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
The movie Shubh Mangal Saavdhan was a commentary about perversions in our society – the denial of the truth about sexuality, that sex is normal, that sex could be just another physical need, that sometimes sex can be boring, that sometimes sex can frustrate.
It is this camaraderie with sexualness that made my mother uncomfortable about my comfort with lipsticks. Stains become metonyms for the woman herself, and her sexuality. It is possible that this stain might stay on someone’s mind as they encounter a stained cup. It is possible that even if they never have seen the person, they would now be compelled to imagine them.
An analysis of billions of hits to PornHub (one of the largest online porn sites in the world) shows that m/m is consistently the second most popular category for women visitors, and that women make up 37% of m/m porn viewers – suggesting that women represent viable secondary consumers of this type of porn.
In a society where queer sexuality had been demonised in not just mainstream fiction but also mainstream culture, the erotic fanfiction that emerged out of kinkfests became an important source of queer sex-positivity.
I think the best thing we can do as we take this conversation forward is to consider this multifaceted breadth of desire as erotica; to include and not exclude in our definitions, and to accept desire wherever it lives, and in whatever form.
Porn is able to express the ‘yummy yucky’ nature of many of our fantasies. I use the term ‘yummy yucky’ because I feel it captures a mix of that which is both “hot and disturbing”
Ellie’s writings are mostly BDSM-centric. Some set in an imaginary world, others in our world with fictitious characters, and some even in a supernatural world. However, almost as a rule, all these stories include elements of BDSM, fantasies, fetishes and even some mildly taboo subjects.
He sighs and says – aapko apni dil ki baat bataane ka mann kar raha hai (I want to tell you a secret, a matter of my heart). I nod and encourage him to do so. Aap bura toh nahi maanengi? (You won’t feel offended, will you?) Confused and immensely curious, I assure him that I will not take offense. Asal mein, mera mechanic ka kaam tha aur who theek hi tha lekin mere dost ne auto drivering karke ye seekha ki auto drivering karne se sex karna bahut easy ho jaata hai (In reality, I was working as a mechanic and everything was going fine but one of my friends who became an auto driver soon learned that it was very easy to have sex this way).
After the underwear slips off, does the underwear brand really matter? The underwear may mean different things for different people. It may evoke desire or may hinder access.
Will I write openly about what is or is not done, what is or is not meaningful when it comes to sexuality? Yes. Will I talk about BDSM and kink as a way of life, despite it being taboo for discussion? Yes, I will talk about BDSM and kink, and many other things as well, but I will not evangelise for them.
Choices are also influenced by our milieu, by socio-cultural norms, by the laws and strictures that operate to regulate what we may and may not do. Lest this makes it seem that we are mere puppets triggered by internal whimsy and simultaneously constrained by external forces, our contributors show that this is not so.
For this March issue, we decided to interview many people, not just one, and over 350 people responded! Here are the results of a ‘public interview’ that took the form of a survey, and two polls with two questions each, on Facebook and Instagram.
In our mid-month issue, Rahul Sen writes of the impossibility of intimacy, of the gnawing pain and underlying cruelties it may unsheathe and how it is at best an illusion while Pavel reminds us of how, in our search for intimacy, we keep bits and parts of our lost loves and they keep parts of us, and how through being loved by them we learn also to love ourselves.
We would spend hours just lost in our sweet, intoxicating world of soft skin, whispers and drenched sheets. It was amazing. But also, I remember the most just sitting together at midnight talking about his mother, my childhood, his habit of wearing a nightcap while sleeping or just our Instagram browsing-patterns.
We might need, therefore, to uncouple sexuality from intimacy because they do not necessarily belong together. Intimacy points to the comfort of knowledge while sexuality often shatters what knowledge we think we have.