Swiping right can go wrong

Hooking up on a dating app like Tinder often leads to happy endings but sometimes one partner reads the signals wrong and nasty situations develop Harsh Singhal (name changed), 20, a fashion design student in Delhi, met a person on Tinder who he thought was “good-looking and polite.” After talking for a day and meeting […]

In search of a platform

Gay magazines have played a key role in helping individuals come out. They are now hoping to find it easier to raise funds and hold events When the first issue of Bombay Dost — India’s first LGBT magazine — came out, it became an inadvertent vehicle for those who were still in the closet to […]

Figuring it out

VIOLENT CRIMES According to the latest government figures, 1.7 lakh women were raped between 2012 and 2016— which translates to an average of four women being sexually assaulted every hour over that span. A 2017 survey revealed that 40% of transgender people faced some sort of sexual abuse before turning 18. The survey, conducted by […]

When love turns brutal

The sexual stigma involved in same sex relationship leads to greater brutality in passion killings of homosexuals All is fair in love and war. Most gory murders are those driven by passion. But when deviant sexuality is a cause, it adds another dimension. Many of the gay murders that have come to light are by […]

A crucial lesson

Indian schools still shy away from introducing sex education in their curriculum but the need for it has always been stressed by the education authorities India has been at the forefront in terms of teen pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases. With 16 million teenagers getting pregnant between the ages of 15 and 19 years, and […]

Soul wears no clothes

The experience of sketching more than 200 people in the nude made me aware of how fluid the boundaries of our world are Sketching people in the nude has been my most enthralling interface with humanity. We are a bundle of complex identities, some of them mutually antagonising, sexuality is one of them, which shapes […]

Biology cannot decide destiny

There is a difference between sexuality and gender—the two words should never be confused or used interchangeably Before we dive into the visibility regarding gender complexities, I would like to reiterate two differences in two different discourses that are significant in order to understand the points raised in this article, which also hold the potential, […]

Slotting women

From being a mother who single-handedly looks after the house and spends the day cooking and scrubbing utensils to being an object of desire for men who can entice them with deodorants, women are either domesticated or commodified in Indian advertisements Ensuring that the child grows up to be ‘taller, stronger and sharper’ by having […]