One late May afternoon, several people – a few filmmakers, a gender rights activist, a journalist and a psychoanalyst, among others – got together in a New Delhi conference hall to release a few important films, and to talk about possibly confusing and absolutely essential matters of the heart and body.
At a session titled ‘Conversations About Consent and Rejection: Exploring Faultlines Between Friendship, Intimacy and Harassment’, 11 short videos were released which showed reconstructions of real-life conversations. These were conversations/questions/doubts that people had raised to Partners for Law in Development (PLD), when the latter was helping organisations implement the sexual harassment at workplace law.
PLD was asked questions such as, “Is it okay if I compliment her?” “Will he misunderstand if I ask him out?” “Do her late-night texts imply sexual interest?”
The questions stemmed from a place of genuine fear that one might mess up existing relationships.
The 11 videos (six on ‘Consent’ and five on ‘Rejection’) were made in collaboration with Co:Motion, and talk about consent, rejection, desire, friendship, et al. Here are a few below (the rest can be viewed on this YouTube channel).
Unboxing Consent:
Handling Rejection:
Apart from the videos themselves, some powerful conversations were sparked by the panel, ranging from, “How can I recognise sexual harassment” to “Can we stop stigmatising desire?”
On sexual harassment in the liberal arts space:
On the importance of talking about sex:
On confusions in modern relationships:
On awareness about sexual harassment today:
On talking freely about desire:
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