This week, Himanshu Jangra apologised for making derogatory comments towards women during a comedy show. He was there as an audience member.

.Another clip on X of another Indian comedian also caused a stir recently. He said that of the 10 rape cases we read about in the news every day, nine involve “just” rape, while one involves murder after rape. He joked that he imagined the last victim reacting with surprise that she is not being killed. The audience laughed.

Disgusted, I exited X and texted a friend. “Suggest a nice, feel-good show,” I said.

She recommended Off Campus, which revolves around Garrett Graham (Belmont Cameli), a hockey player, and Hannah Wells (Ella Bright), a music major at the fictional Briar University. They strike a deal: she agrees to tutor him in philosophy, his weakest subject, while he pretends to be her boyfriend to make her crush jealous. It is predictable enough: the two eventually fall in love. The show is cheesy, fun, and steamy, showing American college life as an endless cycle of sex, hockey, and rock and roll. 

But it is much more than that. Spoiler alert: Hannah is a rape victim and Garrett is a victim of domestic abuse. Yet the show handles both subjects with sensitivity, never resorting to gratuitous details or turning trauma into spectacle, as many movies in India tend to do.

In one episode, Garrett asks his friend Dean what makes a woman orgasm. Dean insists on building trust. “She’s just got to feel completely safe. Like, completely relaxed. But consent is key. And she can’t consent if she doesn’t feel safe,” he says.

Later, when Garrett and Hannah are about to have sex, he constantly checks in with her to make sure she feels comfortable. When he senses Hannah getting stressed, Garrett stops kissing her. 

In another episode, Hannah is overwhelmed by shame, guilt, and anger over what happened to her many years ago. She calls her mother and apologises for putting her family through the ordeal. Her mother reassures her that she was simply a teenager who went to a party and had a drink; she did nothing wrong. What happened, she tells her daughter, was not her fault.

Throughout the show, masculinity is presented not as a form of dominance, toxic and riding on misogyny. Instead, it is all about being empathetic and caring. Similarly, consent is presented as an essential part of intimacy. As Sangita Rajan says in her review, “Clear communication, respecting boundaries and trust are shown not just as important but attractive.”

A few years ago, Sex Education, described by the BBC as the “show that changed sex on TV forever”, also dealt with sex and consent in honest and innovative ways. In one episode, Otis (Asa Butterfield), a student who provides sex therapy for the students of the fictional Moordale Secondary School, explains consent using the metaphor of a sandwich. He says that if someone doesn’t want a sandwich, you never force them to have it.

While it may seem that consent is understood only in fiction, there are conversations about it in the real world as well. In parts of southern India, kink spaces have emerged where desire and boundaries are openly discussed, and where consent is explicitly negotiated, writes Tejaswi Subramanian in this piece. “Especially for women, shadow experiences are part of desire,” says Bengaluru-based sex and trauma therapist Neha Bhat, referring to fantasies, curiosities, or parts of oneself that may be suppressed or deemed socially unacceptable. “Women are leading the conversation right now. There is a shift from a male-driven narrative to a more femme-centred one.”

Wordsworth 

Feminist snap: The concept, coined by queer feminist theorist Sara Ahmed in Living a Feminist Life and further developed in The Feminist Killjoy Handbook, refers to a breaking point when a woman can no longer tolerate sexism or harassment and speaks out against it. Ahmed notes that when this happens, society often turns the woman into the problem for disrupting the status quo or “causing a scene.” Saurabh Sharma writes that the idea is explored in London-based author Lucy Apps’s debut novel Gloria Don’t Speak, which was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction.

Toolkit 

Riha, a 30-minute short film inspired by the life of triple talaq activist Zakia Soman, won the Best Short Film (Hindi) award at the Zee Short Film Awards held in Mumbai. The film was selected from over 12,000 entries across India. Directed by filmmaker Arastu Zakia, Riha follows a woman trapped in an abusive marriage who encounters a triple talaq survivor. Read an old piece about Soman here.

Numbers tell 

Female participation in equity markets has grown to 24.9% from levels near 22.5% in FY2023. Maharashtra reports the highest female participation of around 29%.

National Stock Exchange’s Market Pulse Report

People we met 

M. Soumina, a government school teacher, was appointed as an enumerator in Delhi for the Census exercise. Other than her smartphone, a black bag, a QR enabled identity card and a white cap with a Census logo, Sowmina’s constant companion during visits was her husband. “Sometimes the visit extended into the evening hours, so I used to come with my husband,” she says. Read Vijaita Singh’s story about how several female enumerators, mostly government school teachers, asked their husbands or other male members to accompany them during the field visits as they were worried about safety.