{"id":1563,"date":"2014-02-01T06:00:58","date_gmt":"2014-02-01T00:30:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak?p=1563"},"modified":"2018-06-06T15:55:55","modified_gmt":"2018-06-06T10:25:55","slug":"editorial-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/editorial-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The Editorial: Consent and Violence"},"content":{"rendered":"

Felicitations to us at TARSHI!<\/strong><\/p>\n

As we turn 18 this month, the currently legal age of consent for sexual activity in India, this issue of In Plainspeak<\/i> poses some difficult questions that we all ask ourselves in the course of not just our work but also our own personal relationships. Every day we see around us blatant violations of bodily integrity, of our right to exercise choice \u2013 of partner (because of their gender, class, caste, religion, you name it\u2026), of whether to have sex, of what brings us pleasure, quite simply not just a violation of our right to say No, but also of our right to say Yes.<\/p>\n

In a way, the events since December 2012 have starkly brought to the fore the absolute contempt that we seem to have as a country for the notion of consent. Be it gang rape, sexual harassment (from the streets to the highest echelons of the judiciary), so-called \u2018honour killings\u2019, child sexual abuse, marital rape, consensual same-sex activity, you name it \u2013 in effect not much seems to get done in terms of prevention, implementation of laws, accountability or even comprehensive sexuality education.<\/p>\n

What exactly is consent? Is lack of consent coercion? Or something else? How do we demarcate lack of consent from coercion? Who is capable of giving consent to sex? At what age? Is maturity inevitability linked with age? Does the advent of a birthday bestow a magical ability to give meaningful consent?<\/p>\n

Exploring these issues of consent and coercion we have for you an array of interesting articles.Vidya Reddy of TULIR in the Interview<\/i> <\/a>conducted by Shweta Krishnan lays out the laws of the land and the confusions and contradictions surrounding the age of consent and articulates the complexities of today\u2019s realities for determining the age of consent for young people.\u00a0 Sumati Pannikar delves into the right to say Yes and No in the Issue in Focus<\/em> <\/a>using real life incidents from recent times to illustrate quite chillingly how consent is not even a notion, leave alone a practice that most people are familiar with in our context.\u00a0From this bird\u2019s eye view, so to say, Anita takes us through the I Column<\/i><\/a> to a more in-depth understanding in her personal account of her life as a Devadasi <\/i>in Maharashtra, Western India, destroying in this process many stereotypes that people hold.<\/p>\n

Artika Raj has a book review<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>of Good Times for Everyone: Sexuality Questions, Feminist Answers. In a similar vein, Parigya Sharma exposes the\u00a0 cinematic ignorance of coercion<\/a>. Mukesh offers a powerful poem <\/a>that was first published at Orinam.net, Pooja\u00a0Badarinath from CREA writes about the many facets of consent<\/a>\u00a0and we have pictures of an awareness campaign about \u2018What consent means to people\u2019 organized by Disha Luthra\u00a0in the Voices<\/i> section.<\/p>\n

Our Hindi <\/em><\/a>section has an article by Dipika Srivastava about the lack of clarity, legal and otherwise, about who is a \u2018child\u2019 and what constitutes consent.<\/p>\n

In the Visual Corner<\/i><\/a>, you will find short videos on love, consent, and violence made by Must Bol and Brushstrokes<\/em> <\/a>features the much talked about Fearless Campaign initiated by Shilo Shiv Suleman as a response to the fear instilled among all post the December 2012 Delhi gang rape. \u00a0Manak Matiyani\u00a0takes a closer look at the lyrics of songs<\/a> in international and local media to show how they perpetuate violence in the name of entertainment.\u00a0The Gallery<\/em> <\/a>features posters on Consent and Violence by Must Bol.<\/p>\n

We would also like to take this opportunity to thank all those who have been with us along this 18 year ride – here’s to more adventures along the way!<\/p>\n

The TARSHI Team<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n

 <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Felicitations to us at TARSHI! As we turn 18 this month, the currently legal age of consent for sexual activity…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11410,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104,65],"tags":[97,500],"class_list":{"0":"post-1563","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-consent-and-coercion","8":"category-editorial","9":"tag-consent","10":"tag-editorial"},"menu_order":0,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1563"}],"version-history":[{"count":30,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1563\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14023,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1563\/revisions\/14023"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}