And do those gaps really need filling? By whom? For whom? With whom?

This is the best thing:

I closed the window and put my computer aside, suddenly aware that hijras in Mumbai probably weren’t going to benefit from or care much about increased Tumblr exposure, no matter how many little hearts got clicked or how deeply sympathetic the reblogs. For starters, I couldn’t even trust these pictures; while I have no doubt the life of hijras is hard, what I was seeing was just a fraction of those lives…a series of photos the point of which was to evoke the reaction I was having. More importantly, I hadn’t been invited to this place. These were people’s lives and I was spying on them…plotting ways to insert myself into their narrative.

Is it too early to bring up the word colonialism? When I say (or type) it, I imagine a foppish Renaissance-era white dude pointing to a big blank spot on a map and saying “let’s find out what’s there and share it with the world!”* It’s hard to reconcile that image with myself – a slouchy woman in her pajamas with a laptop and a sleeping cat – but what else could you call what I was doing?

(* The key word here being “share”, because you can’t share something you don’t possess.)

–and if you haven’t already, you should read it.