Voices
Self-Care and Masturbation – Let’s Give It the Female Perspective It Deserves
And that is sadly the case with so many women. Speak of exercise and nutrition as a path to wellbeing and self-care, sure. They will read Prevention and Health type of magazines, employ a personal trainer, go to a yoga class, or follow a dietician’s advice. But speak to them of yoni eggs, masturbation and self-pleasure, and you are suddenly not speaking a language they understand!
Same-sex love in the time of decolonisation: Historicising hidden sexual lives in Selvadurai’s Cinnamon Gardens
Cinnamon Gardens, looking back on the early twentieth century, reveals the trauma of queer lives, in a country where queerness, family and the state are still irreconcilable with each other.
By Kaustav Bakshi
Safety and Adventure All Rolled Into One
However elusive the combination of safety and adventure, it’s a framework I find terribly useful. It helps me understand much of life, including spirituality and sexuality, and what the two might have in common.
By Jaya Sharma
November 1, 2019
Safety and Adventure All Rolled Into One
However elusive the combination of safety and adventure, it’s a framework I find terribly useful. It helps me understand much of life, including spirituality and sexuality, and what the two might have in common.
By Jaya Sharma
January 2, 2020
Safe Sex In The Time of Abundance
I want it, I got it. Right? Except, what I often get is some approximation of erotic pleasure, which has more to do with my own conditioning about what good sex looks like, and little to do with my body’s erotic mechanisms. This very peculiar condition is often lumped under ‘sexual frustration’, when it should really be addressed under safety.
By Faustina Johnson
April 1, 2020
Sacred Sonic Constellations: Abida Parveeen and Falguni Pathak
Sounds of Abida Parveen and Falguni Pathak’s force move me to other frames, that foreground unforgiven settlements. They provide me with what Jacqui Alexander has so beautifully called “pedagogies of the sacred.”
By Sara Shroff
November 1, 2019
Run for your body, Run No Way!
It’s sad that we think we own our bodies: the bodies we love, the bodies we hate, the bodies we…
By Abdullah Erikat
June 17, 2015
Rights and Freedom: From Street to Rehabilitation Centre
The fight for an end to discrimination and violence against sex workers in Cambodia, as in many other parts of the world, has a long way to go.
By WNU
April 5, 2016
Rezubian, Bi or Straight?
Employing a direct line of questioning in a booming voice, a tall drag queen shining in a blood red sequinned gown, strides to our table and shoots the question at us. I am not entirely sure how to respond and neither is my friend.
By Niyati Dave
March 1, 2016
Revisiting Ctrl Alt Swipe Right: Sex, Sexuality and the Internet in India
Looking back at this piece, written seven years ago, the core issues that I identified then remain significant and relevant….
By Siddharth Narrain
Refusing the weight in waiting
As a girl, I was made to believe that pleasure was something that existed outside my body, something that I had to seek out, something that was necessarily a product of a partnered experience. I don’t think I was even allowed to want pleasure, especially in its sexual forms.
By Aathira Gopi
March 15, 2022
Reframing Family History
Often when we speak of families and family history, we talk genetics, traditions and inheritance of all kinds. Somehow our relationship by blood or otherwise to a clan is supposed to help us identify our place in the universe. So there’s family medical history, family culture, family traditions of food and career. But sexuality? A family history that focuses on sexuality? What would that even mean?
By Shikha Aleya
May 1, 2016
Reflections on accessibility and sexuality
I thought of myself as a feminist activist much before I formally entered the development sector space. I participated in…
By Shreshtha Das
August 16, 2017
Reel vs Real: Lessons from the Netflix series, Sex Education
I finally got around to watching Laurie Nunn’s debut series Sex Education that premiered in 2019 on Netflix. With its…
By Isha Vajpeyi
Reclining Vulnerability
Through multiple maquettes, I finally came across (since I myself did not know what the result of the form or figure would be) the Reclining Lady. She represents confident femininity and vulnerability. The feeling one has after taking a bath and sitting in the nude, drying oneself in unabashed nakedness.
By Noella Fernandes
April 19, 2021