Categories
Loitering Online: Conditions of Possibility
To claim the public then in arbitrary, messy and oppositional ways, whether on the streets or online is to challenge the neoliberal impulse which is located in the creation of order. To create place, to stake claim, thwarts the desires for the sanitised neoliberal city and is a politics.
By Shilpa Phadke
April 15, 2019
गतिशीलता को दबा देने के औज़ार
बाद में जब वह आदमी अपने गंतव्य स्थान पर उतर गया, तो मैंने उस दंपति से अपने असभ्य होने के लिए माफ़ी मांगी। मैं अभी भी दयनीय और असहाय महसूस करती हूँ कि मैंने उस आदमी के उत्पीड़न के लिए और अधिक प्रतिक्रिया क्यों नहीं व्यक्त की और अपने असली स्वभाव को दबाकर क्यों रखा।
By Swapna Vasudevan Thampi
April 15, 2019
Beyond the Hashtags: How Online Activism Led to Women Reclaiming the Street
Essentially, the ‘reclaim the night’ or ‘take back the night’ movement fights for a woman’s right to be out and about post sunset.
By Curated Content
On Old Questions that Remain Important
While some of these questions seem old, they continue to be renewed in public debate on competing claims to public spaces. Ideas about public and private spaces also speak to the ways in which caste and class shape ideas about respectability, thus marking some places as ‘safe’ and others as ‘risky’.
By Sneha Krishnan
April 1, 2019
साक्षात्कार: शिल्पा फडके
‘आप मटरगश्ती (लॉयटर) क्यों करना चाहेंगे?’ नारीवादी शोधकर्ता, अभिभावक, शिक्षक और सक्रियतावादी डॉ॰ शिल्पा फडके से पूछने के लिए एक बढ़िया सवाल है।
By Shikha Aleya
April 1, 2019
Brushstrokes: Searching for Network
Thus, you take to the Internet, with its vast landscape of possibilities, and it becomes your means of finding queer solidarity, queer friendships, and even queer love.
By Curated Content
April 1, 2019
Video Page: The Short Film ‘Naked’
The Internet is as public a space as any other – fraught with its own set of complexities – and the stigmas and moral judgments that plague our immediate physical environment often permeate into it, whether subconsciously or not.
By Curated Content
April 1, 2019
Interview – Kalpana Viswanath
Dr. Kalpana Viswanath, researcher, and urban safety and gender rights activist, shares her thoughts on issues of Public Safety and Sexuality with In Plainspeak. Co-founder and CEO of SafetiPin, a social enterprise that uses data and technology to build safer, more inclusive and smart cities, Kalpana has led large gender rights projects globally.
By Shikha Aleya
April 1, 2019
Coming Out as a Kinkster in Public
Will I write openly about what is or is not done, what is or is not meaningful when it comes to sexuality? Yes. Will I talk about BDSM and kink as a way of life, despite it being taboo for discussion? Yes, I will talk about BDSM and kink, and many other things as well, but I will not evangelise for them.
By Asmi
April 1, 2019
Where Do I Go?
As renowned queer scholar Judith Butler said, “For those who are still looking to become possible, possibility is a necessity.” This is essential but also easier said than done.
By Smita Vanniyar
April 1, 2019
Love, Lust and PDA
Six years later (and out of such an abusive relationship), as I sit in a Gender Studies classroom discussing public and private spheres, being introduced to the feminist ideology of the personal being political, I reflect back and see my experiences as emerging from a complex discursive pattern. The peculiar way in which heterosexual romantic relationships are envisaged and the potentiality of them being disruptive of traditional arrangements of companionship requires them to be manifested outside of the four walls of home and family. Yet, one faces a situation of a pathetic lack of safe spaces within the public sphere and the traditional discourse of love being private and contained within the private sphere…
By Anannya Chatterjee
April 1, 2019
Editorial: Choice and Sexuality
Choices are also influenced by our milieu, by socio-cultural norms, by the laws and strictures that operate to regulate what we may and may not do. Lest this makes it seem that we are mere puppets triggered by internal whimsy and simultaneously constrained by external forces, our contributors show that this is not so.
By TARSHI
March 18, 2019
Supreme Court Has Done Well to Legally Reaffirm Women’s Right to Choose Sexual Partners. So What?
Whether it is family, society, gangs of thugs, or political parties, the threats to women’s freedom to choose in India are many and varied. To the above list, one may add the police and the judiciary as well.
By Curated Content
बेटे का पत्र, पिता के नाम
आज वैश्विक और स्थानीय रूप से हम जहाँ भी हैं, मैं दिल से आपको धन्यवाद देना चाहता हूँ कि आपने मुझे हमेशा ही मजबूत और निर्भीक रहना सिखाया है।
By Sahil Sood
March 18, 2019
Multiple Generations, Same-Sex Couples, Many In-Laws: The Indian Family is Changing
The Indian family is changing. There’s no ‘ideal family’ defined by children or lineage. It comes in different shapes and sizes.
By Curated Content