Editorial
The Editorial: Films and Sexuality
The arts hold great sway on how sexuality is viewed, represented, and understood. Does art imitate life, or life, art? Or can it be tossed away as an inscrutable mix of the two influencing each other?
By TARSHI
January 16, 2017
The Editorial: Fiction and Sexuality
For many of us, it was fiction that fed our souls as children, and now as adults who are still ‘growing up’, it feeds us still. Fiction makes, remakes and unmakes us who walk in worlds of the imagination. It liberates us to dream various versions of ourselves and others into being as the articles in this month’s In Plainspeak eloquently reveal.
By TARSHI
September 15, 2017
The Editorial: Feminism and Sexuality
“Ab dil karta hai haule haule se Main toh khud ko gale lagaun Kisi aur ki mujhko zaroorat kya Main…
By TARSHI
November 15, 2015
The Editorial: Fantasy and Sexuality
Fantasy is make-believe. We make something up and then we believe it in order to make it exist. However, in some contexts, the make-believe is relegated to the realm of mere ‘play’ (as opposed to the ‘real’), but there’s no denying that make-believing is a crux of human civilisation – children naturally play make-believe games that steer them in their growth, adults use the hypothetical in their thought to make everyday decisions, and both children and adults rely on fantastical stories and myths to construct a common meaning that contributes to creating the world as we know it.
By TARSHI
November 22, 2016
The Editorial: Family and Sexuality
The trouble with the of the origin of families is that no one knows – Kathleen Gough In her 1971…
By TARSHI
May 15, 2015
The Editorial: Disability and Sexuality
What can persons with disability do and not do? Can they have sex? Should they have sex? However well-intentioned they…
By TARSHI
August 1, 2014
The Editorial: Consent and Violence
Felicitations to us at TARSHI! As we turn 18 this month, the currently legal age of consent for sexual activity…
By TARSHI
February 1, 2014
The Editorial: Comprehensive Sexuality Education
Remember the ‘first time’? And probably, you, like many of us, were plagued by fears of ‘What if…?’ But instead…
By TARSHI
February 15, 2015
The Editorial: Communities and Sexuality
To belong or not to belong? Some people define themselves through commonalities. There are some who define themselves through difference and then seek to find others who share that difference. They find commonality in a shared difference. Commonality is what makes for a community. To keep that commonality becomes an unwritten rule. What lets you in? What keeps you out? Every community tries to keep its members together. There are expectations, rules, impositions and, for the dissidents, punishments. Ironically, even communities of people who do not conform to mainstream norms of sexuality or gender have their own norms.
By TARSHI
July 15, 2017
The Editorial: Boundaries and Sexuality
The boundaries are the most interesting bits. No definitions can be identified without them, and yet they themselves remain in a state of flux – neither here nor there, neither this nor that, but both, all, nothing, and so much more. None can stake their claim on the borderland; it is unseizable, enigmatic, most ungraspable. In its ambiguity it has the power to comfort the outlier at its best, and at its worst, leave bereft those who seek refuge in the absolute.
By TARSHI
April 18, 2017
The Editorial: Body Image
Do you love your eyes and hate your knees? Or do you sometimes wish your XXX were different? Replace XXX with any body part of your choice. We have all been there – griping, never satisfied, and never owning our own beauty. How do we perceive and evaluate our own bodies? What do we love? What do we loathe? And why?
By TARSHI
May 1, 2014
The Editorial: Body and Sexuality
In one sense, the body is what I immediately am. In another sense, I am separated from it by the…
By TARSHI
June 17, 2015
The Editorial: Attire and Sexuality
Where perhaps attire traditionally demarcates community identity (one’s tribe, religion, caste, class, etc.), it has in more recent times (along with other identifiable commodities) come to also be used to express, assert, assess, control and contest individual identity. How does sexuality come into play in matters of attire and identity? And how do they all relate to how we live and connect with each other?
By TARSHI
August 25, 2016
The Editorial: Art and Activism
Art has the potential of reaching out to wide and diverse audiences and speaks to them in different ways. Therein…
By TARSHI
July 1, 2014
The Editorial: Anniversary Issue
We are one year old! Yes, In Plainspeak has been publishing articles from around the Global South, especially India and…
By TARSHI
December 1, 2014