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Saturday, May 16, 2015

Are Malaysians worthy to talk about SEX?

Are M'sians worthy to talk about SEX?
Sex sells. There’s no wonder in that. It is as much a global phenomenon as a Malaysian one. But to have cringe-worthy news headlines on sex is another matter.
It is a wonder how discussions about marital rape can somehow ended up in “sex on a camel” and “no coitus interruptus without consent”, while the topic of paedophilia can entered the realms of heightened emotions (or total nonchalance), ethno-nationalism and ultimately, the binary of Eastern-Western values.
Recently, someone also pointed out that liberal values are what that caused paedophilia. This is highly confusing because the people often termed as ‘liberals’ in the country are also those who stressed the need to criminalise paedophilia, while the conservatives are often those less concerned about it.
All in all, the discussion is very chaotic, non-meaningful and repulsive to say the least. If you do feel something is amiss about these arguments-whether it’s about marital rape or paedophilia-, like I do, it’s this. Very little of the discourse is about sexuality, to me the crux of the debate. What is the role of sex in marriages? What drives one into paedophilia? Little of it is addressed.
Malaysians in general are peculiar beings, we are obsessed about sex on one hand (else why do we even bring camels into this?), but on the other hand, we are uncomfortable about it happening, as if Malaysian babies can come from some other processes.
We hate the sight of public display of affection, we ban concerts that in any way, or by the imagination of some, imply promiscuity, and if we want to discredit a public figure, nothing does better than to splash him/her with a bucket of sex scandals. Sexuality education is shunned because it is believed that it will promote sex among youths, despite no evidence saying so.
While I maintain that what happens between two consenting adults in their intimacy should be strictly private, I do think we ought to discuss it more. Just not in the current manner that lacks honesty, equality, and any decent sense of seriousness.
Sex is inherently biological, no doubt, but for an organism as complex as us, it extends beyond that. It also symbolises power relations, market forces, socio-cultural influences and contemporary understanding of morality, to say the least. That is why our sexual health is tied to not just our physical well-being, but also psychological ones. And for those working in the sex industry, that extends to their financial well-being too.
If sex forms such a great part of our lives, or even civilisation, we ought to recognise it and we ought to know why.  But that doesn’t mean we should feel sufficient with having old men deemed religious to dictate it in front of a crowd of young ladies, whimsically throwing a dirty and even sexist remark here and there, all on national TV. That’s patriarchy at its best, and it shows that how underdeveloped our discourse about sexuality is, as can be seen from how we ruminate on marital rape and paedophilia.
Sex is being taken for granted to the extent that we never examine about the critical meanings behind it. We never bring into enquiry the matters of consent, of power relations between and within genders, of how the consumerist culture affects our views about the matter (it’s almost clear that market forces are shaping the idea that, albeit subliminally, to have sex is to consume) and fundamentally, about our biological urges.
We cannot do so, because like most things in Malaysia, we refuse to accept anything other than conformity and uniformity. For example, besides all this hype about the act of intercourse, have we ever considered the question of asexuality or platonic love?
We know from the bottom of our hearts that no two partners enjoy the same sexual lives (or lack thereof) in relation to the others, but instead of being open about it, we rush to pass judgement on the sex lives of others. Unknowingly, sex has become a form of social control (it has been for ages, actually), and we are not only controlled by it, but also perpetuating the mechanism of control itself.
These questions might sound academic but they are more important than we think. For example, if we don’t dwell into the question of consent (and the capacity for it), how do we identify criminality? If we don’t examine the biological and socio-cultural factors, how do we make the claim that certain forms of sexuality are unnatural?
Latest research does point to paedophilia as a form of sexual orientation, but are we intellectually equipped to even talk about it? Without a deeper understanding on the questions of rights, reproductive biology and human sexuality, I shudder to think where the dialogue might go if the floodgates are open. That said, I must add the caveat that not all individuals preying on minors are paedophiles, and that not all paedophiles inadvertently ended up as sexual offenders.
At this point, I can already predict that some quarters might see my message- wrongly, I might add- about discussing sexuality more openly is to encourage people to have sex more openly. Why won’t they when they have the sex-on-a-balcony case to quote from? But that’s precisely the problem; we are so insecure and ill-educated about sexuality we yanked every time people want to talk about it. We draw lines about who should talk about it and who should not.
I recall reading this article where the author questioned a Muslim feminist that wrote about marital rape if she’s married. The implicit logic is that if one is not married, one should not be having sex and hence should not talk about it. As direct as the logic is, it is also an impoverished one. If we hold the opinion that some people are unworthy to talk about sex, the society itself is most probably an unworthy one to talk about it.
Come on, even the logic that you need to be a criminal to catch a criminal only exists in movies. If not, I as the forensic science graduate would have had killed someone and made a painting with his blood to earn my distinction. – TMI

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