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
Safety and Sexuality… in these uncertain times of COVID-19 when most of the world is in some form or other of quarantine, safety has taken on a new meaning all together. People are encouraged to stay home, not step out unless absolutely necessary, practice social distancing, and so on. Is home the safest place to be? What about if home and family are where one feels least safe?
“It’s rather unfortunate that our educational institutions and systems are so reluctant to understand, or they simply ignore, the importance of providing our youth with CSE that can help erase the shame and crippling self-doubt around sexuality, bodies, reproductive rights and wellness.
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).
Entertainment should aim to inspire, comfort, reflect and express. Even if something violent earns big at the box office, it doesn’t justify its creation.
So I am realising now that for me the space of borderlessness applies to everything. It applies to the physical and topographical border as it does to the borders we create between gender and their expressions. I think I would like to argue for a truly borderless understanding of the world.
We might need, therefore, to uncouple sexuality from intimacy because they do not necessarily belong together. Intimacy points to the comfort of knowledge while sexuality often shatters what knowledge we think we have.
To think of sexuality as performative disrupts the need for stable categories and identities, instead suggesting that we all reinforce and disrupt normative formations as we attempt to inhabit the world in messy ways.
Queer Intentions manages to capture the vast nuances of the queer experience, as Abraham creates space for LGBTQ+ people of a whole spectrum of identities and diverse walks of life to tell their stories.
Directed by Saim Sadiq, Joyland (2022) is not a film about trans rights or women’s rights. It is not even about one specific group or community of people. It is about the whole spectrum of human emotions.
We had gathered to [discuss] digital self-determination for people with disabilities… focusing on its core component: the self. How can I be myself in digital spaces? What gives me more of a sense of self in these spaces? How can design, technology and policy contribute to helping me determine myself in digital spaces?
The film has all the makings and trimmings of a commercial thriller – a dynamic story, song and dance, an action-packed climax – and at the same time, it is a cinephile’s film.
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.