograph of a lush oak tree, its branches sprawling across a field of green.

Ageing is often associated with a loss, a lack of ability and strength. When combined with sexuality, in the popular imagination, fed especially by market forces, youth is to be lauded and ageing regarded as the impending horror that must be evaded for as long as possible.

By TARSHI
March 15, 2021
Editorial: Ageing and Sexuality
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