Sexuality and Violence
Subtopic 3: Media and its Mis/Use– An Introduction 

Sexuality and Violence play out in many nuanced ways all around us, ranging from subtle to more tangible forms. Is violence always manifested physically or are there other ways in which one’s rights could be violated? What role does the media play in subjecting individuals or groups to violence?

The recent case of Santhi Soundarajan has brought to the fore how a person’s sexuality, in this case her sexual/gender identity is subjected to analysis by people in general and the media in particular. It brings up issues of how the rights of people who do not conform to the gender and sexuality norms of society whether by choice or otherwise could be violated. Most interesting in this case, as in many others, is how the media treats people sometimes with the sensitivity they deserve and at other times subjects the person to humiliation, and violates one’s right to privacy. One may say that media involvement in this case could draw attention to the larger issues of the rights of people who might be intersex, transgender or transsexual. True, but it may also be of significance to look at what messages are being propagated by the media, whose voices are the ones generally being heard, which ones censored and for what reasons.

I am glad we have been discussing this in our forum in such detail. Let us go into it a little more in depth and discuss the role of media in such cases. Does the media accurately reflect a case in all its multi-faceted dimensions? How often does the media interact with organizations and people working in the field of sexuality to get to the depth of an issue in such cases? Does it really serve the purpose of changing attitudes, stereotypes and mind-sets of people towards issues which are generally not talked about in the open or does it further help in feeding into these stereotypes? Let us in this forum try and explore the challenges being posed by the media when it plays a pro-active role in portraying issues of sexuality and also talk about how best we could take advantage of the media to spell out and have a debate on issues of sexuality.

Looking forward to a stimulating discussion!

Regards,
Arpita Das (Moderator)
The South and Southeast Asia Resource Centre on Sexuality