Covid-19 Archives • Page 2 of 3 • In Plainspeak

Covid-19

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A graphic illustration with a black, inky tree with branches outlined by a silhouette of a face.

Ageing vaginas in ageing female bodies are joked about. But a vagina shouldn’t have the task of pleasing anybody but itself first. To begin with, we’ll have to love and respect our vaginas in order to pleasure them. Love them just as they are. If they feel a little dry, don’t despair. Use a lubricant or a little coconut oil. If my labia are unshapely, they’re still my labia and respond very nicely to gentleness and tenderness. If I don’t love and respect my ageing body, in need of gentle, loving, patient care, then who will, for God’s sake?

By Nighat Gandhi

July 5, 2021

MY VAGINA IS DUKHA?

Dear Diary: The radically feminist creative journalling practice that nobody talks about

A photograph of a person's arm and hand. The background of a couch with a blue duvet is blurred, and the focus is on the person's hands, with brown nail-paint, and a blue pen in their hands. They are writing in a spiral bound notebook. Beside them is a black cup.

My journal has many entries that are speculative and fantastic. Writing about the mundane leads me to question the way the world operates and from there I frog-leap into a world of ideas where I imagine a radically different way of being. In my journal, I imagine a politics of care, community, and compassion. I become grand, valuable, and unstoppable, even in a world where I am sometimes made to feel small.

By Sheena D'Lima

July 5, 2021

Dear Diary: The radically feminist creative journalling practice that nobody talks about

On Confinements & Coexistence: Perspectives on the Impact of Covid-19 on the Mental Health of Women

A photograph of a room with one window. The photo showcases the room as semicircular and has a black floor with a window reflected, and brown-white brick walls with a sunlit window.

Pandemics have a profound psychological impact. They are known to disrupt one’s sense of safety, security, certainty, control, concordance, and…

By Ansha Patel

July 5, 2021

On Confinements & Coexistence: Perspectives on the Impact of Covid-19 on the Mental Health of Women

Brushstrokes: Women At Leisure: Photo Essay On Pastime As A Feminist Issue

A set of two photographs, on the left a coloured photograph of a woman hanging from a tree with orange flowers, on the right a black and white photograph of a woman looking at her left eye in a hand-held mirror and applying make-up.

Inspired to collect photographs of women spending time by themselves and for themselves after a conversation with her mother’s friend, Surabhi Yadav began the project, Women at Leisure.

By Feminism in India

July 5, 2021

Brushstrokes: Women At Leisure: Photo Essay On Pastime As A Feminist Issue

An illustration of a woman looking in the mirror, with adornments. She is wearing a pink hat with a feather, and blue long hair.

This thought-provoking, luminously illustrated The School of Life video reminds us of self-compassion being essential to building our own selves up, and being a safe space where we can extend the same love and imagination to our vulnerabilities, insecurities, fears, and doubts as we do to our friends.

By Curated Content

July 5, 2021

Video: How to be a Friend to Yourself

Probing the Screen: Pleasure in the Virtual World

Wall-art of a face till the bridge of the nose. The face is coloured in peach, grey, and shades of blue. The eyes, green, are lined in black and have spots of yellow, brown, and blue colour around them. Under the left eye, there are yellow dots. The hair is streaked with purple and blue.

The virtual world allows me to challenge the hold of patriarchy on my ‘effeminate’ body; in a sense, it allows me to evade the policing of desire that my body shares with another, its flows and slippages, the messy and the unkempt. While virtual sex offers a window to revisit the sensual, it is also not immune to limitations and insecurities.

By Neel

June 15, 2021

Probing the Screen: Pleasure in the Virtual World

A digital illustration of networks, with many white lines criss-crossing, intersecting, and branching out across a grey-blue background. Wherever the lines intersect in the web of networks is a small white dot.

While we are struggling with the vicissitudes brought on by the pandemic we are also forced to spend more time online, to look for resources in terms of health care or caregivers, to reach out to people and build a communities of care, to take a break, or to try and hook-up online for a while.

By TARSHI

May 15, 2021

Editorial: Data and Sexuality

A photograph of the eye of a needle and many differently coloured threads passing through it, on a black background.

…even if people have little in common, once they enter these spaces of solidarity, they are connected to a larger community. These spaces become wellsprings of an unspoken sense of safety and mutual support between individuals of communities that share a sense of having been othered.

By Soumya Jayanti

November 16, 2020

Notes on seeing each other through

In our mid-month issue, continuing with the theme of Health and Sexuality, we look at how we can expect our doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals to be sensitive to issues of gender and sexuality if these issues are not addressed in the medical curriculum. Suchitra Dalvie, a feminist obstetrician and gynaecologist, makes a sharp and succinct critique of the training she received as a medical student…

By TARSHI

June 15, 2020

Editorial: Health and Sexuality