Durex sex survey: Is the land of Kamasutra not adventurous enough?

Illustration by Soham Sen | ThePrint Team

Durex India recently revealed that 74 per cent Indians “want to try something new in bed”. The condom brand has now launched a #WhySoBoring campaign in India, which includes chat shows on YouTube featuring celebrities as well as new commercials, to encourage people to open up about sex.

ThePrint asks: Durex sex survey: Is the land of Kamasutra not adventurous enough?

In India, sex is still a pastime of the privileged, and meant mainly for male pleasure

Nandita Singh
Senior Reporter, ThePrint

It’s impossible to know, or comment on, what the sex life of all Indians is like — there are 130 crore of us, and given that figure, it’s safe to say that we’re having a lot of sex.

But intercourse for pleasure is also a pastime of the privileged — in a sexually conservative, patriarchal, largely rural, heteronormative country (also applicable to other parts of the world), sex is for male children and male orgasms.

The Durex sex survey, based on a 2017 report, asked 1,006 Indian respondents about their sex lives. Given that it’s a brand built on the bottomline of selling condoms, I imagine Durex is also primarily concerned with the sex lives of customers — those who can, and will, buy its chocolate-flavoured condoms in the future. In this context, there’s no substantive or representative data to back their claim, however intuitive it might be.

We are, after all, a country that decriminalised homosexuality just over a year ago. Any public display of affection runs the risk of being criminalised under Section 294 of the Indian Penal Code, and quality sex-education is still a pipe-dream.

With talks of purity, chastity and a woman’s virginity still headlining conversations between parents of potential partners, I think Durex may be onto something. But it’s not so much about ‘making sex adventurous’ to sell condoms, as it is about dismantling decades of patriarchy and pushing for the sexual empancipation of marginalised communities.

Sex surveys like those by Durex should be taken with pinch of salt. Sample sizes can be skewed & unreliable

Madhavi Pothukuchi
Senior Web Editor , ThePrint

This is a classic case of the forbidden fruit. The more something is denied, the more we are inclined to indulge in it. And as Indians, even more so. Something as taboo as sex perfectly falls in this category. Apart from being the land of Kamasutra, India is also a country that is soon going to overtake China as the most populous country in the world. So, it is impractical to assume that a nation, whose youth comprise 50 per cent of its population, is only sticking to the missionary position.

Statistics, too, support the fact that we Indians are not bored in bed. Despite our archaic laws that ban sex toys and cosplay, India still sees these products (which include a wide spectrum of BDSM products, lingerie and cosmetics) being manufactured and sold in large quantities.

The government’s crackdown on hundreds of pornographic websites has not stopped us from watching them.

Sex surveys like those by Durex always need to be taken with a pinch of salt. Given the size and diversity of our country, the sample size of such surveys will always be skewed and unreliable.

The finding that Indians want to experiment in bed shows land of Kamasutra is living up to its name

Snehesh Alex Philip
Senior Associate Editor, ThePrint

I disagree that the land of Kamasutra is not adventurous enough. Durex sex survey indeed reveals that a large percentage of Indians want to try something new in bed.

It shows Indians are getting adventurous, and the land of Kamasutra is actually living up to its name.

When we look at our ancient scriptures and sculptures, we realise that Indians at one point in time were more open about sex.

While with time, rest of the world adopted a more open approach to sex and experimented with it, the subject became a taboo for most Indians.

But times are changing. Mobile internet has introduced men and women to a new world of sex altogether.

I have always believed in the old saying “to each their own”.

The bottom line is that if one is happy with the conventional way of having sex, then it’s fine. But if one is bored, then it is time to experiment and find out new ways of jazzing up the sex life.

But then I am sure people don’t need to read this to be adventurous; those bored with their sex lives are perhaps already finding ways to spice it up.

In quest for companionship, coupled with anxieties of everyday life, sex can become almost secondary

Sanya Dhingra
Principal Correspondent, ThePrint

Has sex become boring for Indians? This question coming from a brand-supported study, which might have had its own agenda, hardly qualifies as an authentic statement. But obliquely, the urban middle class youth may have become a confused, hodgepodge of emotions where sex figures in strange ways.

The anticipation of sex is emotional, exciting and, at times, nerve-racking whereas the act of penetration is physiological and hormonal. Modern relationships are often mislabelled as sex-driven. Although this could be true for some people, many modern-day relationships are actually about finding companionship.

In the quest to find companionship and make some lasting bonds on the way, coupled with anxieties of everyday life, sex can become almost secondary.

In this distracted and fractured society — where youngsters are swiping through relationships — people have become increasingly dispensable. But, in the heady mix of things that have made the world what it is — replete with uncertainties — most precious things can turn boring, including sex.

By Taran Deol, journalist at ThePrint