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A close-up image of a text message. At the top is the number of the sender, which is half hidden. Below that is the date the text messages were sent and it reads “Sat, 10 Sep 2016.” The sender’s message is below the date in a blue text bubble and the text says, “If I am close to you I want to press all your keys!! SMS 18:58.” The receiver’s message appears below in a yellow text bubble and says, “Press the Enter Key! SMS 19:00.”

Public. Autonomous. Anonymous. Group. Sexting. At AWID 2016. Oh yeah!

·December 15, 2021
·Curated Content

Sexting is ALL about consent. Consent to RECEIVE a sext, consent to portray yourself in one. Keep this in mind, because one of the reasons sexting receives such a bad rap is because of what might happen after – dissemination of intimate images and content WITHOUT CONSENT.

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Image of mannequins with orange and pink ductapes. On one of the mannequins ‘Your body belongs to you’ is written

STAY SINGLE. STAY SAFE.

·April 5, 2021
·Nighat Gandhi

The largest contingent of voiceless, lonely women with limited agency in the subcontinent must be its married women. If they’re fortunate enough to be born and reach adulthood, a woman’s parents and society make sure she becomes an adult brainwashed into self-alienation and self-loathing.

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In Plainspeak publishes two issues with a theme every month.
A cross-cutting theme across all forthcoming issues in 2021 is how we can expand safe, inclusive self-affirming spaces.

THIS ISSUE:

January 2022 – SISA Spaces and Sexuality
Imagine a space where we are free to be authentically ourselves, to love who and how we want, to feel accepted, connected, and supported, and to assert ourselves against heteropatriarchal expectations around gender and sexuality. In a world riven with violences and marginalisations, safe, inclusive, and self-affirming (SISA) spaces in the context of gender and sexuality bring to life the shared feminist vision of sexual and reproductive health and rights, and wellbeing. Celebrating plurality, SISA spaces make room for multiple identities, lived experiences, and perspectives. SISA spaces encourage us to look within, to engage with and learn from one another, to hold space, and to evolve. In the January anthology issue of In Plainspeak, we bring you a collection of older articles around SISA spaces and sexuality, and attempt to discover newer ways of forging and expanding such spaces.

February – Sexuality and Coupledom
Wading through the dating pool, we are expected to pair off – one man, one woman, get married, and raise children. Romantic relationships within a hetero-patriarchal set-up are tangled in ideas of ‘soulmates’ and ‘forever’. Instead of The One, what if we choose to seek The Two, or even The Three with whom we can forge fulfilling emotional, sexual, and material connections? Or, being asexual, maybe no one at all for sex, but still luxuriate in intimacy? In exploring relationships outside the bounds of socio-political and cultural legitimacy by experimenting with and expressing sexuality in ways we find meaningful is an assertion of agency, bodily autonomy, and selfhood against patriarchal norms around relationships and family. The February issue of In Plainspeak attempts to examine coupledom in our social context, and unearth its possibilities.

For future issue themes, please 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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