The air is heavy with weed and sweat, mingled with the stench of Absolut Raspberry and some other cheap vodka you bought from the corner shop. Music is blasting from the TV as the four of you sit on the floor. Your back’s leaning against the sofa, your knee just lightly brushing his thigh…
Sexual assault, despite now being spoken about more, is still seen as a taboo topic, particularly within the South Asian community. To talk about assault is to first realise the behaviours encouraging and condoning this act of violation, but the conversation often ends before it can even begin…
Recently, a friend of mine moved out from home. For context, she’s British Bangladeshi, from a somewhat traditional and religious household, wherein women are made to live under the tyrant…
A beautiful and painfully honest account of navigating sex as a brown muslim woman and the culture that surrounds it…
Dear past me, you were something like a miracle child, a God-given blessing to parents who waited and prayed and longed for your birth for eighteen years. They’re older now, weaker, and fragile and it will be a heavy weight on your chest, a mountain or a volcano or a pile of rocks and stones only getting heavier with every passing moment. The crushing guilt of wanting a life of your own choosing, paving a way into a world that seems set against you, will bury you alive, suffocating you with its hands, screaming in your face about responsibilities and love and expectations, blaming you for the inevitable heartbreak they will feel…