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

Power

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Editorial – Movement and Sexuality

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.
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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.

Interview – Tishani Doshi

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.
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A photo of heterosexual couple sitting cross-legged on a rampart beside the sea. The man is wearing a blue shirt and there are shopping bags beside him. Beside him, only the mid-length hair of the woman can be seen. In the horizon is the city skyline of Mumbai with skyscrapers and other buildings at golden hour.

Public Sex and the Police in Urban Spaces

While sex workers face repeated harassment by the police, many young couples face threats in a one-off incident if the police finds them with their partner/lover. They may face police surveillance of expressions of intimacy and affection in public.
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A photograph of a person in a gym holding a barbell, his arm and leg visible in the frame.

The Gendered Muscle in Gym Spaces

I can recall my experiences in the washrooms of different gyms that I have been a member of. A men's washroom is an interesting place in terms of how sexuality manifests itself in its various aspects. It was not unusual to see men of various kinds with strange energies in these washrooms.
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A photograph of the silhouette of a woman with long hair with the horizon of an ocean in the background and a sky at sunset with purple, pink and yellow gradient

The Construction of Women as Spaces

This article explores how women are constructed as a ‘space’ manufactured by men to seek comfort, but void of having any active agency or participation in that space itself. I seek to bring this out in this article by drawing a parallel between the nineteenth century ‘Bharat Mata’ (Mother India) and the depiction of the twenty-first century ‘heroine’ in Bollywood movies.
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Negotiating Expression

I am still coming to terms with my own femininity, as with new learnings I find myself regaining many facets of my personality which were lost while trying to ‘act like a man’ and ‘act tough’.
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An image of a vintage-style round mirror with brown frame and a pink-white dahlia with stem lying on the mirror

Conceptualising Love on the Aromantic Spectrum

I now feel comfortable entertaining the thought that my ease with my selfhood does not necessarily have to be threatened by the possibility of love in coupledom. Indeed, comfort with one’s self can actually evolve into healthier forms of love towards the other(s).
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