FANTASY as A FORCE for CHANGE
As India becomes the world's third largest economy, the battle to define its cultural, social and sexual future is on.
Just as sexual fantasy can be a crucible for personal exploration, sexual liberation can drive change on a national scale: As India becomes a leading economic power with a vast youth population, we asked two leading voices of sexual expression in the country how competing conservative and liberal traditions are vying to shape its new identity.
Fantasy gives us license to explore what the law, social taboos and our self-imposed limitations keep us from in any given time or place.
'So just as Nancy Friday's My Secret Garden represents a snapshot of American women's forbidden desires in 1973, Want has captured the same for respondents to Gillian's invitation to share in 2024. But that exploration of the illicit can also be the first step to wider changes, as a platform to bring what we learn about ourselves in that private space to bear in the world around us.'
As a study of social change, there is perhaps nowhere on Earth today where competing traditions of conservative patriarchy and sexual liberalism–now enabled by the internet's collective subconscious and amplified by social media–are shaping and reshaping the landscape of public morality quite as rapidly as in India. To understand more about the role of fantasy in all of this, G Ode spoke to two leading voices of sexual expression in the country–sex educator and founder of intimate care brand Leezu's, Leeza Mangaldas; and Creative Director of culture, fashion and art magazine Dirty, Kshitij Kankaria.
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