school Archives • In Plainspeak

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An abstract photo of blurred blue and white vertical lines that are spanning outwards

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

A screenshot from Robot Hugs' comic. The background is purple and has a figure wearing a darker purple shirt and grey pants. Their hair is green and they are looking curiously and confusedly at the illustration of the female reproductive system to their left. The figure of the reproductive system is coloured in light and dark shades of pink and has a black question mark in the middle. The text, to the right of the figure, says "But I am already whole and complete, and I am not full of empty spaces."

Robot Hugs gives us a glimpse into the doubts and confusions they grappled with while growing up, and unravels the tightly wound preconceptions in culture influenced by, and at the same time, influencing scientific and medical imagination.

By Curated Content

June 15, 2021

Brushstrokes: Dear Sex-Ed Textbook

An illustration of three women against a blue background with bubbles in white. The three women are looking in different directions and close together. The front-most woman has long purple hair and is wearing a black top. Her face is turned towards the left. The woman behind her has short yellow-blonde hair and her eyes are not visible. She is wearing a black top too. The woman behind both is staring into the camera and has purple eyeshadow. She has short copper hair. On the right-most corner, in white letters, is written "(gaysi)"

Of course, one needs to acknowledge that this word did not magically turn up in the vocabularies of the ‘good girls from good families’ that came to a convent school to learn ‘good things’ everyday. The extensively gendered environment which promised to manufacture highly-marriageable ‘young ladies’, aided by the insistence of middle-aged spiteful teachers to absolutely destroy any kind of existence that does not constantly bow it’s pretty, two-plaited head to the heteronormative male gaze, created a suffocatingly toxic atmosphere.

By Curated Content

June 15, 2021

The Legend Of The Invisible Lesbians

Photo of an empty classroom. Chairs, desks, teacher's table and a clean blackboard are visible.

What exactly does being ‘comfortable with your sexuality’ mean? From a young age, all children, especially girls, are taught about specific ‘values’, and how we all need to behave in a certain manner or else we’re being ‘inappropriate’. However, I think the term ‘inappropriate’ simply means, “You should be ashamed of your body and should only think about concealing yourself”. And then our teachers and elders and others around us expect us to be automatically comfortable with our sexuality and with how we look, all the while trying to control us and impose their ideas on us.

By Gayatri Mohan

May 1, 2016

Who’re You Kidding?