Issue In Focus
Issue In Focus: Rabbits, Monsters And Terrified Therapists
The rabbit and the monster is a story about a baby rabbit all alone in a jungle trying to escape…
By Shikha Aleya
Issue In Focus: Privacy and Peer Relationships
If students of such young ages can have the agency to work around hard-wired issues of sexuality and privacy, bearing in mind consent, choice and failure as part of life, we see no reason for this sense of agency to not expand one’s sense of belonging and easily create change.
By Aishwarya and Reshma
September 2, 2019
Issue in Focus: Power, Agency and Sexuality
Since all women do not share a common history, agency cannot and need not be located for all in an emancipatory discourse and in the recourse to resistance and subversion. For some, feminist agency and the realisation of one’s potential as gendered actors in the world can come from submitting to a discourse that others deem repressive.
By Shweta Krishnan
July 2, 2018
Issue In Focus: Perverse Justice
I am a perverse nomad. My journey encompasses cruising parks in Kolkata and New York City, friendships with didis of…
By Debanuj DasGupta
January 1, 2014
Issue in Focus: Performance and Sexuality
To think of sexuality as performative disrupts the need for stable categories and identities, instead suggesting that we all reinforce and disrupt normative formations as we attempt to inhabit the world in messy ways.
By Sneha Krishnan
September 4, 2018
Issue in Focus: Of Webs and Wellbeing
Is seeking wellbeing selfish and individualistic? Does it imply placing one’s own interests above those of others? In the context of sexuality, does it mean prioritising one’s pursuit and attainment of pleasure above all else?
By Radhika Chandiramani
January 2, 2019
Issue in Focus: Of Webs and Wellbeing
Is seeking wellbeing selfish and individualistic? Does it imply placing one’s own interests above those of others? In the context of sexuality, does it mean prioritising one’s pursuit and attainment of pleasure above all else?
By Radhika Chandiramani
June 1, 2018
Issue In Focus: Of Flying Spaghetti Monsters and Inner Goddesses
Spirituality and sexuality (for most people, if they are not asexual or voluntarily celibate, either of which is their right to be) are both about union. And they are both about deeply personal and intimate aspects of oneself.
By Radhika Chandiramani
November 1, 2019
Issue in Focus: Naturalising the Normative
Societal norms that are contested, especially around body and sexuality, are often passed as the ‘natural order’ of things. The objective study of ‘nature’ that science claims to do induces society to seek scientific explanations to verify naturalness. It has been shown in many cases that the questions that scientists ask, and the methods they use, are coloured by norms of society. Yet, the ‘scientific answers’ thus got help determine what is natural. In the process, the normative gets naturalised.
By Chayanika Shah
July 1, 2016
Issue in Focus: My right to say ‘yes’ and my right to say ‘no’
Women in our societies largely do not have any acquaintance with the word ‘consent’, but they are very familiar with…
By Sumati Panikkar
February 1, 2014
Issue in Focus: Money, Money, Money – Must be Funny
A few days ago, we were doing a self-reflective exercise at work on what gives us power, how we demonstrate power, and what (or who) has power over us. Surprisingly, but not much, I found money featuring across the board for me: be it through financial independence or financial constraints. Power, as exercised by me or as exercised over me, has been intricately tied with my sexuality – ranging from job options to travel decisions to reproductive choices – and money seemed to lord over it all. It wasn’t the only lord, but it was quite a powerful lord.
By Vani Viswanathan
Issue in Focus: Memory and Sexuality – A Methodological Approach
A methodological approach to the study of memory and sexuality helps delineate interesting connections between the two: memory as a methodological tool for the study of sexualities, memory as an object of study, and the role of personal memory in the formation of individual sexualities.
By Varsha Chitnis
ISSUE IN FOCUS: LEAVING HOME AND RECLAIMING SELF
As I sit to write this piece, somehow the song Aap Ki Yaad Aati Rahi Raat Bhar from the 1978…
By Chayanika Shah
January 2, 2018
Issue In Focus: Leaving Home and Reclaiming Self
It seems then that there is a direct relationship between the extent of transgression of sexual and gender norms on the one hand, and the need to migrate on the other. Whatever background people come from, migration is almost inevitable and necessary.
By Chayanika Shah
September 1, 2016
Issue in Focus: Knowing Sex
We might need, therefore, to uncouple sexuality from intimacy because they do not necessarily belong together. Intimacy points to the comfort of knowledge while sexuality often shatters what knowledge we think we have.
By Madhavi Menon
February 1, 2019