by HASEEB ASIF
Pakistan: Bhaijaan, show it to me under the sheets
(Jaan in many South Asian languages mean “sweetheart. When it’s added as a suffix to bhai (i.e. brother) or mother or father, it denotes respect plus affection. Ed.)
AFP (From Outlook 24 December 2012)
A prying Pakistani state might slice liberty, but sex will out, in solitary prurience and velvety undergrounds
Sex is a funny thing. Not least because it involves making strange faces while assuming yogic positions, but also because its cultural expression (endorsement and taboos) often take up bizarre, almost surreal, forms. Everyone does it, from the authoritative ranks of politicians and generals to the man selling his wares on the street, yet it is as curiously absent from visible Pakistani life as it seems pervasive. It took incontrovertible scientific evidence for me to consider the possibility that maybe, at some point, in the past, my parents might have actually, you know, had sex. I think many here share my experience. In general, parents and adults here seem to subsist on a non-sexual plane of existence. Sex, like matters of national security, is only discussed behind closed doors.
It’s normal for a family watching TV—the dignified father, the mother with a dupatta over her head, the kids sprawled on the floor—to be jolted as I’m Too Sexy For You starts blaring out of the speakers, accompanied by Katrina’s rhythmic gyrations. After that brief, but sensual assault, it’s ‘normal’ again. The father goes back to his newspaper, the mother to her book, while the kids are left wondering what the half-naked lady dancing with shirtless men was all about.
I learned about sex in the same place where I learned how to read, write and invent excuses: school. True, there are no sex education classes in Pakistan, but that doesn’t preclude sex education from classrooms and school yards, behind textbooks, amidst winks and giggles. Of course, this is unreliable, the teachers too being pubescent kids with raging hormones and vivid imagination, but no practical experience. Children pick up things elder siblings and cousins say, things they see and read, and assemble them for a narrative that may be, or not, close to reality.
This spawns countless myths about sex and masturbation. I was once asked by a younger cousin with wide, worrying eyes, whether it was true that masturbation can make you blind. Of course, I wanted to tell him it was nonsense, but I realised my own face was framed by a pair of thick glasses without which I often walked into furniture, so any reassurance on my part would hardly assuage him. A boy in school who was hit in the crotch by a wayward cricket ball spent many hours crying and swearing because he thought he’d never father children now, as “it was broken”. “But there isn’t any room!”, a girl I knew wondered incredulously, while refusing to believe the descriptions of “what goes where!”.
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India: The kids are alright
OUTLOOK-SKORE SURVEY 2012
30% of urban youth don’t think there’s anything wrong with homosexuality; 73% agree that incest is a big issue in India
Sex is something which has natural association with youth—raging hormones, infinite possibilities and many, many naughty discoveries. Or so we hope and pray. Given that such a large proportion of Indians are young, what’s the point if they aren’t reaping true dividends—sex, and lots of it—in keeping with their demographic? Which is why we at Outlook decided to focus on this demanding segment (ages 18-35) in the Outlook-Skore Sex Survey 2012. Our findings show that, although late bloomers (most of the youth surveyed had their first sexual experience in the early 20s), urban youth are experimenting and more open about attitudes to sex. There’s a clear relaxation here in views on virginity too. There’s also greater acceptability about casual sex in the urban arena (almost 65% respondents acknowledged having what is now referred to as ‘buddy sex’ before marriage). This growing ease and comfort with sex is evident in two startling disclosures: one, 30% of urban youth don’t think there’s anything wrong with homosexuality (29% of urban males admit to having had a homosexual experience at least once). And, secondly, urban youth are talking about the elephant in the room: incest. A stunning 73% of our sample agree that incest is a big issue in India. All this may not add up to a sexual revolution yet but one thing is for sure, our youth are definitely speaking a new sparkling, sexual language.
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