relationships
To be without intricacies is to be without emotional boundaries, to disregard whoever whenever. Besties save you from your shit. They are your heart, and they transcend any efficiency that the Tinderization Bestie Robot attempts to offer you in its binary fantasy.
Waxing my body for the first time last year to have silky skin like the women on Veet’s box but ended up with rashes instead.
The sheer ignorance of the intricacies of consent, or its performance, serves only to strengthen the enduring patriarchal framework that holds sway in a society where the bodies, desires, and even voices of women have been, and, tragically, continue to be, defined and controlled by men.
Consequently, a “yes” – whether verbal or gestural – cannot be shallowly inferred as an authentic, unambiguous, and static agreement to a “contract” proposed by men.
Apart from the masculinity portrayed in commercial films with heterosexual tropes, Bollywood has produced movies portraying distorted female masculinity.
Intimacy can never thrive in an environment of rigid certainty. Intimacy requires surrender – not in the sense of submission – but in the willingness to be with another person without detachment or defences.
I had risked so much already, not just by loving another woman, but by acting on my desires. By allowing myself to feel intimacy and connection with another queer person. Despite feeling guilt and shame, this risk had become increasingly vital to take.
In a time when reason is more valued than emotion, unravelling and understanding the politics of self-care becomes all the more fundamental for us, and the movements we seek to develop and build. When our bodies, our emotions and our needs become weapons to be used against us, acts of defiance become rooted in thinking about your self and how we practice it. I find I am faced with more questions than answers, but I also know that asking the questions is the first step to finding the answers
Z is forced to wear the mask of masculinity, a mask made of the various tropes of stereotypical masculine energy…
Human beings are not brains in jars, but are fundamentally shaped by their perception of and interaction with the worlds around them, through their physical bodies and their sensory encounters.
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.
The language of consent is not neutral. It is rigid where it should be nuanced, malleable where it should be firm. Yes is an all-encompassing spirit, ever-expanding; No is frustratingly constricted, barely visible.
A multitude of views are recorded when couples are interviewed about their sex lives and relationships. It is often found that while women are more concerned about the way they look and how they react to their partners’ moves (including women’s need to fake orgasms), men worry more about things like performance. It is safe to assume that all of us have sexual insecurities.
So, what can be done about insecurity?
Family, immediate and extended, is usually who you turn to. They are the ones who provide stress relief and reduce anxiety by boosting self-confidence and self-esteem and providing a protective shield. There is a sense of belongingness in good times and in bad.