After a long drawn negative receptivity towards sex, have we really adapted to the idea of openness towards sex? Mallica Patel speaks of our non accepting nature towards the topic
Even though Salt-n-Pepa in their hit single ‘Let’s Talk About Sex’ urged people worldwide to talk about sex, nobody really wants to talk about sex, do they?
What is sex? A hushed conversation, a discreet ‘shhh’ a fast forwarded scene or a censored scene in a film. The aforementioned are all the actions we associate sex with. Of course, as we grow older and get sucked into the whirling tornado of hormones, the definition and explanation clears itself, and we get to see (or experience) sex for what it really is.
What happens after that? We continue to talk in hushed tones, the awkwardness reduces just a little bit and many of the other things remain the same except, you now know what is really happening. What makes sex such a taboo in this country? What is it about it which makes us squirm, cringe and glare at the person who just, mentioned the word? Isn’t the need to have sex as equivalent to eating or sleeping? Then why do people stress on the virginity of the sexes before marriage? Why do some girls go through vaginal binding just so that their husbands are assured of their virginity on the first night of marriage?
Most importantly, how long are people going to dodge the sex talk? Long enough till their children learn about it from sources which are horrid enough to scar their childhood. A wise person once said that if we make peace with who we are, a lot of problems vanish. Maybe it’s high time we accept the fact that as humans, all of us are sexual creatures. All of us crave for sex and well… some of us have it too! We need to make sure that the next generation of children do not grow up considering sex as a ‘dirty thing’ or a scene in a movie which needs to be fast forwarded. Why is it that the censor board still thinks that reducing a kissing scene by 5 seconds or by refusing to show a kissing scene all together will make any difference? Remember that steamy scene in the latest Bond movie? I don’t remember it too, because it was never there! Or take the film, 50 shades of Grey for example. Banning the film only further proves our non-acceptance of sex. What people don’t understand is that at this stage of technology and reach no sex scene is going unappreciated; no kissing scene is being cut, because everyone has their way of accessing them. It was only recently that a Pakistani board had an issue with an intimate scene which was shown in an Indian daily soap calling it ‘indecent’. An Indian daily soap usually refrains from showing sex scenes in entirety and if they even decided to, we all can imagine how minuscule and irrelevant it must have been. So how can something as small as that affect an entire country?
The truth is that, as the creators of Kama Sutra, none of us are averse to sex, but we love to put up a façade which helps us protect our ‘culture’, because apparently, celebrating Valentine’s Day impinges upon our cultural mores. Further, beating young couples in parks works wonders as it encourages the act of not falling in love, because in a country where the front page is filled with news of murder, rape and terrorism, who needs love anyway? Watching pornography at the Parliament is even better because it upholds the maxim ‘Work is worship’ So maybe it is time for us to let go of the façade, because beneath the facade lies, perverted babas or self-styled godmen who believe in a unique form of imparting wisdom, or the thousands of rapists who were unfortunately never taught the concept of consensual sex or the Khap Panchayat who think that Chinese food causes sexual tension in one’s body and thus causes the poor victim of the tension to rape!
Maybe it’s high time that we stopped blaming the western culture and media for all the possible problems our country faces, because for a fact, India ranks third in pornography viewership worldwide – not very far from America which ranks first.
Volume 6 Issue 1
