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♦ Reportage ♦ 

1. Are You Ready for the Cops? Are the Cops Ready for You?

Everyone says: Go to the cops. But what happens when you do? In partnership with Amnesty India’s Ready to Report campaign, we published a series of reports on what happens when women reported sexual violence to the police. The series included a piece by Khabar Lahariya reporters that evoked a national outcry and spurred the Uttar Pradesh government to nab the man who had made their lives hell for six months.

2. The Road to Hell is Paved With a Sentimental Education
By The Ladies Finger and Khabar Lahariya

Are Haryana’s new electoral restrictions, upheld by the Supreme Court, the beginning of the end for rural women’s enfranchisement in India? The first co-reported piece by TLF and Khabar Lahariya.

3. Why Does India’s Public Health System Want to Use Scary Injections for Birth Control in Women?
By Menaka Rao

Doctors who endorse the injectable contraceptive DMPA also say they wouldn’t prescribe it to their own patients in the private sector, fearing its side effects. So why does our public healthcare system happily want to inject poor women with it?

4. Yes, Your Gynaec’s Thoo-Thoo Chee-Chee Prudery Can Ruin Your Health
By Zenisha Gonsalves

If you’re young and unmarried in an Indian city, here’s how a visit to the gynaec is most likely to go down. Straight to hell.

5. A No-Vaanthi, No-Cry Guide to Panel Discussions

Tired of seeing men talk endlessly at public discussions on everything from science to the lack of women in panels? Here’s how to stop it.

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♦ Personal Essays ♦

1. Why I Am Addicted to Friendship Affairs, and Why It Has Nothing to Do With My Marriage
By Nisha Susan

A response to the idea that everything warm and loving must lie within marriage. A celebration of the spit and sizzle of friendship.

2. Why Is Being A Woman Such a Piss-Off?
By Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan 

Should growing up a pre-teen in 1990s Delhi comparatively unscathed by sexual violence make you feel lucky? Will closure come only at the price of losing one’s sexuality?

3. Why I Care About Being ‘Liked’ Online
By Shalom Gauri

When you’re in high school, does being on social media give you a ticket to being cool? A 16-year-old writer explains.

4.  To My Mother, On Her Birthday
By Neha Margosa

Remembering a mother whose love for Scrabble, cake and adventures weren’t erased by her battle with leukaemia.

5. It’s Independence Day and You Want My Son to Be An Aman ki Asha Project? Too Bad
By Aneela Z Babar

Notes on being a Pakistani with an Indian husband and an Australian son, living in Bangladesh and everywhere else. High notes, low notes and notes never taken before.

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♦ Kranti ♦

1. Come On In. The Water Is Not So Fine
By Deepika Sarma

A story of sexual assault by a diving instructor, which luckily didn’t kill one woman’s love for the sea.

2.  What’s the Ratio of Known vs Stranger Rapists? Take a Wild Guess
By Sneha Rajaram

What the careful analysis of 644 FIRS in Mumbai tells us about the real nature of sexual violence in India.

3. Feminism Is Why I Don’t Hate Men
By Nisha Susan

You really are in a Mexican standoff with men. Here’s how feminism helps you prepare for battle.

4. My Mother, Suzette Jordan
By Rhea Jordan

A daughter’s tribute to an extraordinary woman who refused to let her identity be defined by rape.

5. Why I Won’t Stop Being a ‘Field’ Journalist
By Priyanka Dubey

An intrepid, award-winning reporter’s response to a minister’s suggestion that women stick to desk journalism.

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♦ Vaanthi ♦

1. We Want to Make Jokes About How Real Men Don’t Farhan. Instead, We’ll Just Grumble About His Weird Pro-Ladies Moves
By Sneha Rajaram

While Farhan Akhtar wants to stand up for women, he isn’t talking about equality. He wants to protect them like a ‘real man’. What’s with that?

2. Why Do We Continue to Call Her Nirbhaya? What’s Wrong with Saying Jyoti Singh Pandey?
By Sneha Rajaram

What if the name “Nirbhaya” doesn’t allow her to be human in our eyes?

3. Hollywood, You’ve Got it All Wrong. Alok Rawat is the Real Man From U.N.C.L.E.
By Sneha Rajaram

Meet the misogynistic new member of the National Commission for Women. Yes, you heard right.

4. An Open letter to Beta Vikramjit Singh
By Gulabo Auntie

One aunty’s response to a stand-up comedian who blames women for Indian men’s inability to clean up after themselves.

5. Get Your Science Right on the Jiah Khan Case
By Manali Vasanth

What the lurid, gleeful headlines are getting totally wrong when it comes to actual facts.

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♦ Health ♦

1. Our Blind Spots on Rural Pregnancy in India Revealed, One Video at a Time
By Sneha Rajaram

What watching Video Volunteers’ extraordinary work can teach you about the state of women’s health in India.

2. It’s Been 6 Months Since We First Met. Why I Still ♥ My Menstrual Cup
By Deepika Sarma

A steady examination of a rocking alternative to the ubiquitous sanitary pad.

3. “You actually touch it? Yuck!” Four Years of Cloth Pads and Empowering Periods
By Sharanya Ramprakash

Once cloth pads seemed like something an older generation had to suffer. What if it is a radical modern choice instead?

4. All You Need To Know About The New Petition To End Female Genital Mutilation in India
By Sneha Rajaram

A group of Dawoodi Bohra women started a petition against FGM. Why this is an issue we should all get behind.

5. Ladies, Do You Always Take a Shawl to Work Because the Office is So Friggin’ Cold?By Sneha Rajaram

A short essay that polarised readers between those who felt like they have been at the Poles and those who wanted to send The Ladies Finger there.

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♦ Films & TV ♦

1. How Bahubali’s Masculinity Porn Destroyed an Awesome Female Lead
By Vivekananda Nemana

An essay about the Telugu blockbuster that had fans raging because it dared to call out rape dressed as romance.

2. Why PC Needs Our Boot Camp More than the One in Quantico
By Nisha Susan

Im which we suggested that Priyanka Chopra could learn multiculturalism from the Americans but learn feminism back home.

3. Why Man’s World’s Ulta-Pulta Universe is Timely, But Not Ulta-Pulta Enough
By Jugal Mody

We watched a cool new web-series that promised a radical flipping of gender roles. And then we felt sorry for all of us. Yes, all of us.

4. What Lies Beneath the World of the Game of Thrones-Style South Indian Fantasy Blockbuster?
By Deepika Sarma

All the crazy, cool and sometimes even feminist things that 2015’s ’s rash of South Indian films invoking medieval history allowed us to do.

5. Can You Handle a Kannada Lesbian Film Complete with Song and Dance Sequences and an Overdose of Animated Heart-Shaped Balloons?
By Sneha Rajaram

This year was the first time a Kannada movie featured a homosexual love story. Missed 141 I Love You?

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♦ Advertisements ♦ 

1. Bharat Matrimony’s #MyWifeToBe Makes You Feel Like #LifeIsNotToBe 
By Sneha Rajaram

The matrimonial website had what they thought was a great idea.

2. Sunny Leone is a Condom of Solace
By Sneha Rajaram

In which Sunny Leone displays considerable more sense (and GK) than politicians.

3. When did Amul Become the Testes of India?
By Nisha Susan

We are startled at a Amul video which suggests that what Indians need to  be doing is celebrating the birth of boys. Warning: Rapid lactose intolerance.

4. I Wanna Hold Your Hand, Your Clothes-Washing Hand
By Sneha Rajaram

Say hello to strange brands which seem to think it’s anti-national to ask men or boys to wash clothes.

5. Welcome to the New Safe Spaces for Indians Who Want Maids
By Sneha Rajaram

A new website that promises the ‘gift’ of domestic help shows that tech is not necessarily an end to discrimination. Sometimes it makes things worse.

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♦ Finding Pop Culture ♦

1. What Fashion Magazines Mean To Me

A series where four women writers write about the place of fashion magazines in cultural debates and feminism. Is it all just pretty pictures? Or is that just condescension?

2. How We Wish this Memoir was a Wee Bit More Aashiqui, A Wee Bit Less Ashram
By Vijeta Kumar

A new memoir prompts a quick trip to Aashiqui and what it meant. And longer trips into the mysteries of Anu Aggarwal.

3. 20 Years Ago, Alanis Morissette Gave Me the Gift of Rage
By Janice Pariat

How cool is it to remember that first moment we discover Jagged Little Pill. The precise moment.

4. What It’s Like To Play ‘Freshman Year’, Nina Freeman’s Online Game about Sexual Abuse
By Mohini Dutta

Check out Freeman’s autobiographical game Freshman Year, a game that lets you be part of the events of one fateful night in the life of Nina, the game’s protagonist.

5. Who’s the Woman Behind the Space Helmet?
By Sneha Rajaram

The awesomeness that is Sunita Williams, her tweets, her pix. And her space toilet.

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♦ Sex, Beauty, Relationships ♦

1. Is Tinder the Harbinger of a ‘Dating Apocalypse’? Or Are We? 
By Sneha Rajaram

Do you only need a thumb to take you from casual to callous?

2. What I Found in a Decade-Long Quest for Lesbians on Screen
By Poorva Rajaram

Pop culture seems to have set out two existential paths for the Indian lesbian: adjusted and snooze-worthy or maladjusted and murderous. Guess which one we prefer?