The product of many years of research, this unique book presents fascinating perspectives on contemporary lesbian life in India and unravels some of the history of lesbian desire from centuries past. Through detailed examination of mythology, cosmology, ancient art and artefacts and her exegesis of ancient Sanskrit texts, Thadani constructs a tapestry of feminine kinship, genealogy and sexual or erotic bonding between women (sakhiyani) in ancient India. The author offers an historical perspective on the effect of colonization upon lesbian identities in India, showing how women were viewed by Western imperialists either as soft victims or as sexually dangerous, possessing an overgrown clitoris and in need of heterosexual domestication. The second half of the book focuses on contemporary lesbian realities and issues, including lesbian marriages, suicide pacts, forging lesbian space, lesbian human rights, lesbophobia, sexual exile and the different construction of gender, family and possible kinship alliances.
This book examines the creation of lesbian communities in India from the 1980s through the early 2000s and explores the everyday practices that comprise queer activism in India.
Fueled by 15 years of road trips, this traveling history follows the search for relics, lost temples, and sacred sites that comprise the archaeology of lesbians in ancient India. While exploring the places, stories, and people of India, the author goes beneath the surface of more recent patriarchal cultures that have neglected or desecrated icons of the sacred feminine to reveal the marvels and mythology nearly forgotten by history.
A study of the "double goddess" iconography prominent in Neolithic and Bronze Age cultures that expands our understanding of female sovereignty. Celebrates this archetype of sacred female bonding and depicts a vast array of relationships women may form with themselves and each other to explore a sense of self and empowerment, and to share power with each other.
Beginning in 1869, when the study of homosexuality can be said to have begun with the establishment of sexology, this Encyclopedia offers accounts of the most important international developments in an area that now occupies a critical place in many fields of academic endeavours. While gays and lesbians have shared many aspects of life, their histories and cultures developed in profoundly different ways. To reflect this crucial fact, the Encyclopedia has been prepared in two separate volumes assuring that both histories receive full, unbiased attention and that a broad range of human experience is covered. Written by some of the most famous names in the field, as well as new researchers this is intended as a reference for students and scholars in all areas of study, as well as the general public.
This book seeks to understand the major mythological role models that mark the moral landscape navigated by young Hindu women. Traditionally, the goddess Sita, faithful consort of the god Rama, is regarded as the most important positive role model for women. The case of Radha, who is mostly portrayed as a clandestine lover of the god Krishna, seems to challenge some of the norms the example of Sita has set. That these role models are just as relevant today as they have been in the past is witnessed by the popularity of the televised versions of their stories, and the many allusions to them in popular culture. Taking the case of Sita as main point of reference, but comparing throughout with Radha, Pauwels studies the messages sent to Hindu women at different points in time. She compares how these role models are portrayed in the most authoritative versions of the story. She traces the ancient, Sanskrit sources, the medieval vernacular retellings of the stories and the contemporary TV versions as well. This comparative analysis identifies some surprising conclusions about the messages sent to Indian women today, which belie the expectations one might have of the portrayals in the latest, more liberal versions. The newer messages turn out to be more conservative in many subtle ways. Significantly, it does not remain limited to the religious domain. By analyzing several popular recent and classical hit movies that use Sita and Radha tropes, Pauwels shows how these moral messages spill into the domain of popular culture for commercial consumption.
Cosmopolitan Sexuality articulates the ethnographic and anthropological studies of varied embodied projects in Indian metropolises. With particular reference to the city of Bombay, it draws evidences of gendered representations – their desires, appeal and aspirations to be and to express their sense of self. It attempts to establish arguments to a deconstructive notion of any fixation of identity categories and build a robust and complex understanding of sexual experiences, love, emotions and interpersonal relationships; an unusual way of local as well as global patterns that are culturally scathed in the contemporary new India. The book is relevant to contemporary embodiment studies – the invasive means of desiring corporeal reconstruction on one hand, and dress, ornamentation, and makeup on the other. Transgressive politics are discursively and materially constructed to their everydayness and their unique ways of re-representation. 'Health' is viewed in new dynamics of shared knowledges and communicative practices that has enabled building fresh arguments around community and public health, with new visions of the anthropologies of empowerment.
Made in India examines seemingly disparate and high profile events in postcolonial India that captured national and transnational/diasporic interest since the 1990s: The emergence of the Indian homosexual, the new trans/national heterosexual woman, lesbian suicides, marriage and kinship contracts in small towns around India and the simultaneous evolution of the modern homophobia and lesbian NGOs. These events demonstrate the material, political, and cultural contexts within which postcolonial subjects negotiate their lived experiences within moments of decolonization and recolonization.
Swa wiccan taeca?: ?as the witches teach.' So, explained the Old English translator, it was witches who counseled people to ?bring their offerings to earth-fast stone and also to trees and to wellsprings.' His contextualizing commentary on a Frankish penitential reveals the witches? intimate association with animist, earth-based ceremonies, contradicting the now-engrained idea that they were ?wicked.' In a compelling exploration of language, archaeology, early medieval literature and art, Max Dashu pulls the covers off ethnic lore known to few except scholarly specialists. She shows that the old ethnic names for ?witch? signify wisewoman, prophetess, diviner, healer, shapeshifter, and dreamer. She fleshes out the spiritual culture of the Norse völur (?staff-women?), with their oracular ceremonies, incantations, and ?sitting-out? on the land for wisdom. She examines archaeological finds of women's ritual staffs, many of which symbolize the distaff, a spinning tool that connects with broader European themes of goddesses, fates, witches, and female power. Ecclesiastical records show that these aspects of European women's spiritual culture survived state conversions to Christianity. Witches and Pagans plunges into the megalithic taproot of the elder kindreds, and the ancestral Old Woman known as the Cailleach. It draws on priestly Frankish and German sources to trace the foundational witch-legend of the Women Who Go by Night with the Goddess'and her links to women's spinning sacraments in the orature of Holle, Fraw Percht, and Swanfooted Berthe. The book also looks at the sexual politics of early witch burnings and the female ordeal of treading red-hot iron. Anglo-Saxon ?mystery-singers? shed light on ancestor veneration in early medieval Europe.The webs of Wyrd, weavers? ceremonies, herb-chanters, crystal balls and the Völuspá: this book uncovers the authentic ethnic roots of witchcraft. Putting the common woman at the center results in a very different view of European history than the one we have been taught. Sagas, ecclesiastical canons, laws, chronicles, charms, manuscripts and sculpture show the spiritual leadership of women and the goddesses, fates, and ancestors they revered. These strands can help to reweave the ripped webs of women's culture.
