My Observations on Sexual Phenomena in the South Asian Context

My Observations on Sexual Phenomena in the South Asian Context

By Mrinalini Ranjan 19 November 2008 2,679 views 30 Comments

Have you ever felt that on some days, the universe conspires to embarrass you? Well, the gods were definitely a bit bored the day my mother (who was also the head of Special Education in my school) ended up giving the sex talk to the boys of my sixth grade class. Needless to say, I was mortified, and the forces governing the cosmos had a good laugh. My mom was considered way cooler than me that year. But that sex talk was the first ever open acknowledgment amongst my peers that we all knew what sex was and we all wanted to do it one day. Or so I thought.

Being a girl who had had crushes on boys since she was in kindergarten, my sexuality was like a secret identity I never revealed to anyone in India for a while. (Also being a highly geeky looking individual with a long braid, glasses and braces through most of my adolescence, I didn’t really get much opportunity to). I was silent on the issue primaily because for many years, my female friends behaved as if their sexuality didn’t exist. I mean, come on! Who has not visited a porn site–“Oh my god you saw one of those? Yuck! Gross!”–or read a slightly adventurous novel by the age of 17? Well they claimed they hadn’t and didn’t want to. They also claimed I was insane. Either all of them were lying to me, or they really never had the urge to, you know… explore… which then made me think; what the hell was wrong with me? Also, why is it okay for boys to do this stuff and unacceptable when girls do it? I will never forget the statement uttered by a certain 20 year old South Asian UT student who had just heard me warning everyone to stay far away from South Indian pornographic cinema (surely a topic for another article). His exact words were, “Girls watch porn too?” He was shocked - a real culture shock, perhaps.

Masturbation was another topic of intense discomfort amongst us all - and yet another clear cut example of the gender enculturation surrounding individual sexuality. I am going to state certain generalizations, and you are free to disagree, but the following is a brief summation of my observations. In a group of South Asian boys, when one claims he has never masturbated by the age of 18, the others look at him in shock and disbelief. However, in a group of girls from a similar background, when one claims that she has, the rest look at her in a mixture of disgust and awe. “Why on earth would you do such a thing?” they ask. Amusingly, an even more common response is – “Wow, how did you even manage it?” and of course the saddest one: “I tried that one day, but then I gave up.”

The truth is that as a community, South Asians are pretty conservative about such issues. At this point I would like to make it clear that I feel that being conservative is actually a good thing. To protect your sexuality till you have a safeguard such as marriage in place is an option that is beneficial to everyone who attempts it. Couples who wait till marriage have negligible chances of contracting sexually transmitted diseases or being in very tricky pregnancy situations. They also have better opportunities to build strong bonds of intimacy which are not as threatened by all the obstacles unmarried couples face, such as uncertain futures, capriciousness and broken hearts. In light of all this, people don’t understand why premarital sex is becoming increasingly common amongst youth in South Asia. Yes, there are certain western notions that have influenced our culture. With half of all marriages in the US ending in divorce it is no secret that the West ( and Western media) doesn’t attach same importance to monogamy and abstinence as does the East. But beyond this argument lies the fact that there is a trend towards a higher marriage age. Hormones come into play by puberty, but nowadays people tend to get married in their late 20’s and early 30’s. Those who advocated abstinence in the past were also the ones who were married by age 16.

The concept surrounding the idea that women have more to lose than men when it comes to spontaneous sexual activity is why generations before us have developed ways to curb female expressions of sexuality, rendering it unimportant, unnecessary and almost dirty. And their ideas remain ingrained within our society.

But things weren’t always this way. In the East, Confucius and LaoTzu, the Upanishadic sages, Mahavira, and the Buddha continued to speak of the importance of women as sexual teachers and their active role in ritual sexual union. Women are given much importance in books such as the Kamasutra, and are affirmed as sexual beings by the erotic temple carvings in the Khajuraho temples in South India.

Another interesting fact: A Jewish tractate in the Babylonian Talmud, echoed later in an Islamic creation myth, tells us that “Almighty God divided sexual beauty/pleasure into ten parts. Nine parts he gave to women. One part he gave to men” (Brooks, 1995; Kiddushin daf 49B). In Greek mythology, when Zeus and Hera argued whether males or females had a greater capacity for sexual pleasure, Tiresias, who had experienced half of his life as a man and the other half as a woman, maintained that when it came to the capacity for sexual pleasure, women were by far the winners¹.

So whatever happened to the above mentioned philosophies? As time progressed, the balance of sexual power shifted towards men. There are many theories regarding how and why this took place. Some claim sexuality is a portal to spirituality and men wanted to dominate that. Others claim it was a natural progression of events to protect female society as a whole from unprotected sex with random men. Repression was never more apparent. While semen was considered sacred, menstruating women were considered impure and – again – dirty. I once heard a bizarre myth from our washerwoman back home in India. She claimed that women should not touch pickle while on their period. Apparently this makes the pickle go bad. And that was just one example in a series of superstitions put out there solely to malign all evidence of the ‘good’ in our sexuality. I don’t even know a word for the female genitalia in Hindi which is not simultaneously a swear word!

So yes, it’s true that female sexuality has a sad story to tell. But it’s never too late to change. With the advent of birth control, the idea of men having an unfair advantage when it comes to sex becomes a much weaker argument. There are numerous developments occurring in the world today where women in relationships are asserting their right to sexuality and their male counterparts are happily giving it to them. To recognize the value of sexuality and understand its importance in the realm of societal egalitarianism will benefit both men and women in their relationships with one another and with respect to their own genders.

Footnotes:
1. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2096/is_3_54/ai_n8706636/pg_1?tag=artBody

Photo Courtesy: margolove, independentman