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Contemporary feminism manifests itself in the form of blogs, hashtags, e-magazines, and digitally planned protests through online communities that address the prevailing concerns of feminists in the digital age. This feminist approach to digital activism aims to reclaim the power of technology which is inherently hegemonic and masculinist by creating alternate spaces and modes of protest. Transnational feminism is increasingly being shaped by online discourses and the new digital space enables social movements in shaping feminist solidarity and complex netizen identities. This paper adopts discourse analysis of online contents that question the prevalent patriarchal system in South Asia and thus situate it in the changing socio-cultural context globally. Popular hashtag movements in various countries such as #YesAllWomen, #notallmen, #MeToo, #SheInspiresMe, #WomenMarch4Change, #WhyLoiter, #IWillGoOut, #AuratMarch #GirlsAtDhabas, #SafeCityIndia #PinjraTod as well as other online forums which raise the voices of women against various forms of violence will be analysed with a view to uncover their multi-layered impact. These multifaceted discourses on gender-based violence have reached a wider audience across the world through social media, and academic webinars during the Covid-19 pandemic have also largely contributed to the debate. The resonance of these dialogues has transcended the local to the global level; a close study of the transnational character of these digital messages in social media aims to examine the strict demarcation between the public and the private, thus challenging the concept of gendered spaces. This paper employs a multidisciplinary approach to methodologically analyse the online resources and nature of activism in India and investigate its global relevance. Additionally, the paper will also explore how the online campaigns are establishing networks notwithstanding time and place, by interrogating and understanding the relationship between online activism and its significance in conceptualizing transnational feminism. Keywords: Online activism, Hashtag, Transnational feminism, Local-global, Gender, South Asia, Introduction With increasing use of internet tools, digital technology has emerged as a key instrument in creating a space for feminist activism. This space has been variously utilized by specific [...]

This paper aims to critically analyze the deployment of 'gay man' as an identity category in Sharif D Rangnekar's autobiographical account Straight to Normal: My Life as a Gay Man (2019). The frequent usage of sexual identities in 'coming out' narratives often tends to reiterate and reify sexuality as a well-defined concept. Using Queer Theory's approach to identity and Akshay Khanna's postcolonial critique of categorical identities, it situates the multilayered nuances of 'gayness' and foregrounds how the hegemony of the sexual identity framework in India engenders psychological and moral dilemmas. It explores spaces like family, school, and workplace, which discursively enforce the culturally dominant images of gay men as effeminate, and unnatural, and treat them as social outcasts. And simultaneously, it probes into the problematics of negotiating the subjective experiences within the emergent collective gay community spaces, which are often dynamic and characterized by the specific community codes of socialization and intimate behavior. The paper highlights this dichotomy as it results in the psychological ambivalence of the narrator, which gets manifested in the alternating tone of the autobiographical voice, and argues how it offers a different approach to identity politics in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on Vandana Mishra's autobiography I, the Salt Doll which was originally published as Mee Mithaachi Baahuli in Marathi in 2014 and translated by Jerry Pinto in 2016. It attempts to analyze the concept of protofeminism by unfolding some significant sociocultural reformations in women's lives in the colonial metropolis of Mumbai. The study explores how a section of women revolted against the rigid gender norms to assert themselves in the public realm. It also concentrates on the miserable plight of widows who adopted the nursing profession. This paper features how male stalwarts, in those days, advocated not only for the upliftment of women through education, but also championed women's involvement in theatres. The study employs narrative analysis and highlights how protofeminism can be useful to unearth Vandana Mishra's mother's strenuous challenge against regressive gender stereotypes surrounding female education and nursing profession while setting an example for women of the next generation to follow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to study the representation of same-sex desire in Ruth Vanita's Memory of Light (2020) and analyze how the socio-spatial dynamics of the kotha helps to reconstruct female-to-female intimacy and convey a different idea of community and a sense of belonging in history. The novel, which traces the relationship between two courtesans, is also a recreation of the pre-modern Lucknow and its vibrant kothas with distinct architectural features. Beyond its overt function of entertaining the male patrons, the kothas as all-female establishments also served as a space of security and intimacy for women. The paper outlines the politics of situating same-sex desire in the historical backdrop of pre-colonial era. It uses concepts from Feminist Theory, Cultural Geography and Memory Studies, to examine the importance of kothas as a material and an ideological space, in facilitating discourses on gender variance, intimacy, and friendship that entered the cultural production of the time. In particular, the analysis intends to emphasize on the frequent entanglement between the spatial features and women's intimate practices as a distinct way of articulating same-sex desire that dissolves the binary understanding of hetero/homosexuality. Therefore, by insisting on the remembrance of kothas, the paper delineates how the 'memory of places' carves out two functions in the context of lesbian politics. On the one hand, it generates a 'symbolic continuum' to the history of women loving women to reframe postcolonial categorical understanding of 'lesbian' in contemporary times, and on the other, by infusing strategic use of metafictional elements, it emerges as a subversive mode of narrating stories of same-sex love while negotiating with the historical erasure of spaces of female-to female desire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper situates pioneering travel narratives of women in colonial Bengal and explores their multi-layered experiences and problematics of identity in relation to the centre-periphery dyad. It also unravels how translated accounts of Krishnabhabini Das and Durgabati Ghose in A Bengali Lady in England (2015) and The Westward Traveller (2010), respectively, explicate the development of their identities by juxtaposing an expanding consciousness resulting from their accumulated observations. Locating the nascent stages of women's writing in colonial Bengal, it brings to the fore complex issues of gender and mobility as well as the public/private dichotomy while navigating foreign shores, especially England. The paper also highlights how the power of the gaze lies with the colonised women who drew thorough comparisons between English society and contemporaneous Bengal. A critical investigation of the travelogues by adopting a postcolonial lens opens up the underlying intricacies of interactions, reflections, and dilemmas that the authors encapsulate in the narratives and thus help in contextualising their accounts in the larger sociocultural and political backdrop. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]