SISA spaces
Self-care is influenced by the environment we inhabit, the way we relate to others, the way we negotiate with other living beings or structures. Self-care is also interlinked with other types of care – whether that is in community resources, psychosocial support, engagement with medical and health care institutions, and of course in collective agency and solidarity.
As a queer person, it’s hard not to think right away of chosen family. A term that has become relatively well-known by now, but not always understood I find. One of the primary support systems I personally, like many queer folx, depend on, are ones that we develop and nurture over time.
But not every issue of discrimination and conflict can go to a court.Say for example, affording privacy to a young adult with disability to understand their body and sexual responses, or enabling them to access accessible sex toys or assistive devices related to sexual pleasure.
We are plugged in to all kinds of data from a variety of sources, through technology, and even a window view of this space is like stepping into a global COVID control data centre. We are standing up to be counted, to be seen, to do, to contribute, to advocate, to remind, to rectify and restore, to strengthen a growing network of support and response to crisis on a scale we have neither been able to process or measure.
There are times when we bend the rules and draw on the walls. This is one of those times. We listened in on some of the chatter online on the subject of consent and we ended up with some questions.
“I feel that connection is the survival language of the LGBTQIA+ community. The sense of a common struggle makes way for developing quick yet lasting connections among the community…”
The larger question is, who gets to bring all of themselves to the workplace, and who is either not allowed, or feels scared, or is bullied for doing so?
I feel that parents, teachers and CSE can make room for these disparate realities of adolescents by first acknowledging the limits of formal sexuality education, that the curriculum imparted formally fails in providing the kind of learning that happens through other sources.
Safe spaces in the way that they often circulate are depoliticised and the assumption is that there won’t be any conflicts, but there can be no safe space without an exchange of ideas, which will create some bad feelings leading to conflict.
How might we think of sexuality as innovation, before we jump onto producing new technologies? Does the language of innovation, that of newness, invention and change, have anything to offer in rethinking structures of intimacy?
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…