In “The orgasm we do not know: subaltern erotica and anti-colonial sexual politics in India,” researchers Sohini Datta and Himashree Patowary challenge the Western eye that has dictated what is written about sexual fluids. Datta and Patowary argue that scientific narratives have overlooked the deep-seated structures of colonialism, religious patriarchy, and caste hierarchies, which has led to silencing this part of sexual pleasure in the Global South.
To track these unmapped spaces, the study takes off from Shannon Bell’s concept of "feminist ejaculations," which conceptualised the act as a type of bodily rebellion that busts right through standard, male-centered sexual scripts. Datta and Patowary introduce "wet methodology" (I love this!)—a framework that reads bodily wetness, both literal and metaphorical, as a form of volatile knowledge leaking past moral, medical, and colonial boundaries, and also introduce the concept "wet politics". The authors map this "wet politics" across three distinct Indian contexts: first, the 19th-century British medicalization that ignored pre-colonial erotological traditions; second, the public, ritualized spaces of spiritual trance where the expression of intense corporeal release is deeply stratified along caste lines, and finally, the quiet, daily "pedagogy of silence" through which contemporary women, queer, and trans individuals use indirecte language to communicate their desires and experiences.
The authors conclude that: "Liquids can never be contained, they leak. [...] Female ejaculation is not simply a physiological act but a political one, unsettling the boundaries of what can be known, controlled, and legitimized." They ask what an anti-colonial erotic future could be, concluding "It is a world where bodies are not taught silence, but are allowed to speak on their own terms; where sex is no longer framed as danger, duty, or taboo, but a space of exploration, rest, and delight. It will no longer be humiliating to be wet in that world. It will be ordinary. And in that ordinariness, it will be radical."
Read the Full Paper:
- Authors: Sohini Datta & Himashree Patowary
- Journal: Porn Studies (Published online: June 11, 2026)
- DOI: 10.1080/23268743.2026.2665165