Young politicians must do simple Google searches before they speak or tweet. At least, if they are male politicians, like BJP’s Tejasvi Surya, when they speak about women’s sexuality.
With his bigoted tweet five years ago about Arab women’s orgasms, he waded into an age-old dilemma and a quest. Why can a society not understand a woman’s orgasm? With rather extraordinary confidence, he said in a now-deleted tweet, “95% Arab women have never had an orgasm in the last few hundred years! Every mother has produced kids as act of sex and not love: Tarek Fatah”.
It is not just a Hindu-Muslim, or Indian-Arab gap. You are dealing with the formidable orgasm-gap, Mr Surya. But it may be much above your sexist mind to go into such a nuanced subject.
Before speaking about Arab women’s orgasms, reading up would have painfully revealed to Tejasvi Surya the sorry state of affairs of Indian women.
Headlines like ‘Why many Indian women do not orgasm during sex with men’, ‘An Indian woman’s search for an orgasm’ or ‘5 reasons why most Indian women find it difficult to achieve an orgasm’, leave little to imagination.
Then there’s also that odd Quora question that sums up our dilemma, “Do Indian women reach orgasm?” It’s safe to say, many Indian women have not orgasmed, and through no fault of their own. However, it seems as though controversy and bigotry’s favourite child, BJP leader Tejasvi Surya, didn’t get the memo.
Apart from proving his blind hatred towards a certain community, this tweet has also showcased the minuscule understanding that most Indian men have about their own country’s women.
But Mr Surya, you may be right, in theory. Most women have not had the privilege of an orgasm for decades. But I am ‘95%’ sure that it’s not just Arab women.
Since you struggle to understand Mr Surya, let me take you through the process step by step.
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Not just an Arab issue
Geography is not the issue here. A cultural divide definitely persists when it comes to understanding and speaking about orgasms and female pleasures. However, it seems like you have the wrong end of the stick. It is not a contest between Arab women and Indian women.
Many therapists across India say most Indian women don’t have the privilege of experiencing orgasms. A clinical psychologist Anindita Chowdhury said, “It is true that many women in India do not experience orgasms. The most common reason is their lack of understanding or acknowledging their physical needs.” And how can you expect them to understand if society is breathing down their neck shouting that the word itself is taboo?
Their sagas of a search for orgasm are loud but still remain unheard. Mr Surya you should talk to the Indian women around you before learning about Arab women. Or maybe, decades of patriarchy has silenced them into thinking they have no desires.
Traditionally, a woman’s orgasm has been explained in movies and literature as the opening up of a “flower”, or as an experience that is gentle yet freeing. It’s a “eureka” moment. But sometimes, it can be far more powerful and scary. It can be sweaty, messy and far from a “flower”.
Margaret Mitchell’s portrayal of an orgasm in Gone with the Wind sums it up: “She tried to speak and his mouth was over her again. Suddenly she had a wild thrill such as she had never known; joy, fear, madness, excitement, surrender to arms that were too strong, lips too bruising, fate that moved too fast.”
Also Read: Veere Di Wedding: It’s been a terrible week for masturbation in India
Pleasure only for men
I am assuming your love and trust for numbers because you’re so sure that ‘95%’ Arab women haven’t orgasmed in the last hundred years. Since opinions are easy to refute, let’s talk numbers.
A survey found that women have only one orgasm for every three orgasms that are enjoyed by men in heterosexual encounters. Research published in the Archives of Sexual Behaviour found that heterosexual women do experience fewer orgasms in comparison to men, lesbians or bisexual women.
Another study says that women see only a faint semblance of pleasure in their 20s. It concluded that women aged 36 or above have had the best orgasms compared to any other group.
This is a classic example of men having never understood female pleasures. A woman’s pleasure is not deemed ‘necessary’ because men’s orgasms are the ones that lead to the first biological step of procreation. Unfortunately for women, pleasure is not a precursor for zygotic existence and society has never been able to fathom the ‘need’ for it.
Behind the ‘orgasm gap’ is a serious demand and supply issue. There is a lot of demand and hardly enough supply. The demand is hardly ever recognised by men. And women have no easy access to sex toys to pleasure themselves.
Speaking of toys also feels like a stretch. We live in a country where men couldn’t even tolerate a scene from the movie Veere Di Wedding where actress Swara Bhaskar was pleasuring herself. Till today, all her reasonable rants about the current political dispensation are met with snarky comments on her masturbation scene in a movie.
It was also a step forward for Bollywood to actually promote a scene like this. For the longest time, showcasing a woman’s pleasure in a Bollywood movie was a no-no. Which is why Deepa Mehta’s Fire (1996) led to an inextinguishable furore.
Moreover, awkward and close-to-no conversations with Indian mothers on orgasms don’t help either. Even in 2020.
Also Read: Tejasvi Surya, Arvind Kejriwal, Smriti Irani learned Twitter karma can be such a glitch
Marital rape not illegal
For a Member of Parliament to assume that all children are born of orgasms and consensual sex shows blatant ignorance. Why does it have to be pointed out that many children in this country are also born of marital rape?
Forget pleasuring a woman, marital rape is still legal in this country.
Many esteemed BJP leaders have expressed their two cents on the subject. But BJP MP Maneka Gandhi’s comments take the cake. In a response to a question on marital rape in Rajya Sabha, Gandhi said “It is considered that the concept of marital rape, as understood internationally, cannot be suitably applied in the Indian context due to various factors like level of education or illiteracy, poverty, myriad social customs and values, religious beliefs, mindsets of the society to treat the marriage as a sacrament etc.”
In 2013, a United Nations survey found that nearly a quarter of 10,000 questioned in the Asia-Pacific region, including India, admitted to having raped their female partners.
NCRB data suggests that 98 per cent of most rapes involve perpetrators familiar to survivors. And if you were to argue that 2020 has allowed more freedom to women to walk out of marriage, I have some news for you.
Khadijah, a counselor working on domestic violence, said, “In my 25 years of case-work I have seen that a woman who wants to walk out of an unhappy marriage will inevitably face sexual violence.”
We are in a country where women’s orgasms are as rare as non-sexist parliamentarians. We are in a country where sex is over when a man decides so. We are in a country where women’s desires are a strike on her character. Where the g-spot is the missed spot.
Yes, Mr Surya, you are 95 per cent right about missing orgasms.
Views are personal.