Shame
Girls, Shame, and Favourite Vegetables
“It’s rather unfortunate that our educational institutions and systems are so reluctant to understand, or they simply ignore, the importance of providing our youth with CSE that can help erase the shame and crippling self-doubt around sexuality, bodies, reproductive rights and wellness.
By Gayathri M R
August 25, 2023
Guilty Learnings: Breaking the Cycle with Comprehensive Sexuality Education
It is unfortunate that one of the most fundamental processes of human life is shunned to the extent that we’ve been taught, and so we learn to dismiss the natural feelings our bodies produce.
By Sanchia Alleen Aranha
When the Game is Set Against You, Why Play By The Rules?
When working with clients at the margins, the effort is not just to find out what intersections they are at and what systems alienate or harm them, but also the internal factors that affect them in the process of exclusion and violence.
By Simran Kewlani and Vasudha Ramani
September 19, 2022
Editorial – Movement and Sexuality
This issue of In Plainspeak while inviting us to embrace the joys and pleasure in movement, also questions the ways in which movements are facilitated or obstructed, visibilised or invisibilised, and the spaces that we must envision to find freedom in/to movement.
By TARSHI
May 19, 2022
Interview – This is what you bring to the table!
In this write up, we’d like to share a sense of what emerges from a compilation of these responses. This is based on the thoughts and feelings that come through for those of us here at In Plainspeak who have had the joy of reading the original responses as they came in to us. (Some of the quotations that follow have been slightly edited for flow and to help connect themes.) We know that most things in the realm of art, information and ideas lend themselves to a wide range of inferences and insights depending on the individuals making the inferences.
By Shikha Aleya
March 1, 2022
Haunted by Shame: The Struggle of Being Rendered Invisible
Where did my body go? This is a question I have asked myself repeatedly over the last two years. My…
By Reva Puri
September 1, 2021
The Legend Of The Invisible Lesbians
Of course, one needs to acknowledge that this word did not magically turn up in the vocabularies of the ‘good girls from good families’ that came to a convent school to learn ‘good things’ everyday. The extensively gendered environment which promised to manufacture highly-marriageable ‘young ladies’, aided by the insistence of middle-aged spiteful teachers to absolutely destroy any kind of existence that does not constantly bow it’s pretty, two-plaited head to the heteronormative male gaze, created a suffocatingly toxic atmosphere.
By Curated Content
June 15, 2021
Communication: A Path to Vulnerability
We must all care for ourselves and be discerning about when and where and with whom we show our cards…but those who can hold our emotional and sexual vulnerability are out there, and we can find them and be all of who we are.
By Shilpa Sachdeva
April 5, 2021
Claiming One’s Space After False Sexual Harassment Allegations
Those who are rendered vulnerable due to their gender or sexuality, particularly those who are economically and socially disadvantaged (or less powerful) and lack the agency to speak up for themselves, are more prone to allegations, social ostracism and marginalization.
By Andy Stephen Silveira
Sweet Sixteen
At sixteen, the senior boy I loved, touched me down there and said, this is what boyfriends do, this is what love feels like – uncomfortable.
By Tapaswinee
December 1, 2020
Shame, shame!
I discovered the movie What Will People Say? while browsing Netflix. Growing up in a society in which people are…
By Nidhi Chaudhary
July 1, 2020
For I Am A Woman
For I was a woman / Taught to chain herself gracefully / In an invisible cage.
By Khushi Pahuja
February 3, 2020
No One Talked To Me About Sex
We need to disturb the institutionalised infrastructure and skew power dynamics even when it comes to something as complex as pleasure. Being aware of our language and the practices of our sexuality and denuding them of socially imbibed constructions will open up a safe space for discussing the diversity of our sexual behaviour.
By Abdullah Erikat
February 3, 2020
Reading Off a Black Mirror: Shame, Distress and (Sexual) Privacy Laws
One summer afternoon some moons ago, a man at work assigned to help me move numbers on an excel sheet…
By Mamatha Karollil
September 16, 2019
Why Do We Find Erotica Shameful?
Erotica, which according to statistics is largely a women dominated genre, often creates a platform where women across space and time can connect and don’t feel alienated in their sexual needs when they find a heroine with the same desire, or when they read about a plot situation which resonates with their own.
By Tulika Parikh
July 1, 2019