resistance

Editorial – Language and Sexuality
An image of several Indian languages mentioned
Editorial – Language and Sexuality

The glorious heights of self-actualisation to which some words beckon us, the promises lying within others, it’s all language.
By TARSHI
July 16, 2025
Editorial – Language and Sexuality
Revealing the Code
Relaxing Family Beach Photo in Sri Lanka
Revealing the Code

What is the language, across languages, that we associate with sexuality? Is it healing? Empowering? Does this language comfort and console? Does it lift you up and make you feel good about who you are?
By Shikha Aleya
June 17, 2025
Revealing the Code
If Mountains Can Move …
A scenic photograph of a river flowing down the valley with hills at the background
If Mountains Can Move …

Language itself is being plugged as a resource, to be shared with those who share similar politics, or if not, at least to move them along in that direction. And people who speak, think, love and live differently are targeted as “the other”.
By Nandini Rao
June 17, 2025
If Mountains Can Move …
Editorial – Mental Health and Sexuality
A close-up photograph of a daisy
Editorial – Mental Health and Sexuality

Mental health, much like physical health, is a state of wellbeing and not just the absence of disease or infirmity….
By TARSHI
September 19, 2022
Editorial – Mental Health and Sexuality
This is how we do it
An abstract illustration of multi-coloured swirling patterns
This is how we do it

We need to recognise that mental health stressors that queer people face are not because something is inherently wrong with them.
By Shruti Chakravarty
September 1, 2022
This is how we do it
Editorial – Movement and Sexuality
An abstract photo of blurred blue and white vertical lines that are spanning outwards
Editorial – Movement and Sexuality

This issue of In Plainspeak while inviting us to embrace the joys and pleasure in movement, also questions the ways in which movements are facilitated or obstructed, visibilised or invisibilised, and the spaces that we must envision to find freedom in/to movement.
By TARSHI
May 19, 2022
Editorial – Movement and Sexuality
Interview – Tishani Doshi
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.

By Shikha Aleya
May 3, 2022
Interview – Tishani Doshi
Video – Tishani Doshi: Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods (poetry/dance)
Photograph of Tishani Doshi in the middle of a dance performance. She is wearing a pink pantsuit and has long hair. She has her legs slightly bent in a wide stance, with her palms cupped, facing outward towards the camera lens and positioned near her pubic area. A spotlight is focussed on her.
Video – Tishani Doshi: Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods (poetry/dance)

In the video section, watch Tishani Doshi perform one of her most haunting and popular poems ‘Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods’. Using the movements of/in body, music and language, it is a powerful expression of Tishani’s expansive vision of resistance, freedom and solidarity in the face of violence.
By Curated Content
May 3, 2022
Video – Tishani Doshi: Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods (poetry/dance)
Interview – Sameera Khan
Photo of Sameera Khan. She has long black hair and is standing in a garden. She is wearing a black kurta, a deep emerald dupatta and a black necklace.
Interview – Sameera Khan

But what has been amazing to witness is how quickly young women in particular, took to the ideas of Why Loiter? and pushed them even further, creating new movements to expand women’s rights to the public, including the right to be out late at night, to stretch the curfew at women’s hostels, to demand extended access to women’s toilets, to public transport etc.
By Shikha Aleya
April 1, 2022
Interview – Sameera Khan
Negotiating Expression
An abstract painting of teal squares with splashes of orange, white, blue and yellow.
Negotiating Expression

I am still coming to terms with my own femininity, as with new learnings I find myself regaining many facets of my personality which were lost while trying to ‘act like a man’ and ‘act tough’.
By Ambica Naithani
March 1, 2022
Negotiating Expression
Between Fear and Freedom
एक चित्रण जिसमें एक लड़की को एक सड़क के बीच में खड़ा दर्शाया गया है। लड़की ने अपने दोनों कंधो पर एक बस्ता पहना हुआ है जिसमें से एक चाँद और एक तारा बाहर निकल रहे हैं।
Between Fear and Freedom

We are led to question what ‘safety’ really is: Will it be guaranteed by going gently, if at all, into that good night? Is it at all possible to freely and safely explore who we are and the world in which we live?
By Anjali
January 3, 2022
Between Fear and Freedom
Navigating love, loneliness and singlehood
A photo of the throat, clavicles and shoulders against a black background. The body is highlighted with golden brown light and there is a mole at the base of the throat.
Navigating love, loneliness and singlehood

The desire for intimacy might rob one of the intimacy that one shares with oneself and thus, being with the beloved can leave one feeling even lonelier because of the continuing struggle for validation and comfort.
By Anonymous
January 3, 2022
Navigating love, loneliness and singlehood
Who would we be if we weren’t trying to survive? A Conversation on the Survival Myth
A photograph of a bench on a rocky-slightly bushy terrain. The bench is facing the other direction, which stretches out into wilderness. The sky in tinged with purple, blue, yellow, and pink.
Who would we be if we weren’t trying to survive? A Conversation on the Survival Myth

What does it mean to hold space and extend compassion to ourselves and our  communities? Rachel Cargle reminds us to ask ourselves: who  would we be if we weren’t trying to survive? Similarly, what would care and vulnerability look like if we weren’t trying to survive? The anarchy of queerness constantly and necessarily resists the capitalist engineering of the Survival Myth: one that wants us to endure an isolated life instead of embracing it with the radically transformative joy of togetherness. Caring for yourself precedes, succeeds, and exists alongside caring for the collective.
By Rukmini and Soumya
July 19, 2021
Who would we be if we weren’t trying to survive? A Conversation on the Survival Myth
Rights, Rescues and Resistance In The Global Movement For Sex Workers’ Rights – Introducing The Series
Rights, Rescues and Resistance In The Global Movement For Sex Workers’ Rights – Introducing The Series

Further, the crucial role of sex worker organisations in promoting the rights, safety, and security of sex workers and addressing working conditions in the industry has largely gone unrecognised by national and international policymakers, donors, and some non-governmental organisations
By Curated Content
December 16, 2019
Rights, Rescues and Resistance In The Global Movement For Sex Workers’ Rights – Introducing The Series