Forging Fraught Solidarities: Friendship and Feminist Activism in South Asia

Friendship has been central to the forging of feminist solidarities. Cross-border friendships and feminist activism in South Asia have disrupted narratives of violence and hostility between countries. Friendship then is deeply political for multiple reasons, often facilitating a powerful critique and unsettling hegemonic, heteropatriarchal narratives of affective relationships. Drawing on the narratives of feminist activists in South Asia, we explore the nuances of ‘doing activism’ with friends as well as how friendship itself inflects activism and the interrogations that these might bring to the fore. We reflect on the ways in which feminist activism has engaged with fun arguing that joy is intrinsic to feminist organising. We also examine feminist fractures and how these might impact our activism, our friendships, and what they reveal about structural inequalities. As we reflect on the transformative potential of feminist activism within the South Asian region over the last four decades and the friendships it has nurtured, we ask if friendship has fulfilled the promise of challenging existing structural hierarchies and reimagining our relationships, concluding that the answer must be yes and no

Crossing boundaries:bras, lingerie and rape myths in postcolonial urban middle-class India

With the processes of modernization, urbanization and the entry of women in the formal labour market in Indian metropolitan spaces, this paper examines how the modern middle-class woman’s sartorial choices become enmeshed in popular rape myths (false beliefs) that serve to blame her for the wearing of western clothing. The paper articulates the ways in which middle-class women’s social realities are shaped by historical, colonial and nationalist ideologies of modernization, constructed and mediated through moral codes of dressing. By drawing upon original and contemporary empirical narratives from the urban spaces of Delhi and Mumbai, we emphasise how everyday sartorial choices, in relation to particularly the bra and lingerie, can reveal the nuanced ways in which Urban Indian Professional Women (UIPW) seek to understand, negotiate, and resist patriarchal power. Our findings shed light on conflicting and contradictory spatial experiences, where some women internalize and negotiate moral codes of dressing, out of fear, and others who transgress are subject to sanctions. Given the paucity of scholarly literature in this area, the paper makes an important theoretical and empirical contribution with its focus on postcoloniality and everyday discursive material spaces of gendered and sexualized dress practices. It argues for the consciousness raising of everyday urban geographies of dress that reveal complicated structures of power that are often deemed hidden