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
We had gathered to [discuss] digital self-determination for people with disabilities… focusing on its core component: the self. How can I be myself in digital spaces? What gives me more of a sense of self in these spaces? How can design, technology and policy contribute to helping me determine myself in digital spaces?
Diversity, I think, can be a deceptive word. On the surface it carries the promise of plurality and multiple possibilities. Yet, it is deployed in ways that simply reinscribe normative two-gender stereotypes and heteronormativity.
Rath Wang is a founding member of Nijiiro Diversity (Rainbow Diversity), Japan’s first non-profit organization promoting LGBT equality in the workplace. He leads the Ernst and Young Unity Network for LGBT employees and allies in Japan. Rath appeared at number 4 in the OUTstanding and The Financial Times 2015 listing of The Top 30 LGBT Future Leaders.
There have been several recent examples of actors, movies and events being called out because of their lack of representation, like for the Oscars. With social media it is easier to create and distribute diverse art and also to voice the need for diversity. So it needs engagements and awareness in society. Change will happen once enough people demand that change.
Here, in Part 2, each interviewee addresses aspects of sexuality and diversity from their own particular space of personal knowledge, as well as work, advocacy, art and activism across diverse fields.
For the two-part interview section of this month’s In Plainspeak, Shikha Aleya spoke to a few individuals who continue to push the boundaries of their work, art, and social norms, and expand the understanding of diversity and sexuality.
When we are talking about the theme of embracing equity we can see sports as a neutral space that has the potential to be a space where everyone can connect, together, without language, and without the domination of any community over another.
Entertainment should aim to inspire, comfort, reflect and express. Even if something violent earns big at the box office, it doesn’t justify its creation.
The larger question is, who gets to bring all of themselves to the workplace, and who is either not allowed, or feels scared, or is bullied for doing so?
The researchers also concluded there was no evidence that children raised by a single parent or same-sex couples were less competent or well-rounded than other children. If anything, studies of single-parent families show these men and women are more flexible in their parenting styles than they are given credit for.
I was focused on becoming the ‘perfect’ feminist, based on the stipulations of mainstream feminism. The result: a deeply narrow conception of feminism,and it would take years to unlearn the ‘black-and-white’ mentality and embrace intersectionality.
From my experiences, I find that diversity is not an end unto itself. Instead, it is a tool for reflection, a mirror that shows not only who we, and the society we live in, are in the present, but what we aspire to be in the future.