Category: Feminism
-
Queerness, Sex Work, and Refugee Status in Nairobi: A conversation with Queer Sex Workers Initiative for Refugees (2022)
In this interview, the author speaks with Queer Sex Workers Initiative for Refugees: a Nairobi-based grassroots service-provision and advocacy group formed by queer refugees in Kenya who are engaged in sex work. The interview explores the question of how queer identity experiences interact with the policing of borders, labour issues, and refugee status. It teases…
-
Porn, sexuality and expression in Sri Lanka: feminist debates and interventions (2022)
This article explores the engagement of feminists in Sri Lanka with the question of pornography. The article looks at some of the ways in which feminist scholars in Sri Lanka have written about sexuality, sex work and freedom of expression, as a way of engaging with the gaps and nuances in Lankan feminist discourse and…
-
Acts of Agency: Exploring a feminist approach to abortion research in Sri Lanka (2020)
In Sri Lanka, abortion continues to be a criminal offence under the Penal Code of 1883. Several attempts have been made to challenge the colonial-era law since the 1990s with no success thus far. This study documents and centres the knowledge of women and transpersons in accessing abortion and sexual health and reproductive health services…
-
Transcript from Yvonne Jonsson Memorial (27 November 2019, Colombo)
(I was asked by the family and friends of Yvonne Jonsson to share some thoughts on the evening of a memorial for her, organized in Colombo. Below is the slightly edited transcript of that short address. Here is a statement by women’s rights activists for additional context.) [Name and intro] I am an activist and…
-
Podcast: Consent, Pleasure and Danger
‘This episode examines why we need to reimagine prevailing ideas around consent, pleasure and danger as embedded in our laws, social norms, and feminist movement politics. The discussion explores why pleasure needs to be moved from the margins of feminist agendas to be viewed as integral to dismantling patriarchy; why the connections between pleasure and…
-
Private Parts: Obscenity and Censorship in the Digital Age
Image description: Illustration of body and various objects. Artist: Umaimah Damakka From GenderIT.org (Excerpt) Earlier this year, the telecommunications minister of Bangladesh declared a ‘war on pornography’, blocking access to around 20,000 websites and banning TikTok, the Chinese-owned video production and sharing app. The move came after a petition citing ‘obscenity’ was filed by a…
-
The Men I Know: A ‘young feminist’ from the third world speaks from inside the #MeToo moment(s)
(Excerpt) Preface In October 2017, I said ‘#MeToo.’ I did it on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. These were my words: ‘Me too. As a child. As an adult. By men I know and men I don’t know. More than once. More than twice.’ This piece is not about the everyday sexual harassment we face; not…
-
Where have all the queer women gone?: An Editorial for GenderIT
(Commissioned and originally published by GenderIT.org in December 2017.) How the stories of movements for queer liberation are told is a historically complicated thing. What and who constitute the gay rights movement is a perennial question to which we know now clearly that there is no one answer. There is no homogeneous ‘LGBT’ community in…
Subha M Wijesiriwardena 