Same-sex love

silhouette of a woman smoking against a black background - empowerment

Brushstrokes: Pussy and Patron

·July 2, 2018
·Curated Content
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Photographer Roshni Kumar’s photo-series, Pussy and Patron, seeks to challenge this, drawing inspiration from “retro erotica” to capture photos of the nude female form expressing desire and sexual agency in empowered ways.

Friendship, Sexuality and the Auden Group

Friendship, Sexuality and the Auden Group

·February 15, 2018
·Kaustav Bakshi
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Friendship has always remained a thinly coded term for same-sex love within queer discourses, and early writings in favour of homosexuality frequently revisited this trope to historicise and naturalise same-sex desire. In this article I shall recount an interesting story of three friends – three eminent figures in the history of English modernist literature –…

Cinnamon tree in a garden.

Photo Credit: (CC BY 2.0)

Same-sex love in the time of decolonisation: Historicising hidden sexual lives in Selvadurai’s Cinnamon Gardens

·November 1, 2017
·Kaustav Bakshi
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Cinnamon Gardens, looking back on the early twentieth century, reveals the trauma of queer lives, in a country where queerness, family and the state are still irreconcilable with each other.

In Plainspeak publishes two issues with a theme every month.
A cross-cutting theme across all forthcoming issues in 2020 is how we can expand safe, inclusive sexuality-affirming spaces.

THIS ISSUE:

January 2021
Wellbeing and Sexuality – Anthology Issue 2021
Faced with a pandemic in 2020, we were reminded to reimagine wellbeing as more than the absence of disease and rather as a mosaic, its many differently coloured tiles together constituting an intricate and interconnected whole. Wellbeing may consist in living in alignment with who we truly are and feeling fulfilled, freely expressing our sexuality, or even being able to run 10 kilometres at a go. Though unique to each one of us, our wellbeing is affected by some overarching aspects such as our physical and mental health, our self-image, and our relationships. Sexual wellbeing includes not only sexual and reproductive health but also expressing and experiencing sexuality safely, positively, and pleasurably. At a time when we are witnessing violence (sexual and otherwise) and uncertainty in our world, we probe wellbeing again – how might we care for ourselves, especially while caring for one another, and cultivate practices and spaces which may contribute to a sense of wellbeing? In our anthology issue in January 2021 we republish In Plainspeakarticles from previous years about what wellbeing means to our contributors.

February 2021
Singlehood and Sexuality, I Issue – Feb 1, 2021
We live in a culture organised around relationships. We are told finding ‘The One’ is integral to our well-being; our ‘soulmate’ will intuitively understand as well as fulfill all our emotional, sexual, and material needs and desires. Our engagement with dating is expected to culminate in cisgender-heterosexual marriage, but what if we aren’t looking to live ‘happily ever after’ with another person? Singlehood carries stigma – of being lonely, materialistic, selfish, sexually restricted or ‘unlucky in love’. However, not all of us seek companionship within a heterosexual and monogamous framework. We may not consider love or commitment a prerequisite to engaging in sexual activity; we may simply be ‘single and not looking to mingle’; we may express and experience intimacy outside of romantic and/or sexual relationships. When our self-worth is considered to be inextricably tied to having and being desired by a partner, being single may be an assertion of our agency against patriarchal norms around legitimate relationships, sexual behaviour, and family. In the February issue of In Plainspeak, we attempt to delve into these aspects of singlehood and how they relate to our socio-economic location, age, gender identity, sexual orientation, and disability status.

March 2021
Ageing and Sexuality, I Issue – March 1, 2021
Juxtaposed against the broad category of youth, older adulthood is often considered as a period of decline instead of a stage as complex and full as any other in our life. Socio-cultural negativity around sexuality and ageing make the physical, psychological, and psychosexual changes that come as we grow older, unnecessarily difficult to deal with. As older adults we may be made to feel that our desires are superfluous and undignified, and our sexual performance is diminishing or compromised, as is our desirability. When we are older, our relationships, especially those which are romantic, are often portrayed as devoid of sexual passion and instead, as hingeing on companionship and caregiving, which is fine if that indeed be the case. However, sexuality may be as intrinsic to our relationship with ourselves and the world as we grow older, and with the confidence that comes with life experience and self-awareness, may be even more authentically expressed and enjoyed. In the March 2021 issue of In Plainspeak, we examine the place sexuality occupies in our life as we grow older, how it relates to our self-expression, relationships, and sexual and reproductive health and rights, and how notions of sexual wellbeing in older adulthood may be expanded.

For future issue themes, click here.

Would you like to contribute? Send an email to blogeditor@tarshi.net with your idea. Do take a look at our submission guidelines!

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