Sexuality
Dear Parents-of-the-Young-Woman-Picked-Up-By-Moral-Mumbai-Police, I write this as a citizen, outraged by the actions of the Mumbai Police in picking up consenting…
The fans invest emotional energy, and time, knowing very well that the players may never know of their existence or reciprocate the same emotions. That, however, does not deter them from feeling and living those emotions.
Unlike many trans-masculine people who identified as lesbians/tomboys/butch pre-transitioning, I refused to abandon my ‘lesbian’ identity post-transitioning. A negotiation that took time to flourish.
But TikTok is giving young people – particularly women – in South Asia a new avenue to showcase their talents. While for the majority of women using the app their fame is exclusive to TikTok, an increasing number are able to use it to get paid work. And for many, the platform represents a scarce opportunity for bodily autonomy, and a chance to carve out space as a performer in the face of film and fashion industries that shut them out.
Contemporary and predominant imaginations of intimacy focus primarily on a sex-centric (romance-centric?) model which assumes that sexual desire exists and holds the same value for every person and every relationship regardless of their subjective positions. Sexual intent and desire are often the cruces of how relational aspects such as intimacy are socially constructed.
I would once again be theirs, in memory, on the day my lover would die.
One gets introduced to feminism through various modes: through books, through university courses, through parents and sometimes one does not…
While some of these questions seem old, they continue to be renewed in public debate on competing claims to public spaces. Ideas about public and private spaces also speak to the ways in which caste and class shape ideas about respectability, thus marking some places as ‘safe’ and others as ‘risky’.
How am I bringing myself into the erotic moment I am sharing with a lover?
I wanted to be one of those people who decide to never date again and actually follow through. Indeed, I decided that a lot. A resolution that was broken so many times that it became a running joke in my head.
Bula was not happy at being offered a bath and fresh clothes. Food, she would gladly take – but…
Though writing about feminism and being in a position to voice out one’s opinions about the injustices and inequities that continue to exist in society is still relevant, times are also changing as we begin to understand intersectionality as an all-inclusive concept and the positions we speak from.
In a society where queer sexuality had been demonised in not just mainstream fiction but also mainstream culture, the erotic fanfiction that emerged out of kinkfests became an important source of queer sex-positivity.
Words weren’t always needed – we were content in each other’s quiet company, letting stillness speak. It took me years to realise that their home was my first classroom, and love was the language we spoke.
The point is not to lay the blame on women or assign them responsibility for patriarchy. It is to encourage a deeper introspection of our desires. My first boyfriend, whom I got to know in 2010, was in the habit of asking me (and other women he had previously dated) whether he could kiss me, before doing so. Every time any sexual activity was involved he would always ask beforehand and continuously check in if I was comfortable throughout.