A digital magazine on sexuality, based in the Global South: We are working towards cultivating safe, inclusive, and self-affirming spaces in which all individuals can express themselves without fear, judgement or shame
मां बनने के बाद से आत्म-देखभाल पर मेरे नज़रिये में बहुत बदलाव आया है। एक अभिभावक की भूमिका निभाते हुए और उसकी चुनौतियों का सामना करते हुए अपना ख़्याल कैसे रखा जा सकता है?
Directed by Saim Sadiq, Joyland (2022) is not a film about trans rights or women’s rights. It is not even about one specific group or community of people. It is about the whole spectrum of human emotions.
I was not simply stuck within the binaries of “same-sex” or “opposite sex,” assuming that any reference to “same-sex” is in itself already revolutionary. But the call to recognise friendship, is a call to recognise so many forms of community that are made invisible by the emphasis within a liberal or conservative framework on “marriage” as the only path to family making.
People in the city move from their homes to their workplaces and back to their homes. The production of this everyday rhythm of the city makes people accustomed to the sexual overtones that come with it.
But self-care is not a clean and happy procedure, it is not definitively achievable when systematically explored. To understand the scope of self-care we need to see the ‘dark side’ of the landscape, and destroy the versions of self-care that denounce our plurality. In this fight, the only outcome can be a recognition of experiences beyond the wellness narrative structured around the neoliberal agenda. This article is an attempt at foregrounding some aspects of self-care that decentralise the prevalent commodification of it.
Digital entanglements transcend bodies, time, geographical borders and boundaries, influencing – and perhaps fundamentally changing – the ways in which we understand, explore and express our sexuality.
That offline patriarchal norms are travelling online – lock, stock and barrel. Digital technologies may appear to be gender-neutral, but floating below their waters is the whole kit and caboodle of patriarchy.
I often imagine if I had been able to access friendly and empowering comprehensive sexuality education from my childhood, how different my life would have turned out to be.
Fire served as a seminal piece of media in my life for that reason, not only because of its queer themes and normalisation of LGBTQ+ relationships but because of how it normalises the pursuit of pleasure as a fundamental part of us, and not something we should be ashamed of.
Food unites, but as we are sadly witnessing, it also divides. What people eat and how they eat it is related in many ways to class, caste, purchasing power, and other factors of social currency and control.
Indian films have for long fed into as well as mirrored social and cultural practices. Many of them depict a woman as being restricted to the kitchen and serving delicacies during festivities.
Our most powerful, sexy, responsive and attractive sexual organ may be the mind, but it is through the body that we express and experience our sexuality. Our body is our first and primary home; whether we truly feel at home in it is another matter.