Domesticating the Feral Femme: Legal Battles, Sex Workers & their Art Forms

How does the state define “women”? This course argues that womanhood (according to the state) is a socio-political construct produced to channel bodies into reproductive, economic, and social functions where they can be regulated. We map this production across three ontological stations of the reproductive axis of control: maiden, mother, and crone. Against this axis stands the “feral femme”: the figure who refuses domestication.

This course traces them across centuries. We encounter Gauhar Jaan (born Angelina Yeoward), an Armenian-Indian courtesan, who was the first woman and the first Indian artist to record a Gramophone Disc. We then travel light years to encounter the Golden Vinyl Record on the Voyager 1, launched by NASA in 1977, which carried the Sounds of the Earth. Amongst the selected sounds, a recording of yet another courtesan’s voice, Kesarbai Kerkar, floats in space today. As we await the aliens to discover our famous courtesans’ voices, we will then trailblaze through lived experiences of one of history’s superwomen, a courtesan of the name, Bangalore Nagarathnamma, and her predecessor, Muddupalani.

The course will investigate how the state attempted to domesticate the feral femme through cultural reform and legal battles. We shall explore how Victorian (British) modesty was imposed upon post-colonial bodies, replacing indigenous pluralities of vernacular sexualities. Finally, we deconstruct society’s modesty expectations through South Asian tales on fluidities in gender and sexualities, concluding with a parallel drawn between colonial India’s legal battles and social reform movements, with the rise in the world’s anti-gender and anti-sex worker policies.

This 2-hour session on Thursday, October 1 is for people with lived experience in the sex trade and will include a 15 minute break during the session. It begins at 1:30pm ET/12:30pm CT/11:30am MT/10:30am PT.

Century: Until mid-to-late 19th c.

Where: Kerala, India

Scenario: A sex worker walks into a temple, bare-breasted & an upper-class woman walks into the temple, completely covered.

Question: Who is perceived as modest or immodest?

A. Upper-class Woman=Modest. Sex Worker= Immodest

B. Sex Worker=Modest. Upper-class Woman=Immodest

C. Upper-class Woman & Sex Worker= Immodest

D. Upper-class Woman & Sex Worker= Modest

Nishita Rao is the Krantikari behind "Pillow Talk With Nixi," an insurgent platform challenging colonial architectures across education, research, therapy, consultation, publication, archiving, and art through radical plurilogues, embodied inquiry, and anarchical resistance.

She holds an MS in Neuroscience with a focus on Behavioral Neuroendocrinology and a BE in Biotechnology, specializing in Brain-Computer Interfaces & Phytochemistry.

Her academic and professional training spans Sexual Sciences, Neuroscience, Anthropology, Molecular Biology, Behavioral Sciences, Political Science, Linguistics, Dance Ethnography, Ethnomusicology and more.