SISA spaces
Despite the lack of a formal Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) curriculum in place in India, there has been a growing interest in providing CSE programmes in schools.
Social media and dating platforms provide new opportunities for connection, but they also elevate the potential risk of harm associated with any online engagement. The anonymity of the interaction can serve both as a source of freedom and potential exploitation.
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 long for much more than a greater representation of brown women. I long for a complete overhaul of the racial, gendered, and economic systems that structure our suffering.
But I also long for representation of all people, including brown women, who are in love, who are loveable, and who are — in the absence of love — lonely.
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.
We become women before we become a woman. Of course, we don’t need to try hard to do so…We learn the sides and folds of the gendered box we are in before we gain the perspective to decide we don’t fit in and build a customised box or choose to have no box at all.
Pandemics have a profound psychological impact. They are known to disrupt one’s sense of safety, security, certainty, control, concordance, and…
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.
I went to a girls’ high school and for somebody who had spent the last ten years in a co-ed…
Marriage also feels complicated when one approaches it through the lens of feminism. Marriage throws in two people and often their families into a system designed to perpetuate patriarchy, subjugate women, and bind men and women (in heteronormative marriage) into strict roles in the marriage.
Marriage also feels complicated when one approaches it through the lens of feminism. Marriage throws in two people and often their families into a system designed to perpetuate patriarchy, subjugate women, and bind men and women (in heteronormative marriage) into strict roles in the marriage.
Four More Shots Please! moves in the right direction when it comes to women (of a particular social stratum), their lives, and feminism at large – even if it takes small, stumbling, baby steps towards it.
These two films were refreshing because they didn’t have the fairytale endings of girl-meets-boy, they fall in love, overcome difficult challenges and live happily ever after. Instead, they were set in everyday reality where life takes over and choices have to be made.
…even if people have little in common, once they enter these spaces of solidarity, they are connected to a larger community. These spaces become wellsprings of an unspoken sense of safety and mutual support between individuals of communities that share a sense of having been othered.