Let\u2019s kick off with physics, because, why not? It\u2019s brutally clear: nothing stands alone. Motion? Stillness? Position? Meaningless without a frame of reference. Your \u2018at rest\u2019 rocket is screaming across the sky in someone else\u2019s view. Nudge the frame, and the whole picture dances. What felt rock-solid starts to wobble. What seemed obvious, purely made-up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Physics admits this upfront. We pretend otherwise. We nurture this cosy myth: the Self as some eternal core inside us, unchanging, pure, just aching for expression. Safe from the world\u2019s chaos. But let\u2019s be real. The Self thrives in relation to people, institutions, raw power. No isolation. Shift the frame, and it morphs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Picture a woman in a government mental hospital in rural Bengal. Over a decade locked in. Her name? Faded to a case file, ID number etched in faded ink. Days blur into medicated routine: meds at dawn, group therapy echoes, lights out by nine. Inside, the docs nod: \u2018stable\u2019. She complies, stays quiet, no outbursts. System-speak: \u2018at rest\u2019. It\u2019s tidy, contained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But zoom out. That \u2018rest\u2019 screams confinement. Stability for whose world? Recovery into what? A life doled out in portions? Seen through which lens, doctor\u2019s chart, family\u2019s whispers, society\u2019s side-eye? The institution tamed her. It didn\u2019t rebuild her Self. It archived it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We\u2019ve met dozens like her in our mental health programs across Kolkata\u2019s fringes and beyond. Folks for whom \u2018who am I?\u2019 isn\u2019t about self-discovery. It\u2019s survival: do I even register as a Self? Mainstream identity talk assumes an intact core, ready for unpacking, celebrating, TikTok affirmations. But reality bites differently. It\u2019s erosion, a slow grind of being unseen, redefined by others\u2019 scripts. Lives plotted on charts you didn\u2019t draw.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Call it what it is: identity deprivation. Not muddled feelings. Straight-up starvation.
Enter sexuality. Not as sidebar fluff, but the razor-sharp arena where Self gets greenlit or ghosted. We romanticise it, desire, orientation, bold identity. Empowering, personal. Yes, if you\u2019ve got the runway: freedom to claim your body, your intimacies, your pace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Most haven\u2019t. In asylums like hers, sexuality? Erased. No hungers acknowledged, no boundaries yours to set, no touch beyond clinical pokes. Bodies become vessels, dosed, scrubbed, surveilled. Feeling? Choice? Laughable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Shift to the slums and villages we organise in. Women pour out stories: bodies as workhorses. Dawn-to-dusk labour, fetching water, cooking for ten, enduring floods or fevers. Caregiving marathons. Survival mode. Pleasure? A hazy rumour. \u2018My body aches from bricks and babies,\u2019 one said last workshop, eyes distant. \u2018Joy in it? That\u2019s for films.\u2019 Sexuality feels alien, maybe sinful, reserved for making heirs, not claiming delight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Queer and trans kin face it worse. Every glance a probe, every step a correction. \u2018Fix that walk,\u2019 families hiss. Clinics \u2018treat\u2019 it as illness. Communities police it into shadows. Recognition? A fragile truce, revoked on a whim.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sexuality persists, though. Just reframed:
Desire in one world.
Danger in the next.
Blank slate in the last.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Same soul, wildly different permissions. Their depths don\u2019t flip, the frames do. So \u2018what does the Self offer sexuality?\u2019 lands flat. The Self arrives pre-shaped, rationed by what\u2019s tolerated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Punitive cage? Sexuality turns toxic, not uplifting. No mirror of true seeing? Self withers. Our go-to fix? \u2018Accept yourself. Build that inner fire. Claim your truth.\u2019 Feels good, but it\u2019s a dodge. Pins blame inward, spares the structures strangling possibility. Like telling a caged bird to soar higher.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Affirmation sparks in connection, not vacuums. Sexuality blooms affirming only with scaffolding:
True recognition, as whole person, not labels. Desires valid, boundaries sacred.
Relational haven, intimacy safe from fists or shame, vulnerability cradled.
Structural green lights, laws shielding instead of snaring, institutions enabling, communities embracing multiplicity.
Lacking these, \u2018be you\u2019 mocks. Expand? In shrinking boxes?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That \u2018discharge-ready\u2019 woman teeters here. Hospital frame, check. But family reunion? \u2018Too broken for marriage.\u2019 Village gaze? \u2018Medicated oddity.\u2019 State aid? \u2018Compliant case closed.\u2019 Each frame resets her. Who emerges? What hides for air? Personality? No, permission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We prod \u2018know thyself.\u2019 Flip it. At rest, according to whom? A trans youth we worked with put it raw: \u2018I\u2019m still when the cops look away. Racing when they circle.\u2019 Frames dictate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In one rally last monsoon, a survivor shared: post-hospital, her desires resurfaced, quiet wants for touch, laughter. Family frame crushed it: \u2018You\u2019re cured, act normal.\u2019 Community? Gossip mill. She shrank again. Till our circle reframed it: \u201cYour body\u2019s yours. Tell us your story.\u201d Permission unlocked flickers of Self.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ignoring frames keeps \u2018be yourself\u2019 unequal. Gift to the privileged, burden to the bound. Self doesn\u2019t solo-emerge. It ignites, or fizzles, in worlds we craft.
Change those worlds, and sexuality stops echoing limits. It sings what\u2019s possible, selves fully, fiercely alive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Illustration by Rukmini Chakravarty<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Change those worlds, and sexuality stops echoing limits.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":611,"featured_media":29354,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5351,8],"tags":[66,121,26,317,918,1001,71,303,48,1739,4986,99,5353,68,25,2310,5358],"class_list":{"0":"post-29282","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-the-self-and-sexuality","8":"category-voices","9":"tag-desire","10":"tag-feminism","11":"tag-gender","12":"tag-gender-identity","13":"tag-identity-politics","14":"tag-lgbtqia","15":"tag-love","16":"tag-mental-health","17":"tag-pleasure","18":"tag-power-equations","19":"tag-queer-experience","20":"tag-relationships","21":"tag-self-and-sexuality","22":"tag-sex","23":"tag-sexualities","24":"tag-sisa-spaces","25":"tag-trans-experiences"},"menu_order":0,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29282","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\/611"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29282"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29282\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29312,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29282\/revisions\/29312"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}