The Dark Side of Bollywood

To untrained eyes, it’s easy to get caught up in the glamour and glitz of Bollywood movies, but what lies under the copious amounts of colorful silks and catchy dance numbers are harmful societal expectations for women that date back thousands of years to the creation of Hinduism. To understand how Hinduism influences the Bollywood […]

Being a Good Religious Wife

There are 32 countries that allow marital rape. Of the 150+ countries that do, some explicitly criminalize it, some it is simply considered the same as non-marital sexual assault etc. Some of those countries may in theory not exclude marital rape from being a crime, but those laws have never been tested, in effect meaning […]

Gender-Variant Identities in Hinduism

There isn’t any written proof of support for trans and non-binary identities in the ancient Hindu scriptures, but there is evidence of gender-variant identities in Hindu mythology. One of the more well-known divine figures, Ardhanari, physically manifests as half-Shiva and half-Devi. This half-male and half-female form is the main idol of worship for the Hijra […]

circumcision/superincision prevalence map

Visualization of the Pew Research Center’s Religious Landscape Study

In 2014, the Pew Research Center, a non-partisan think tank, conducted its second Religious Landscape Study, in which they interviewed over 35000 Americans from all 50 states in order to understand the varying religious, social, and political views that are upheld by the people of the nation. For my final project in Sexuality in World […]

Hindu Eroticism through Images

This video presentation discusses Hindu eroticism through images. I examine the Hindu deities, the Kamasutra, Tantra, and modern art. In creating this project, I discovered a plethora of graphic and entirely fascinating images within Hindu art. I am happy to share them with the class. Source Bibliography Apte, Savita. “Neo Tantric Art as Liberation.” Sotheby’s. […]

Interlocked / Interfaithed

“I believe in recognizing every human being as a human being — neither white, black, brown, or red; and when you are dealing with humanity as a family there’s no question of integration or intermarriage. It’s just one human being marrying another human being or one human being living around and with another human being.” […]