Voices
Even her talking to other men elicits a growl from these men, and it’s all supposed to be okay because they’re billionaires and 6’5 feet tall or something, oh and did I mention the abs?
Men perform an identity that they don’t fully understand. The pressure to appear strong while feeling the full range of emotions that they cannot express creates a hollow inside, creates a quiet dissonance, a loneliness that is rarely spoken of but deeply felt.
Apart from the masculinity portrayed in commercial films with heterosexual tropes, Bollywood has produced movies portraying distorted female masculinity.
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.
Could it be that other changes in our lives make it even more difficult to conceive the desire of the ‘other’, specifically of those with whom we don’t share as many conversations, with whom we’ll soon, I expect, lose entirely the ability to speak?
Language can be a limiting thing when it alone is considered to be the marker of success or failure in intimate spaces. Sometimes we get stuck on what is said and fail to notice what is done in relationships. At other times, denial of a need, request, or crossing of one boundary can make us feel like the entire relationship has lost its value.
Intimacy can never thrive in an environment of rigid certainty. Intimacy requires surrender – not in the sense of submission – but in the willingness to be with another person without detachment or defences.
Consent cannot be a singular lesson plan. We need to reimagine the ways in which consent can be integrated into our curriculum content, conversations, and how we role-model it.
The language of consent is not neutral. It is rigid where it should be nuanced, malleable where it should be firm. Yes is an all-encompassing spirit, ever-expanding; No is frustratingly constricted, barely visible.
शहरी स्थानों को पुनः प्राप्त करने के लिए, सार्वजनिक स्थानों पर प्यार और रोमांस की पुलिसिंग या निगरानी के कई पहलुओं को देखना महत्वपूर्ण है
The sheer ignorance of the intricacies of consent, or its performance, serves only to strengthen the enduring patriarchal framework that holds sway in a society where the bodies, desires, and even voices of women have been, and, tragically, continue to be, defined and controlled by men.
Consequently, a “yes” – whether verbal or gestural – cannot be shallowly inferred as an authentic, unambiguous, and static agreement to a “contract” proposed by men.
When a woman, in her own house, is told by her family members, to always seek their consent before doing anything, and to always keep them informed of every activity she engages in, or even to seek a job in her chosen field, her freedom is taken away from her. She is expected to take their consent for anything and everything, but her own consent is taken away from her.
…when both of us speak about the way we engage in our workspaces, we find common contradictions and barriers. How does a queer person navigate these barriers, constantly negotiating when, where and on what terms to engage? To be seen or to remain unseen?
This awareness of the status ascribed to women – the status of being the objects of men’s desires – affects every aspect of a woman’s life. Desire then, in particular, becomes an aspect of a woman’s life where navigation becomes tricky.
Our bodies become the form and medium through which we present ourselves to the outside world, engage with it, interact with it, perceive it and are perceived by it.