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 out the ramifications of the ...
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 debate, if any, about ...
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 in Sri Lanka in order ...
Yvonne Jonsson memorial, 27 Nov 2019, Colombo. Photo taken by author. (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] ...
‘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 danger must be rethought; ...
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 civil society organization with ...
(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 about every time a ...
Taken from Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s official Facebook page.I made some quick and immediate reflections after the large UNP rally last Tuesday the 30th of October. I attended the JVP meeting at the Nugegoda supermarket last Thursday, the 1st of November, and wanted to do the same. It was well-attended; an organic turn-out only (no people ‘brought in’ for this ...
Human Rights Watch 2016 There is a constitutional coup in Sri Lanka. There is much more about it at Groundviews, but you can start here if you like. Today, we marched in the thousands in the country’s capital and commercial centre, Colombo. This is a response to things I am reading on social media this evening. I think if ...
(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 any country, nor is there ...
Women human rights defenders gathered at Viharamahadevi Park in 2016, during a public rally for a people’s constitution: Sri Lanka. Courtesy of Women and Media Collective. (Keynote address delivered at the launch of Urgent Action Fund Asia Pacific, 24 October 2017, Colombo, held in memory of Sunila Abeysekera: 1952 – 2013.) It is an immense, humbling almost overwhelming honour to ...
Material from a social media campaign done for the Global Day of Action for Safe Abortions (ENGLISH / SINHALA / TAMIL available) (Published originally here on Groundviews on 01 October 2017) At this moment in Sri Lanka, ‘the abortion debate’ has sprung up once again; with the cabinet purportedly attempting to pass a bill which would legalize abortions for women ...
This is the transcript for the short talk I delivered at the event South Asian Feminisms: A MEMORIAL FOR LALA RUKH, hosted by A Collective for Feminist Conversations and Women and Media Collective, in Colombo on 23 August 2017. The bulk of it includes an excerpt from an essay titled Forging a New Political Imaginary: Transnational Southasian Feminisms written by ...
You know you have to start worrying when a lot of ‘free speech’ advocates look like this. (Image courtesy of cs.stanford.edu) We have been hearing a lot about ‘free speech’ recently – and not in the way that we in Sri Lanka are typically used to; not as a call to defend journalists and activists against persecution. For example: the ...
You know you should start worrying when ‘free speech advocates’ look like this. We have been hearing a lot about ‘free speech’ recently – and not in the way that we in Sri Lanka are typically used to; not as a call to defend journalists and activists against persecution. For example: the highly divisive Milo Yiannopoulos’ speaking appointment at the ...
Ada Lovelace (1815 — 1852), image courtesy of women.com: English mathematician and writer; known for her work on the Analytical Engine; first to recognise the machine’s potential beyond pure calculation and created the first algorithm to be carried out by the machine; now considered the first ‘computer programmer’ (Wikipedia) This was a short presentation I delivered (with a few ...
Ada Lovelace (1815 — 1852), image courtesy of women.com: English mathematician and writer; known for her work on the Analytical Engine; first to recognise the machine’s potential beyond pure calculation and created the first algorithm to be carried out by the machine; now considered the first ‘computer programmer’ (Wikipedia) This was a short presentation I delivered (with a few ...
Courtesy of the Sunday Leader: ‘Don’t make Sri Lankan women slaves!’ For awhile now, I’ve been thinking about intersectionality and what it would mean for feminists and other activists in a Sri Lankan context at this moment. For young women activists and queer-rights activists in Sri Lanka, like myself, the temptation is strong to follow young, American liberational discourses. on social ...
Courtesy of the Sunday Leader: ‘Don’t make Sri Lankan women slaves!’ For awhile now, I’ve been thinking about intersectionality and what it would mean for feminists and other activists in a Sri Lankan context at this moment. For young women activists and queer-rights activists in Sri Lanka, like myself, the temptation is strong to follow young, American liberational discourses. on social ...
(Written originally for and published in ShishtaLanka – DecentLanka – February 2017, in translation in Sinhala) What is the role, and what is the status, of women in Sri Lanka today? Where do we stand? These are the primary questions I asked of myself when I began writing this essay. It seemed a good moment, at the beginning of ...
