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

young people and sexuality

A still from the film Batman & Robin

Why is it difficult to say, “I’m bisexual”?

Being an adolescent is never easy. It is the beginning of one’s life journey to answering the ultimate existential question: Who am I? It was E.E. Cummings, a North American poet, who said, “It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.” Now, I find that a little non-inclusive. Allow me to…
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A watercolour image of a woman

Poems by Nhylar

1. A Certain Type of Life  since the age of 16 I idealised a certain type of life involving certain type of women who loved women they were the kind of people who looked perfectly content stooped over a book and their lover in a park on a beautiful Sunday morning the kind of people…
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A still from the Netflix series Jeffery Epstein – Filthy Rich

Dismantling a sex-trafficking pyramid

Every Friday my organisation Red Dot Foundation hosts a SafeCircle, an online space for listening and for sharing experiences of sexual violence. Last Friday, as we were sharing stories, it suddenly dawned on me that many of us were still traumatised by some of the relationships and experiences we had when we were between 16…
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A still from the film What Will People Say?

Shame, shame!

I discovered the movie What Will People Say? while browsing Netflix. Growing up in a society in which people are obsessed with everyone else’s opinion (except their own, perhaps), the name of the film caught my attention. Directed by Iram Haq and set in present-day Norway and Pakistan, the film is about Nisha, the teenaged…
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A watercolour image of a woman

From ‘I wish I knew!’ to ‘Is it right to tell them this?’

  • ·July 1, 2020
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I wish my elders had told me about more than just bleeding when they talked about menstruation. I wish they had told me about sex, at an appropriate time. Because the way my friend described it to me in 11th grade sounded so yuck. Today, I’m 36 and sometimes in my head, it still triggers…
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A part of the webcomic ‘Closets’

Brushstrokes: Closets

Robot Hugs, in their insightful comic, take on closets as inherently oppressive structures built to uphold what is acceptable and what is not. They subvert the popular notion that coming to terms with and coming out with our queer identity is a one-time event as well as problematise coming out in itself as reinforcing that…
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A still from Sumukhi Suresh's 'I Run When My Mom Calls'

Video: Run When Mom Calls | Sumukhi Suresh | Don’t Tell Amma

Stand-up comedian Sumukhi Suresh’s video I Run When my Mom Calls, part of her performance Don’t Tell Amma, is a boldly humorous reminder of lines drawn around us by tradition. She uses the figure of Amma (mother) to symbolise socio-cultural attitudes towards sex, particularly outside of marriage. With an air of resigned amusement, Sumukhi recounts…
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