Pint of View Kolkata (Lecture #5): The Gendered Politics of Sexual Fluids
Pint of View Kolkata (Lecture #5): The Gendered Politics of Sexual Fluids
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About the event
Pint of View is in Kolkata at last. 🍺
About the Lecture
The Gendered Politics of Sexual Fluids
This lecture will engage with the question of sexual body fluids and the gendered hierarchy between menstrual blood and semen. While conversations on sexual body fluids have extensively focused on flowing menstrual blood and the associated fear, horror and “shame” around it, the male body fluid semen has occupied a position of power in the discourse on sexual fluids. The lecture will interrogate this power of semen and, in turn, question the vulnerable ground on which this power rests.
Unlike the flowing female body, which is constructed as a site of uncontrollability and thereby ‘pollution’, the stoic male body, the lecture argues, gains its power not from the materiality of semen itself but from the acts of its control.
Addressing this discourse, the lecture will focus on the seminal politics of late colonial India, with the emerging political turn and scientific discourse on celibacy. It will ask: if the power and potentiality of masculinity in men is dependent on the “non-flowability” of semen, what happens when the male body flows and becomes itself a site of vulnerability?
Locating this tension within ethnographic work in byayam samitis and akharas of Kolkata, the lecture will examine the politics of celibacy and the male body as a site of both vulnerability and power.
About the Speaker
Dr. Sohini Saha is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Sociology, St. Xavier's College (Autonomous) Kolkata, India.
She completed her PhD in 2022 from the Department of Sociology, Jadavpur University.
Her research interests lie in the field of Gender studies, Masculinity studies, Sexuality studies, Sociology and Anthropology of the Body, Urdu Poetry, Politics and Resistance. Sohini actively contributes to research and teaching alongside writing on contemporary socio-political concerns
Event Details
📅 Wednesday, 30 September
🕓 6:30 PM – 8:30 PM
📍 Conversation Room, Chowringhee Road, Kolkata
🍻 Enjoy a complimentary Geist beer on the house
Seating strictly on first come first served basis.
About Pint of View
Pint of View is India's Largest Lecture Community. We brought the lecture in bar format to India and are now expanding across the globe with chapters in 14 cities worldwide. Here, big ideas meet intimate spaces, and you walk in curious and walk out with a sharper lens on the world.
Book now and develop your own pint of view. 🍻
Location
Conversation Room, Chowringee Road, Elgin, Kolkata, West Bengal, IndiaFAQ
One Geist beer included. Additional food & beverages can be ordered on à la carte basis. Feel free to arrive around 6:30 pm to meet fellow attendees and grab a drink or a snack. Tickets are non refundable but transferable. You can sell or pass your ticket to someone else. Seating will be on first come, first served basis. Kids (under 18 year olds) are not allowed at the bar post 6 pm.