SISA spaces
Public. Autonomous. Anonymous. Group. Sexting. At AWID 2016. Oh yeah!
Sexting is ALL about consent. Consent to RECEIVE a sext, consent to portray yourself in one. Keep this in mind, because one of the reasons sexting receives such a bad rap is because of what might happen after – dissemination of intimate images and content WITHOUT CONSENT.
By Curated Content
December 15, 2021
Public Interview on Risk and Sexuality
Risk by itself is not a stigmatised subject, but sexuality is, and has been for generations. This has led to closeting, to shutting the door, on many necessary conversations about the risks to rights that millions of vulnerable individuals and many vulnerable communities live with, across the globe.
By Shikha Aleya
October 15, 2020
Probing the Screen: Pleasure in the Virtual World
The virtual world allows me to challenge the hold of patriarchy on my ‘effeminate’ body; in a sense, it allows me to evade the policing of desire that my body shares with another, its flows and slippages, the messy and the unkempt.
By Neel
August 14, 2020
Probing the Screen: Pleasure in the Virtual World
The virtual world allows me to challenge the hold of patriarchy on my ‘effeminate’ body; in a sense, it allows me to evade the policing of desire that my body shares with another, its flows and slippages, the messy and the unkempt. While virtual sex offers a window to revisit the sensual, it is also not immune to limitations and insecurities.
By Neel
June 15, 2021
PRIVATE PARTS: OBSCENITY AND CENSORSHIP IN THE DIGITAL AGE
Around the world, LGBTQ+ activists, queer ‘sex-positive’ feminists, sex-workers, artists and educators are leading the charge against the increasingly complex webs of regulation and censorship of sexuality online, where corporate policies intersect with restrictive state law.
By Curated Content
September 15, 2020
Prescriptions of Proper
Performance and ‘proper’ go hand in hand because every performance has rules and prescriptions, so you can tell whether it’s a good performance or not, whether it’s skilled or not. Otherwise, it appears, you can’t understand or appreciate performance – or know if you’re doing it right!
By Shikha Aleya
January 4, 2021
Poem: ‘A debauchee’s ode to self-love’
All I have known of loving men is emotional labour, And by that, I mean back-breaking, soul-sucking toil, Oh, the relief of carrying nothing but yourself, Oh, the relief of taking nothing but pleasure from their sex
By Malini Gopalakrishnan
February 1, 2021
Please Touch: Tactile Art as a Medium of Exploration
Most of us, during childhood, internalised the lesson that sex or pleasure is ‘dirty’ and ‘bad’. Artists around the world are increasingly using ‘tactile art’ to challenge the shame and embarrassment that people feel when they look at their bodies.
By Isha Vajpeyi
August 14, 2020
Peek-A-Boo: Navigating Conversations on Sexuality with Young People as an Educator in India
Despite the lack of a formal Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) curriculum in place in India, there has been a growing interest in providing CSE programmes in schools.
By Ayesha Khaliq and Nandhini Jaishankar
On the Sustainability of (Non) Romance
Contemporary and predominant imaginations of intimacy focus primarily on a sex-centric (romance-centric?) model which assumes that sexual desire exists and holds the same value for every person and every relationship regardless of their subjective positions. Sexual intent and desire are often the cruces of how relational aspects such as intimacy are socially constructed.
By Fariha Sameen
February 15, 2022
On Sexuality, Representation, and Being a Lonely Brown Girl
I long for much more than a greater representation of brown women. I long for a complete overhaul of the racial, gendered, and economic systems that structure our suffering.
But I also long for representation of all people, including brown women, who are in love, who are loveable, and who are — in the absence of love — lonely.
By Curated Content
On Looking for Love
I wanted to be one of those people who decide to never date again and actually follow through. Indeed, I decided that a lot. A resolution that was broken so many times that it became a running joke in my head.
By Wesley D'Souza
February 1, 2022
On Confinements & Coexistence: Perspectives on the Impact of Covid-19 on the Mental Health of Women
Pandemics have a profound psychological impact. They are known to disrupt one’s sense of safety, security, certainty, control, concordance, and…
By Ansha Patel
Of Identity and Belongings: The Gatekeeping within Queer Spaces
No matter how much I wanted to be a part of the rainbow, it felt like the rainbow wanted no part of me. It was an elite space for the exuberant über cool gays, with access, privilege and a vocabulary filled with jargon. I couldn’t even decide if I was ‘gay enough’, let alone deconstruct my experiences, having being brought up in a heteronormative culture.
By Shubhangi
September 1, 2022
Of filter coffee, marriage and mixed celebrations of sexuality
Marriage also feels complicated when one approaches it through the lens of feminism. Marriage throws in two people and often their families into a system designed to perpetuate patriarchy, subjugate women, and bind men and women (in heteronormative marriage) into strict roles in the marriage.
By Vani Viswanathan