The orgasm we do not know: subaltern erotica and anti-colonial sexual politics in India

In dominant sexual histories, female ejaculation has been dismissed, misunderstood, or fetishized, expressive of Western, heteronormative discourses that prioritize male pleasure and penetration as the sexual ideal. As feminists demand ‘orgasm equality’, debates increasingly focus on women's sexual agency in the South, where colonialism, religious patriarchy, and caste systems further control and silence female pleasure. This article builds on Shannon Bell's work regarding feminist ejaculations and non-penetrative acts as somatic acts of insubordination, extending her framework through postcolonial, Dalit feminist, and queer perspectives. The article proposes a ‘wet methodology’ as an analytical framework that reads wetness – literal and metaphorical – as refusal, a form of knowledge that leaks beyond colonial, medical, and moral control. Through archival research, ritualized trance practices, and pedagogies of silence, the article traces how subaltern bodies register pleasure beyond normative sexual scripts. Attending trans, queer, and diasporic experiences, the article argues that ‘wet politics’ reclaims suppressed erotic knowledge and envisions erotic sovereignty beyond colonial and patriarchal sexual orders.