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
As a girl, I was made to believe that pleasure was something that existed outside my body, something that I had to seek out, something that was necessarily a product of a partnered experience. I don’t think I was even allowed to want pleasure, especially in its sexual forms.
Despite the progress made, Hindi cinema still faces challenges in accurately representing the diversity of LGBTQ+ experiences. Critiques have been raised regarding the tendency to prioritize cisgender, upper-class narratives.
Using silent actions and secret fulfillment of what society considers as sin and the law condemns as illegal, the text offers an example of the silence of resistance.
The relationships that are portrayed in queer media also often transcend all attempts at categorisation, but are still undeniably queer – as are the characters whose inescapable push-and-pull, to their audience, often becomes the plot itself.
We need to disturb the institutionalised infrastructure and skew power dynamics even when it comes to something as complex as pleasure. Being aware of our language and the practices of our sexuality and denuding them of socially imbibed constructions will open up a safe space for discussing the diversity of our sexual behaviour.
While Nishit Saran’s iconoclasm loomed large in his lifetime, his oeuvre as a pioneering queer filmmaker and activist seems to have been largely obliterated.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.