Posted on 29 October 2008.
by Michelle R. Kaufman
Sex. I think about it all the time. Constantly. I read about it, I write about it, I analyze it, I discuss it. Am I a nympho?
No, I am a sex researcher. More specifically, I’m interested in women’s sexual behavior—how women enjoy sex (or, as is often the case, not enjoy it), how they protect themselves when having it, why they engage in certain sexual behaviors.
Lately I’ve been thinking about how lucky we are to live in a society that allows women to be sexual beings (generally speaking, of course. Many feminists would say we are not truly free to express our sexuality). But I’m talking about the ability to talk about sex, to talk about what we like with our partners, to pleasure ourselves if necessary. The freedom I have to research it and write about it. I’ve come to appreciate this because over the past few months I have been living in a society that does not allow these sorts of freedoms for women.
Since October, I have been living in Kathmandu, Nepal as part of a grant to study women’s sexual health. Through interviews with women and ethnographic re- search, I am learning that in Nepal, women are denied their sexuality. Most women do not talk about it, initiate it, or expect to find pleasure in it, and sometimes they learn to disregard it all together. Many of the women I’ve spoken to never even learned about sex until their wedding day. In school they are simply taught about the sperm and the egg—the yin and yang—and the rest they are forced to figure out on their own. Or rather, they learn from their husbands, who are expected to
be more experienced and teach women.
Through my work I’ve been educating these women about how Americans approach sex. After each interview I conduct, I give the women space to ask me ques- tions. Several of them wanted to know how many sex partners a typical American has, how to please a man so that he won’t leave his wife for another woman, and in what kind of positions we have sex (Nepalis tend to stick with missionary—and only the man on top). I’ve gotten questions (and looks of shock at my responses) about oral sex, dildos, and pornography. Last week, one woman I spoke with was shocked that in the U.S. we have entire stores dedicated to sex toys. In Nepal, it is illegal to even buy or sell pornography.
All of this has gotten me thinking about how different my work on sex is back in Connecticut. Before I left, I was maintaining baskets of free condoms in the South End as a part of the Teens United in Health project to get teenagers to use condoms in order to lower teen pregnancy rates. I continue to work with Big Sisters in the Nutmeg Big Brothers Big Sisters program on strate- gies for talking to their Little Sisters about sexual health issues. And, as always, I am an advocate for women’s reproductive rights.
For as many problems as we have with school cur- ricula lacking proper sexual education, a lack of access to services for teenagers, and the constant struggle to maintain women’s reproductive freedom, compared to women in Nepal, American women have it all. It is very sobering to discover that while we are worried about whether our sex lives have slowed down too much or why our partner cannot make us orgasm (very legitimate concerns, by the way), women on the other side of the world are too embarrassed to even visit a gynecologist because it would mean having someone look directly at their vaginas.
The other part of my work is even more serious and depressing—sex trafficking of girls and women. Throughout all of my trips to Nepal over the past few years, I have been studying sex trafficking in South Asia and the anti-trafficking movement that has taken place over the past 12 years in Nepal. I have met girls who have been taken across the border, worked in Indian brothels, and had to perform services on several clients a day to pay off the debt to the trafficker or brothel owner. And as the political situation in Nepal has gotten worse, more girls and women have been trafficked.
So the next time you have mind-blowing sex, or you reach over into the night stand drawer for your rabbit, or your partner goes down on you, give thanks to the fact that we live in a society where such things are celebrated. Be thankful that we are able to talk about such things, write about them, and learn about ourselves as sexual beings. Because at this moment on the other side of the world, a young bride is for the first time learning what having sex really means.
Michelle Kaufman is a doctoral candidate in social psychology at the University of Connecticut who spe- cializes in women’s sexual health issues. Her research focuses on the sexual behavior of women in Nepal, South Africa, and the U.S. In her spare time, she enjoys photography. You can see an exhibit of some of her photographs from Nepal at Jojo’s Café in Hartford.
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