Banned: advertisements promoting sex-selection on Google, Microsoft Bing and Yahoo.
Banned: searches from India with the words ‘sex’ or ‘sexual’ on Microsoft Bing.
Banned: porn cartoon Savita Bhabhi, depicting the sexual exploits of a married Indian woman.
The discourse of censorship is well-known to most people, as India’s right-wing moral brigades routinely flock to the streets to prevent everything from item numbers in Bollywood films to sex education posters in trains to the greeting-card shop Archies (for its ‘promotion’ of Valentine’s Day) from going ahead. But what does this mean for freedom of speech and expression in the country? And more specifically, given that the bans most frequently pertain to sex, and more specifically, female sexuality, what does this mean for women?
Read more in GenderIT.org .