Curated Content
The Romance of Small Intimacies
For a while now, I have been invested in noticing the unique terms of endearment that characterise individual relationships. What are some of the non-verbal, non-physical ways in which couples begin to connect with each other? Intimacies that are so subtle that they are almost invisible and often hidden in plain sight?
By Curated Content
February 15, 2019
Tom Makes Breakfast: A Personal Narrative On Intimacy & Casual Relationships
We would spend hours just lost in our sweet, intoxicating world of soft skin, whispers and drenched sheets. It was amazing. But also, I remember the most just sitting together at midnight talking about his mother, my childhood, his habit of wearing a nightcap while sleeping or just our Instagram browsing-patterns.
By Curated Content
Video Page: The Challenge of Being Close
The process of connecting with another person, opening up to them, and getting close enough to build an intimate relationship is fraught with complexities and grey-areas, which often has a marked impact on how we interact with that person and how we choose to conduct ourselves around them.
By Curated Content
February 1, 2019
Brushtrokes: Amanda Oleander’s Art
Artist Amanda Oleander’s paintings chronicles the everyday lives of couples and the various mundane things they do together that are simultaneously deeply intimate and poignant.
By Curated Content
February 1, 2019
Brushstrokes – Miss Moti Comics
“Moti” is often used as a slur, a denigrating epithet translating as “Fatty”, that is used to shame and to degrade; but when the “t” sound is pronounced differently, it becomes “moti”, a pearl – shining, precious, priceless.
By Curated Content
January 2, 2019
Video Page: #PuranaPyaar
The short film, “#Purana Pyaar”, by Gorilla Shorts, starring veteran actors Mohan Agashe and Lillette Dubey, evocatively highlights how age is no bar when it comes to love and desire.
By Curated Content
January 2, 2019
Video Page: The Amorous Adventures of Shakku and Megha in the Valley of Consent
How does one negotiate the “delicate and complex” terrain of giving, receiving and respecting consent, and safely and effectively express sexual desire?
By Curated Content
Let’s Talk About 377 | Popular Culture is Changing How India Views Homosexuality
When Deepa Mehta’s Fire came out in 1996, violent protests roiled India over the depiction of romance between two female leads. There is no homosexuality in India, demonstrators declared while burning effigies in the Capital. In contrast, when Margarita With A Straw came out in 2014, it received accolades for its sensitive portrayal of queer desire in a woman with disability.
By Curated Content
Crazy in Love? The Japanese Man ‘Married’ to a Hologram
Even in a country obsessed with anime, Kondo’s wedding shocked many. But he wants to be recognised as a “sexual minority” who can’t imagine dating a flesh-and-blood woman.
By Curated Content
December 15, 2018
Bodice-Rippers and Bad Education: Do Romance Novels Lead to Sexual Mistakes?
While we’ve grown used to hearing porn blamed for society’s ills, it’s now the medium’s comparatively matronly cousin – romance novels – that have come under scrutiny.
By Curated Content
Video Page: Leading Lady Parts
The short film Leading Lady Parts offers incisive commentary on how femininity and female sexuality are represented in popular culture.
By Curated Content
December 3, 2018
Brushtrokes: Representation in Comics
Comicbooks sell us the fantasy of larger-than-life superheroes, the victory of good over evil, the promise of fighting for a better, inclusive world. But alas, when it comes to the characters themselves, this very inclusivity is often nowhere to be found.
By Curated Content
December 3, 2018
From Stone Dildos to Sexbots: How Technology is Changing Sex
Sex and technology link in many different ways – whether its helps overcome a disability or separation from a loved one, or is simply be a way to increase pleasure and excitement.
By Curated Content
November 15, 2018
Why We Don’t Get Consent
But here is the thing. In heterosexual relationships, how are women and men going to learn to see women’s desires if the world does not see them? If the world is shaped to conform to a certain type of man’s desires only? Where is consent without a diversity of desires and a galaxy of desirability?
By Curated Content
November 15, 2018
Brushstrokes: How Ideas of Purity Damage Our Mental Sexual Health (And Happiness)
How, then, can one shed such harmful modes of thinking around sex, sexuality, and sexual purity, and work towards not only a greater self-awareness, but positive sexual mental health?
By Curated Content