ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts to engage with a lingering impasse in feminist politics in India surrounding women's lives at the intersections of caste, sexuality, and labor by exploring the possibilities of feminists from diverse locations engaging with the impasse. It explores the small steps and tentative hand-locking that have been possible not just to make space for conversation around sexual labor and sexual politics but also to understand how diverse standpoints offer interrogations from the margins that urge the center to turn self-reflexive. The differences that emerged among feminists over the bar dancers' controversy were not to be abandoned, especially at a juncture when capitalist patriarchy was gaining ascendance within the larger political-economic realm with divisive forces of caste, religion, and ethnicity being whipped up in good measure. Amidst intense challenge from the state and conservative forces in India, one could agree that there is an emerging politics of intersectional alliance in India that knits anti-caste, anti-patriarchal, anti-communal, and anti-homophobic/transphobic politics.
