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

Religion

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 small bird fluttering around a branch with orange berries, picking at one

Editorial: Singlehood and Sexuality

In this issue of In Plainspeak our contributors reflect on and reveal the myriad facets of being single – is it a choice? A condition? A state of being? Lonely? Joyful? Not one or the other, but a glorious mix?
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On a pick background with blue spots and black stripes, a photo of actor Emma Watson is superimposed with yellow lines drawn around her.

Reclaiming Being Single Against Emma Watson’s Self Partnered

Emma Watson spoke to British Vogue about the incredible amounts of stress and anxiety that follows, “…if you have not built a home, if you do not have a husband, if you do not have a baby, and you are turning 30, and you’re not in some incredibly secure, stable place in your career, or you’re still figuring things out…”
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A photograph of Kalpana Sharma, Sharda Ugra, and attendees at an event around the book ‘Single by Choice: Happily Unmarried Women’.

Why singlehood is meaningful: Three voices

By the end of the evening, the room was suffused with the celebration of singlehood, rather than any explanation or apology for it. It appeared that the solitary life was envied and extolled by those who have opted out of it as well as many who haven’t.
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A photograph of an individual’s neck and shoulders, with a focus on the collarbone.

 Navigating love, loneliness and singlehood

I believe that queer friendships and intimacies are sheer resistance, which not only swallow the despair and pain that might be perpetrated on gender-nonconforming people by their families, but also recognise all the lies about love that have been sold to us.
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