Performance

Brushstrokes: Fiction Comic: Unwrinkled Saris And Just Another Evening
A poster of the fiction comic Unwrinkled Saris and Just Another Evening. In the background is a picture of the lower face of a person. The person is holding a red lipstick between their teeth. The lipstick has an inscription that says FAE. The person is wearing gold coloured earrings. A green coloured blouse and saree is also visible

In a society ruled by heteronormative patriarchal structures, expressing one’s gender or sexuality outside the trimmings of what is socially acceptable is an act of resistance.

By Curated Content
November 2, 2020
Brushstrokes: Fiction Comic: Unwrinkled Saris And Just Another Evening
A ‘girly’ feminist
Two dandelion flowers in a glass vase on a pink background.

Desiring motherhood meant veering into a more ‘girly’ territory, a notion that I had simultaneously been fighting and trying to embrace since childhood. I had understood that to be a feminist I had to be independent, be wary of men, dislike families and relationships.

By Anubha Sarkar
December 1, 2020
A ‘girly’ feminist
Editorial: Femininities and Sexuality
A close-up photograph of a dandelion with dew. The dewdrops are differently coloured in the light.

Are certain forms of femininities denigrated more than others? Not just by misogynists but also by feminists? Is there a particular way of manifesting an ‘appropriate’ femininity, one that is just right, and is not ‘too girly’ or ‘too tomboyish’?

By TARSHI
December 15, 2020
Editorial: Femininities and Sexuality
Prescriptions of Proper
Four illustrations on a light blue background of a woman’s silhouette wearing a pink cape in different, traditionally masculine poses.

Performance and ‘proper’ go hand in hand because every performance has rules and prescriptions, so you can tell whether it’s a good performance or not, whether it’s skilled or not. Otherwise, it appears, you can’t understand or appreciate performance – or know if you’re doing it right!

By Shikha Aleya
January 4, 2021
Prescriptions of Proper
QUEERNESS AND PRIVACY[1]: BABY I LOVE IT WHEN YOU NEVER HOLD BACK FROM ME

For so long, private has meant a place that I was forced to create, claim and carve out to hide away from the public violence. And if I’ve been allowed to further wallow in it then I don’t want to – thank you very much.

By Curated Content
April 19, 2021
QUEERNESS AND PRIVACY[1]: BABY I LOVE IT WHEN YOU NEVER HOLD BACK FROM ME
Probing the Screen: Pleasure in the Virtual World
Wall-art of a face till the bridge of the nose. The face is coloured in peach, grey, and shades of blue. The eyes, green, are lined in black and have spots of yellow, brown, and blue colour around them. Under the left eye, there are yellow dots. The hair is streaked with purple and blue.

The virtual world allows me to challenge the hold of patriarchy on my ‘effeminate’ body; in a sense, it allows me to evade the policing of desire that my body shares with another, its flows and slippages, the messy and the unkempt. While virtual sex offers a window to revisit the sensual, it is also not immune to limitations and insecurities.

By Neel
June 15, 2021
Probing the Screen: Pleasure in the Virtual World
Video – Tishani Doshi: Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods (poetry/dance)
Photograph of Tishani Doshi in the middle of a dance performance. She is wearing a pink pantsuit and has long hair. She has her legs slightly bent in a wide stance, with her palms cupped, facing outward towards the camera lens and positioned near her pubic area. A spotlight is focussed on her.

In the video section, watch Tishani Doshi perform one of her most haunting and popular poems ‘Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods’. Using the movements of/in body, music and language, it is a powerful expression of Tishani’s expansive vision of resistance, freedom and solidarity in the face of violence.

By Curated Content
May 3, 2022
Video – Tishani Doshi: Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods (poetry/dance)
Interview – Tishani Doshi
Photograph of a woman with long hair in red sari, sitting with a brown dog against a background of bushes with vines and pink azaleas. The woman is resting her chin on one hand and petting the dog with the other.

I’ve essentially thought of movement as a kind of freedom, but one that has the capacity to destabilise you in some way. My most creative moments are when I’m not moving, when I am in fact rooted and still.

By Shikha Aleya
May 3, 2022
Interview – Tishani Doshi
Editorial – Movement and Sexuality
An abstract photo of blurred blue and white vertical lines that are spanning outwards

This issue of In Plainspeak while inviting us to embrace the joys and pleasure in movement, also questions the ways in which movements are facilitated or obstructed, visibilised or invisibilised, and the spaces that we must envision to find freedom in/to movement.

By TARSHI
May 19, 2022
Editorial – Movement and Sexuality
Drag As Mapping Culture, Fun, And Resistance Onto Our Bodies
urvi-kotasthane-gl-KSnRyhE0-unsplash

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.

By Rajeev Anand Kushwah
March 1, 2023
Drag As Mapping Culture, Fun, And Resistance Onto Our Bodies
Editorial – Narratives and Sexuality
jason-leung-4QGf3PYueMU-unsplash

Stories hold power. They shape how we understand the world, and if they are stories of distorted facts and falsehoods, they spread unease, discord and hatred. But stories also allow us to imagine other possibilities; they give us hope that we can overcome oppression and injustice.

By TARSHI
March 17, 2023
Editorial – Narratives and Sexuality
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