Sexuality
Issue in Focus: Naturalising the Normative
Societal norms that are contested, especially around body and sexuality, are often passed as the ‘natural order’ of things. The objective study of ‘nature’ that science claims to do induces society to seek scientific explanations to verify naturalness. It has been shown in many cases that the questions that scientists ask, and the methods they use, are coloured by norms of society. Yet, the ‘scientific answers’ thus got help determine what is natural. In the process, the normative gets naturalised.
By Chayanika Shah
July 1, 2016
ISSUE IN FOCUS: LEAVING HOME AND RECLAIMING SELF
As I sit to write this piece, somehow the song Aap Ki Yaad Aati Rahi Raat Bhar from the 1978…
By Chayanika Shah
January 2, 2018
Issue in Focus: Knowing Sex
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.
By Madhavi Menon
February 1, 2019
Issue in Focus: Hackers and High Heels
Adeanna Cooke:
International model, featured in Playboy,
Established hacker and amateur computer programmer.
By Shikha Aleya
June 5, 2016
Issue in Focus: Desire and the Discourse on Difference
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.
By Shweta Krishnan
Issue In Focus: Dealing With HIV—Has India Missed the Bus?
HIV remains exceptional in that it carries the seemingly immutable burden of being synonymous with immoral behaviour. Open and safe…
By Mona Mishra
December 1, 2015
Issue In Focus: Challenging Neo-liberal ‘Equality’ in Consent
In an ideal world, this article would read at Tweet-length: “Enthusiastic sexual consent is sexy, and necessary for negotiating unequal…
By Kristin Francoeur
November 1, 2015
Issue in Focus: Beyond Ramps and Restrictions
Accessibility begins with access, enabled or denied, to concepts and ideas. At the core, beyond the architecture of the real and virtual worlds, it is about the architecture of the ways in which this access is broadened, to not only accommodate, but to nurture, the myriad expressions of human minds and bodies.
By Shikha Aleya
August 3, 2017
Issue in Focus: A Travelling Sexuality
There is a deep connect between travel and sexuality that is internalized at gut level. From birth perhaps. Across cultures. The two are almost metaphors for each other, twins, borrowing words from the lexicon of the other, entwining identity.
By Shikha Aleya
January 2, 2020
Issue in Focus – Desire and Sexuality
Any desire, not necessarily or narrowly sexual, but perhaps related to sexuality, such as independence, equality, gender role-bending, controlling your own finances, eating the food you’d like to eat as opposed to the food your spouse desires, wearing the clothes you’d like to wear, birth control, choosing to have or not to have children … any of these desires would have only that importance that the individual concerned is able to apportion to it.
By Shikha Aleya
August 1, 2018
Issue in Focus
There are different narratives where lie hidden worlds of codified feelings, justifications, a reason to buy or not buy into injustice, or othering.
By Shikha Aleya
March 1, 2023
Issue in focus
Companions take many forms. Using the word very loosely here, a companion is anyone the self is connected to, anywhere, at any point in time, from a family member, to a stranger on a train.
By Shikha Aleya
November 15, 2022
Issue in Focus
Expanding contexts give the word ‘movement’ different meanings and value. Physical, conceptual, technological, relationship, emotional, mental, power, knowledge, ability, access, may be amongst the contexts immediately identified.
By Shikha Aleya
May 3, 2022
Is This The Best A Man Can Be?
In a patriarchal society, masculinities manifest or show-up as a very particular set of behaviours such as being controlling and dominating, often in violent ways. In fact, the root of masculinities in a patriarchal society emphasises practicing this violence and control.
By Saswati Chatterjee and Pauline Gomes
October 1, 2019
Is Privacy Merely An Illusion To Be Rejected?
Is there anything about my sexuality that is private anymore? What happened to the unspoken rule of not discussing one’s sexual life in the open? What happened to the sleazy jokes and the complete silence around sexuality that I remember from the previous generation?
By Asmi
September 2, 2019