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
Any conversation on sexuality cannot exclude engagement with the myriad ways in which taboos around sexuality, the privileging of heteronormative ideals, the violence and marginalisation faced by people deviating from norms of sexuality and gender affect our mental health and well-being.
Aastha Khanna is India’s first intimacy coordinator who is making sure that a film’s vision is realised without flouting anyone’s boundaries, or leading to general awkwardness on set, especially when it comes to intimate scenes.
Sharp and evocative, Kalki Koechlin’s spoken-word poem The Printing Machine lays bare the cycle of ceaseless and desensitised consumption engendered by the media. Kalki’s short and hard-hitting sentences, keys tap-tap-tapping, and the chrrs and grrs of printing machines bring out the urgency and sensationalism media narratives embody, turning incidents of violence into a stream of headlines that make us gasp and forget, gasp and forget.
The In Plainspeak team decided to time travel and re-discover previously published articles that explore the multiple ways in which people find joy and pleasure in their sexualities.
Sexuality can be said to influence and be influenced by every aspect of our lives. Talking about sexuality, however, is widely tabooed, especially at the workplace. Anything that evinces sexuality is at once mired in controversy – from clothing choices (of women, especially) to sexual harassment cases, from gender role-challenging career choices to sex work. Why is anything to do with sexuality seen as taking away the gravitas of work?
Our desire to connect is perhaps one of the human aspirations that both Sexuality and the Internet serve. And with the Internet we now have new ways, unthought of even twenty years ago, of connecting with each other, and even at times with ourselves, finding aspects of our selves that we did not know existed.