SISA spaces
The aim of this piece is to bring to light the inherent queerness marking Baul folk music in Bengali, an oral undocumented spiritual expression that transcends heterosexual impositions and classism.
In those moments of doubt, when we wonder whether we can really make a difference in the world, it is often our work friends who remind us why we began.
Growing up, for me, has been about accepting that the loneliness and sadness woven into the fabric of my being do not go away with entering conventional arrangements like monogamous relationships or marriage.
Language itself is being plugged as a resource, to be shared with those who share similar politics, or if not, at least to move them along in that direction. And people who speak, think, love and live differently are targeted as “the other”.
A kiss for the side of your neck One for the last of your back For a year that we…
Some nights I worry that if birth control for men is indeed released, clinical trials of which were suspended in 2016 as its side effects, incidentally the same as what women have been dealing with for ages, were just not worth it, it would be named Fuckboi.
Cyberspace has given the queer woman a chance to problematize the existing gender and sexual identities which, like any identity, is not static. It allows her to create and occupy spaces which will give her freedom and power in a way that the misogynistic physical world cannot provide.
Every part of life, the world too, is storied. Stories are the thread that hold histories and truths together. Stories are at the core of myth-making. Everything that we know is part of multiple crisscrossing relational storylines that we raise and those that we have no power in raising.
In the middle of this pandemic, can one seek sexual support in the form of a hook up with one’s best friend, ‘just because’? Is it redefining boundaries, is it sympathy sex, is it simple indulgence, or is it something that one or both might later resent?
I have dealt with having a non-masculine body since the time I was a teenager. I have questioned my sexuality and how it interacted with my non-masculine body.
“I feel comfortable with who I am,” he responded. “I’m at ease with myself. I don’t wake up and hate myself. I can’t tell you how amazing that feels.”
“I know how that feels,” I told him.
The film Hot Girls Wanted followed the journey of five young women aged 18-25 years as they joined the pornography industry and also looked more broadly at at women in this age group and their motivation to join.
This film reminds us of the power of connections in finding pleasure, joy, confidence and healing.
This short and cute graphic story by Priya Dali, published by Gaysi in collaboration with Tinder, captures the playful initial stages of online dating as Maya tries to make the first move on Rae with the help of colleagues.
This question of appropriateness is, for me, at the heart of all questions around sexuality. Each of us carries within us our own private benchmarks for which expressions of sexuality we find appropriate, and which ones, in turn, have crossed an invisible line. The ones we believe belong across the border, in the land of the inappropriate, of the too much.