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
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.
It’s an entire genre of poetry known as rekhti, which was characterised by a female speaker and preoccupation with women’s everyday lives.It is counter posed to rekhta, the “literature narrated in the masculine voice”.
I do not feel the need to fight the feminist war within these spaces all the time, now that it has become my home. I have come to terms with the idea that certain contradictions can co-exist peacefully like the yin and yang. But still, sometimes, my mind is roiled in conflict, with me cautiously trying to balance my two identities – the feminist and the army officer’s wife. Nevertheless, I am unwilling to give up one for the other (even if I might be perceived as being less of one of them). So I continue to be an individual with two seeming contradictions: a feminist army-officer’s-wife!
Suddenly, three older, high-ranking female bonobos bolted up from below, a furious blur of black fur and swinging limbs and, together with the female in estrus, flew straight for the offending males. The males scattered. The females pursued them. Tree boughs bounced and cracked. Screams on all sides grew deafening.
Delhi-based queer feminist activists Rituparna Borah and Jaya Sharma recorded a conversation they had about their views around marriage. While both women maintain their stances of critique towards the institution of marriage, what they agree upon and investigate as their chat progresses is that marriage has a pull that even its staunchest opponents will have to acknowledge and attempt to understand.