relationships
Adsa Fatima is a feminist, trainer and resource person working with Sama Resource Group for Women and Health. In this interview, she shares her insights on issues of privacy, safety and inclusion in the context of reproductive health, sexuality and rights, and the family and social environment that influence individual choices and decisions
Jeeja Ghosh is a disability rights researcher and activist, feminist, parent, writer, scholar and trainer. Her lived experience of disability, and of standing up against discrimination and injustice, is at the core of her work and insights. Shikha Aleya interviews Jeeja about mobility across divides other than the physical.
For them there is always a smile, and for them time has stood through. Memories are edged in the season of those years in which I met them.
But whether you root for this couple or not, Little Things makes you think about the small things – like reading out a line from a book of poetry, sharing a friend’s WhatsApp message with your partner, forgetting to wash your dirty socks before they make the room stink – that make or break a relationship.
The process of connecting with another person, opening up to them, and getting close enough to build an intimate relationship is fraught with complexities and grey-areas, which often has a marked impact on how we interact with that person and how we choose to conduct ourselves around them.
As we move toward destigmatising the topic of sex for all genders, we should include the language of intimacy as we collectively create a new cultural grammar around sex.
Artist Amanda Oleander’s paintings chronicles the everyday lives of couples and the various mundane things they do together that are simultaneously deeply intimate and poignant.
Desire is a man’s turf, right up there with moustaches and Adam’s apples / I’m the apple, I am the snake, I am Eve / I am the vibrator nestled between flimsy, cheap lace underwear / I am the shame, of saying I came
Both of us, have recently, decided to get married and will be in a marriage that I like to call a subversive marriage. Subversive marriages are based on an uncompromising equality and negotiations that serve for the betterment of both the partners.
The last few years have been a struggle in accepting myself with the possibility of always having acne and believing that I am still beautiful, even on the “outside”. This journey of believing that I can be worthy of love, attraction, expression and desire regardless of my looks continues to be liberating and empowering.
In a world of prescriptions of performance and perfection, there isn’t truly that much space built in to risk non-performance, not being perfect, or to risk not fitting the prescription.
In the short film, Baby Steps, a seemingly mundane Skype conversation between a mother and son turns into something more.
My hair smells like jasmine / From the wedding I went to last night / When I tethered my untameable hair with flowers,
In this video, Nisha and Chetan set the record straight about love, attraction, and disability. Nisha’s life changed after a spinal cord injury that led her to use a wheelchair. She thought romance was off the cards for her – until Chetan came into her life.
From my experience of being at the receiving end of this snap judgment of desirability, and seeing what a loss it is of getting to know people as persons instead of cardboard images, I realise how unjust this approach is towards seeking companions (which doesn’t necessarily mean romantic partners). This is not how I would want to be seen. I have been missing out on a lot of sexual, emotional and intellectual stimulation by reducing a person’s attractiveness to these notions.