The Ladies Finger
Indian laws compartmentalise criminality in rape cases: Notion of 'women as property' eclipses consent
The law compartmentalises the criminality of rape based on the relationship of the victim to the offender. How does one even begin to talk about consent in such a culture?
Period leave isn't 'radical'; it's simply making the workplace amenable to the people who work in it
The story of how weekends and humane working hours came to be makes for an important and inspiring comparison when talking about period leave.
Tayari Jones' An American Marriage is a swift-paced, nuanced story of a falsely incarcerated black man
Tayari Jones' prose in An American Marriage has a fable-like quality, and knowing how much research she did makes you appreciate the writing even more, because none of it shows. It would have been easy for a less skilled and stylish writer to drown in the details and statistics. Instead this is a novel like a jewel, gleaming, rich and impressive.
Prompt Twitter: The best of school slam books, the old Internet, and note-writing in ancient Kyoto
These past few months Prompt Twitter has made an otherwise often-depressing website an enjoyable place in a way that it has never been enjoyable for me | Nisha Susan writes
Killing Eve Season 2: Jodie Comer, Sandra Oh's spy thriller upends the genre by subverting gender stereotypes
Killing Eve's unusual blend of dark comedy and high jinx thrills has won it a clutch of awards, including multiple BAFTAs, Golden Globes and a Peabody.
Jokha Alharthi's Celestial Bodies: Man Booker Int Prize winner shows what is remembered, forgotten in a ‘new’ nation
Jokha Alharthi's Celestial Bodies tells us about the massive changes that Oman saw between the early '80s and the early noughts and how the arrival of oil money affected people across class and ethnicity. It talks about love, sex, ambition, pretension and grief.
De De Pyaar De is an unfunny fantasy peddled by Luv Ranjan to his male viewers
De De Pyaar De doesn’t have the famous anti-women rants of PKP and PKP 2, but it will still please the mards in the audience.
Avengers: Endgame is proof that Marvel never gave Black Widow the importance and arc she deserves
In the Marvel franchise, male superheroes get thrice more screen-time than female characters, and an important Avenger like Black Widow gets severely sidestepped in the finale film.
Akshay Kumar interviews Narendra Modi: An artistic appreciation of PM demonstrating ye olde ‘Man Tells Wife Joke’
A critical deconstruction of a moment in Akshay Kumar's interview of Narendra Modi, when the PM decided to demonstrate a national artefact – 'Man Tells Wife Joke'
Lo Baith Gayi Theek Se isn't about 'womanspreading', it's a call to defy the policing of women's bodies
In early March, a pair of young Karachi feminists, Rumisa Lakhani and Rashida Shabbir Hussain, created a poster with the Lo Baith Gayi Theek Se (Here, I'm sitting properly) slogan juxtaposed with a cartoon of a girl holding her thighs apart like a wrestler. This is the poster they carried to the Aurat March on Women’s Day in their city, a march in which over 7,000 women participated.
Why the controversial Michael Jackson documentary Leaving Neverland is an unavoidable cultural earthquake
2019 might be the year we finally face up to the possibility that Michael Jackson was a serial pedophile. It's hard to read the previous sentence, but it's time we did.
Gillette's controversial ad essentially asks men to be better — and then sets the bar really low
Gillette’s “best” version of men are “great” guys who don’t assault others, don’t demean women, and are not generally indecent. That doesn't sound too hard, does it?
Rahaf Mohammed Alqunun's ordeal foregrounds Saudi Arabia's continuing gender apartheid, global indifference
Human rights activists say that for every Rahaf Mohammed Alqunun who grabs global attention, so many more go unnoticed by the world.
Army chief Bipin Rawat's flights of logic on women in combat roles reveal sexist assumptions, double standards
I wish my flights of hyperbole had been as enjoyable as army chief Bipin Rawat’s recent flights of logic on women in combat roles.
Representation, resistance, solidarity: What I learnt from attending a women's caucus
Once Indian women get their foot in in politics, everything changes for them — and for women voters who are usually ignored by male politicians
MJ Akbar and the law of himpathy: Why men are hired, rehired and rehabilitated where no one needs them
MJ Akbar resigned from his post on 17 October. On 28 November he had a byline in a newspaper that all of Delhi reads. Would that other people’s careers looked a hundredth as good as his ‘exile’.
#MeToo: What Kannada film industry's prurient bullying of Sruthi Hariharan, Sanjjanaa reveals
It was hard not to think of Galileo's forced recanting recently while watching a video of Kannada actor Sanjjanaa apologising a month after first sharing her allegations of sexual harassment during the filming of the 2006 movie Ganda Hendathi
Sabarimala row: Trupti Desai's attempt to enter temple indeed a 'grave provocation', but only to status quo
Only the ladies and their guerilla forces such as Trupti Desai need to be questioned on whether they have maintained abstinence and are carrying the irumudikettu. The men beating up women apparently come with the factory setting of ‘faith in deity’.
Sabarimala temple management's refusal to build toilets for women shows it wants to punish them for SC verdict
Sabarimala's Travancore Devaswom Board said it will offer no special facilities to women pilgrims at the temple, though earlier it had said in court that they would build a hundred toilets.
Phantom Films, All India Bakchod and #MeToo in India: The rise and fall of the 'edgelords'
Anurag Kashyap and Phanton Films' rise and popularity has been built on deploying women’s bodies in peril to cater to men's fantasies