Shame Archives • In Plainspeak

Shame

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When the Game is Set Against You, Why Play By The Rules?

A photograph of multi-coloured flower bouquets.

When working with clients at the margins, the effort is not just to find out what intersections they are at and what systems alienate or harm them, but also the internal factors that affect them in the process of exclusion and violence.

By Simran Kewlani and Vasudha Ramani

September 19, 2022

When the Game is Set Against You, Why Play By The Rules?

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

Interview – This is what you bring to the table!

A photograph of a number of multicoloured rainbows against the background of a blue sky.

In this write up, we’d like to share a sense of what emerges from a compilation of these responses. This is based on the thoughts and feelings that come through for those of us here at In Plainspeak who have had the joy of reading the original responses as they came in to us. (Some of the quotations that follow have been slightly edited for flow and to help connect themes.) We know that most things in the realm of art, information and ideas lend themselves to a wide range of inferences and insights depending on the individuals making the inferences.

By Shikha Aleya

March 1, 2022

Interview – This is what you bring to the table!

Haunted by Shame: The Struggle of Being Rendered Invisible

Where did my body go? This is a question I have asked myself repeatedly over the last two years. My…

By Reva Puri

September 1, 2021

Haunted by Shame: The Struggle of Being Rendered Invisible

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

A black and white photograph of two children walking on an empty road. One child’s hand is on the shoulders of the other child

We must all care for ourselves and be discerning about when and where and with whom we show our cards…but those who can hold our emotional and sexual vulnerability are out there, and we can find them and be all of who we are.

By Shilpa Sachdeva

April 5, 2021

Communication: A Path to Vulnerability

Claiming One’s Space After False Sexual Harassment Allegations

Image of a bronze coloured ‘Lady Justice’ statue. The statue depicts a woman standing with blindfolds and a set of scales

Those who are rendered vulnerable due to their gender or sexuality, particularly those who are economically and socially disadvantaged (or less powerful) and lack the agency to speak up for themselves, are more prone to allegations, social ostracism and marginalization.

By Andy Stephen Silveira

April 5, 2021

Claiming One’s Space After False Sexual Harassment Allegations

An image of a half cut pear resembling the shape of a vagina. There are seeds around it.

At sixteen, the senior boy I loved, touched me down there and said, this is what boyfriends do, this is what love feels like – uncomfortable.

By Tapaswinee

December 1, 2020

Sweet Sixteen

A still from the film What Will People Say?

I discovered the movie What Will People Say? while browsing Netflix. Growing up in a society in which people are…

By Nidhi Chaudhary

July 1, 2020

Shame, shame!

For I was a woman / Taught to chain herself gracefully / In an invisible cage.

By Khushi Pahuja

February 3, 2020

For I Am A Woman

We need to disturb the institutionalised infrastructure and skew power dynamics even when it comes to something as complex as pleasure. Being aware of our language and the practices of our sexuality and denuding them of socially imbibed constructions will open up a safe space for discussing the diversity of our sexual behaviour.

By Abdullah Erikat

February 3, 2020

No One Talked To Me About Sex

Reading Off a Black Mirror: Shame, Distress and (Sexual) Privacy Laws

One summer afternoon some moons ago, a man at work assigned to help me move numbers on an excel sheet…

By Mamatha Karollil

September 16, 2019

Reading Off a Black Mirror: Shame, Distress and (Sexual) Privacy Laws

A scene from Sita Sings The Blues. Scott, A. O. “Legendary Breakups: Good (Animated) Women Done Wrong in India.” An illustration of sita lying in bed with hanuman behind her.

Erotica, which according to statistics is largely a women dominated genre, often creates a platform where women across space and time can connect and don’t feel alienated in their sexual needs when they find a heroine with the same desire, or when they read about a plot situation which resonates with their own.

By Tulika Parikh

July 1, 2019

Why Do We Find Erotica Shameful?