A digital magazine on sexuality, based in the Global South: We are working towards cultivating safe, inclusive, and self-affirming spaces in which all individuals can express themselves without fear, judgement or shame

SISA spaces

With Love: A Special Issue on Sexuality, Mental Health, Wellbeing, and Self-care

The intricate connections between sexuality, mental health, wellbeing, and self-care have been some of the core themes that In Plainspeak has attempted to highlight in its issues over the years. Any conversation on sexuality cannot exclude engagement with the myriad ways in which taboos around sexuality, the privileging of heteronormative ideals, the violence and marginalisation…
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An abstract photo of blurred blue and white vertical lines that are spanning outwards

Editorial – Movement and Sexuality

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.
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An abstract image of waves.

Issue in Focus

Expanding contexts give the word ‘movement’ different meanings and value. Physical, conceptual, technological, relationship, emotional, mental, power, knowledge, ability, access, may be amongst the contexts immediately identified.
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Photograph of a woman with long hair in red sari, sitting with a brown dog against a background of bushes with vines and pink azaleas. The woman is resting her chin on one hand and petting the dog with the other.

Interview – Tishani Doshi

I’ve essentially thought of movement as a kind of freedom, but one that has the capacity to destabilise you in some way. My most creative moments are when I’m not moving, when I am in fact rooted and still.
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Three people are seated at a wooden table - two are reading and one is writing.

Shouldn’t The World Be Big Enough?

We live in a world where resilience is celebrated and given priority over attempting to resolve factors that force one to be resilient. Campuses shouldn’t aim to merely be inclusive of diverse individuals – they must strive to not only affirm them but also celebrate them.
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Photo of Sameera Khan. She has long black hair and is standing in a garden. She is wearing a black kurta, a deep emerald dupatta and a black necklace.

Interview – Sameera Khan

But what has been amazing to witness is how quickly young women in particular, took to the ideas of Why Loiter? and pushed them even further, creating new movements to expand women’s rights to the public, including the right to be out late at night, to stretch the curfew at women’s hostels, to demand extended access to women’s toilets, to public transport etc.
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Photo of a smartphone screen displaying the logos of Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and Clubhouse.

A ‘Room’ of One’s Own – Sexuality, Self-expression, and Safe Spaces on Clubhouse

In theory, the concept of the app is a great one – it provides women, queer people, and people belonging to oppressed castes the tea-stall, cigarette-shop type of public spaces for conversation that are available to upper-caste cis het men. The relative anonymity acts like a safe cover, and the app affords a certain autonomy and agency to marginalised people to regulate the kind of conversation that goes on in rooms moderated by them.
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Two hands reaching out to each other against the background of a blue sky.

Looking For Someone To Talk To

I would say that growing up in a small village would make it difficult to find love or companionship, but I have since moved to a city and found that it was difficult to find love there, too. It did not stop me from trying, though.
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