Sex, Religion and omg... menstruation?

So..... much more interesting conversation has been generated from the last post. I'm glad that more of you are participating and letting your thoughts be heard :) Its truly the best way to learn more about topics unknown and un-discussed.... for example one of my commenters wrote on the last post;


"Also, it [Islam] doesn't really oppress female sexual desires. If anything, it protects females by prohibiting men from sex during periods, which doctors today say would be harmful for females."


and then followed up with:


"As for proof, there are doctors you can talk to about sex during menstruation. I have asked doctors, that too female ones about it and the majority hold the view that its not safe, irrespective of how horny they might be feeling. Now to give you some "proof", "A woman's risk of sexually transmitted disease and infection is higher than normal during this time because the cervix opens to allow blood to pass through. Unfortunately, this creates the perfect pathway for bacteria to travel deep inside the pelvic cavity. A woman is also more likely to pass on blood-borne diseases like HIV and hepatitis to a partner during her period, and she's more likely to develop yeast or bacterial infections because the vagina's pH during menstruation is less acidic" as taken from http://www.everydayhealth.com/sexual-health/101/specialist/berman/sex-during-period.aspx ."


But of course, like I said to him us humans can manipulate facts to suit our needs... we can just pick and choose what to point out, if it strengthens our point... because the same website, does indeed say its perfectly normal to have sex during your period. Certain precautions should be taken, but then again... isn't that the case with all sex? 

http://www.everydayhealth.com/sexual-health/sex-during-your-period.aspx (link courtesy of @themaholupper)

(its time to re-use this illustration, i think :P)

Anyhoo, I took to twitter, to ask what more people's opinions were on the matter. Because I was a bit surprised actually, to read the view that prohibiting sex during menstruation, was actually 'protecting' females. Now of course, everyone has their own opinion and preference... so I'd like to say that I appreciate everyone's input. In fact, without the above comment, I wouldn't have had half as much to say - so thank you!


But I'd also like to point out that there is nothing medically unsafe (religion is another thing entirely) with having sex during your period (see link above for more information). If you aren't in a monogamous long-term relationship... you should be using condoms anyway! 


Here is some of what was said;

 

And then I had a volunteer email me her own account of having intercourse during menstruation:


Clearly this is a subject many people have lots to say about. And I'm glad it came out, because this wasn't even on my list of topics to write about... it just kinda happened on its own.


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Well my boyfriend and I have been dating for over two years now. Our relationship was physical before any emotional attachments. But I think it's safe to say we are quite in love now. We are both each other's first sex partners although he had fooled around with oral sex in his earlier relationships.

When we are together it's quite impossible for us to keep our hands off each other. It's more of my fault actually since I use sex as validation for love. So the first time I was with him during my period we didn't hesitate to agree on having sex.

The issues I would like to point out are 1. Hygiene 2. Comfort 3. Birth control.

For hygiene we just needed some towels under my nether regions. We layered two towels with a plastic bag between them so as to prevent any stains on his bed sheet. We also had to keep tissues and a sanitary napkin nearby in case of any emergencies.

The comfort is totally dependent on the individual. Mentally if someone thinks it's gross, there's no point in doing it since what's the fun in doing something you won't enjoy? But fresh period blood does not smell bad at all. Smells kind of citrusy. I have to hand it to my boy though. He made me feel like there was nothing wrong with me. After some initial anxiety I was pretty happy.

Physical comfort for the girl can be an issue. During menstruation the cervix distends so the penis hits it harder and there is a lot more sensation. The guy here needs to he careful and adjust the speed and force of intercourse accordingly.

Recommended position would be missionary. I tried to ride him once while on my period and despite being extremely erotic and fun, it ended up in a mess of cum and blood on his pelvis.

Now because the girl is much more sensitive, condoms as a form of birth control might not be comfortable. My guy usually pulls out right before ejaculation but that might be risky as it requires practice and control. The female is said to be infertile during menstruation but there is a slight chance of pregnancy since sperm can live in the vaginal tract for upto 5 days. If someone's cycle is short and if ovulation occurs right after menstruation, there is a slight chance of fertilization. I would suggest if not done on the first day, keep some misoprostol handy.

The side effects include increase in blood flow after sex since the hormones released during an orgasm speed up the contractions of the womb causing faster expulsion of the uterine lining. My period lasts 5-6 days but if I have sex I'm done in 3-4 days.

Religiously, as far as I know, Islam condemns intercourse during menstruation.

Personally, I would recommend people to try it if they're curious and not grossed out. It can be a lot of fun since sensitivity is enhanced and if done on the first day you don't need to worry about birth control.

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Sounds like she really knows her stuff :) 'Cept one thing that I pointed out to her, and would like you to take note of  as well,  is that the withdrawal method is never reliable, because pre-ejaculate can get a person pregnant too.  


Just sayin' - You should always know what you're getting in to.....

Anyhoo, here's what the men had to say about sex & religion. Remember, dear readers - that tolerance is key - if there are views expressed here that offend you to your core, the best way to deal with that is expressing yourself in a well thought out, relevant comment.

Fahad, Male, 24 
I'm not sure that sex plays much of a role in religion aside from procreation - but I do know there are some specifics mentioned in the Quran.


Sultan, Male, 19
If you look at the view of a mainstream, conventional religious person – sex is very taboo. In religion it’s a very mechanical type thing.


Khizer, Male, 26
I think sex is a part of religion, I don’t know about other religions but in Islam it’s allowed and it’s a part of it. I don’t think it goes so deeply into kinkyness and fetishes etc but its something that is discussed, and Islam does tell you what you should and shouldn’t do, and why you should or shouldn’t … I’ve heard it tells you exactly how to do it because of why you should do it that way because it gives you a higher chance of pregnancy – missionary sex with her left leg on top of your right shoulder…or the other way… so it gets the deepest penetration.


Imad, Male, 25 
I think sex plays no role, absolutely no role in religion. Religion I think is all about restriction – more often than not – and giving yourself more things to do … more of a purpose, and restricting one of your most general desires is one of the biggest self-made purposes… so it has no role, technically.


Qasim, Male, 26

religiously, its purely seen as a way of procreating and thats it... ur supposed to have sex just so u can raise a family... have kids... religiously its not something for pleasure of excitement... its purely for the act of having a kid... ur not supposed to have sex for pleasure. 

Ali, Male, 29
In religion sex is something for which u should not be looking at grls, or using booze or anything... u just take her pants off......do it and leave her... its wrong completely......  its for mens pleasure ... it is a very concealed  act.. u should not see womens body.. it should be dark when u have sex... and i disagree with that...


NJ, 42, Male
Difficult question. Well I think except Hinduism all religions think sex is for reproduction only. In islam maybe its both repro & enjoyment. But sometimes I think why minaret is like erect penis and domes look like big boobs ! 


Bilal, 24, Male
Im not the religious type, specially with my sexuality, im not  always thinking about sex and religion at the same time. That would seriously play havoc with my head.


S.K.A., 28, Male
In a society like ours, religion plays a part in everything. Too bad that the most distorted kind of Islam is all we get. Nowhere in Islam is it forbidden to have sex as recreation (albeit between married couples). We choose to ignore that. The curse of Selective Islamism! Muslims when it comes to sex, not when it comes to basic humanitarian principles of honesty, tolerance etc.


Hamid, 24, male
Sex for most religions is something that needs to be strongly and harshly contained and regulated. Rampant sexuality in a society has many ill consequences, and especially if we imagine the situation in the pre-scientific era when there was no such thing as ‘safe sex’ and there was practically no prevention against pregnancy and STDs, and the society was extremely misogynistic. There was some grain of wisdom in that religions tried to suppress and thwart the sexual impulse to avoid those evils, but I think these attempts were not successful and created many negative consequences of their own.


Arsalan, 20, Male
Well, Islam lays down strict injunctions about the subject, so yeah, sex does play a role in religion. I have studied about Islam a lot, and the fact that mystifies me is that while our religion lays down punsihments as extreme as  stoning for adultery, it doesn’t lay down any law about rape. Also, we have accounts of the prophet Muhammad taking sex-slaves as wives. A princess whose father, husband and entire tribe has been murdered, wouldn’t consent to sex with the man who perpetrated these acts willingly, would she?
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Oh - and if u aren't the easily scandalized type - do go ahead and add me on Facebook

Brown Girls shouldn’t have brown Vaginas part 2

Since I had a lot to say, and always do… I had to cut the writer short last time… & since he says it so well, here’s the rest of what he had to say regarding colour & genitals (in case you missed part one of this post, you can read it here)

The modern recourse is to blame everything on colonization and cultural imperialism, but equating feminine beauty with fairness is not a post-colonial phenomenon, not even if we look at imperialism before the industrial/capital driven one in the last few centuries; it seems pervasive in many eras and cultures, even within predominantly ‘white’ cultures themselves. Not all white women have pink genitalia, but that seems to be the standard for them as well, if the internet and pornography and feminist critiques are anything to go by.

Moreover, there wasnt just an internalized racism at play here. These men did watch pornography but did not hold the same colour standards for themselves (after all pornography involves both sets of genitalia). In fact, when it came to the penis, colour paled in comparison to the importance of size; where both pornography and popular perception (and perhaps even empirical evidence, I am no expert) suggests that ‘black’ people have the biggest penises.

Penises become a source of great envy and personal complexes for men, and despite the similarly prejudiced notion that the colour black is not aesthetically appealing, it still becomes the ideal because of the sheer power and prestige associated with magnitude.

In a weird way, one which resists reductions to racism or cultural colonization, the black penis and the pink vagina seemed to be the genital ideals.
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The fact that we have ‘genital ideals’ is pretty surprising for me really… its not an issue I had given much thought to prior to this brown vagina conversation. Of course I am familiar with mens’ obsession with penis size, but anything other than that had not crossed my mind. I wondered if black people had the same colour prejudices when it came to genitals as brown people did… did black guys expect black girls to have pink vaginas like brown guys supposedly expect brown girls to have? I decided to ask an African-Canadian friend.

Of course by now, none of my friends are surprised by the bizarre questions I ask or types of conversations I have with them. I am lovingly called a perv… but clearly they aren’t familiar with the true definition of that word :P

After much beating around the bush and uncomfortable answers that were going nowhere, my friend ‘B’ finally decided to open up:

B: ok, the first time i saw a dark vagina, i have to admit i didn't know what to think, i had thought they were all light coloured. so i can see where they (he’s referring to the group of men mentioned in my previous post about this topic) get that idea from, and just urban myths take it from there, if that’s what everyone is telling you what else are you supposed to think? I had the benefit of not knowing anything, so i was a clean slate

me: well why did u think they were all supposed to be light? porn? did u think a black girl would have a pink vagina?

B: partly porn yes, and also because i had never thought of it till i actually saw one that wasn't, once i realized, it made sense

B: it was an unconscious assumption

me: yeah but if u hadn’t thought about it… why had the picture of a light one popped into ur virgin brain as the standard?

B: because thats all that i had seen

me: where? porn?

B: from the very little porn that i had seen

me: but that was ur only source?

B: at the time, yea

me: and as a black guy it didn’t occur to u that black girls may not have vaginas that looked like that?

B: lol, u overestimate a man's ability to think clearly in a sexual situation

me: cummon now

B: seriously, do you think that’s what we're thinking, that we rationally try to analyze things? we're trying to not cum in our pants and hoping the girl doesn't laugh at how little we know

B: the only time a man's able to have any type of rational thought at that point is if he’s having sex with a girl that he has no feelings for whatsoever, like a prostitute, like i said, afterwards you are able to realize, but at the time? not so much

B: and following this post, you may want to do another about girl’s reactions to un/circumcised penises

me: I’d do one, but it wouldn’t really apply to my readers since most of them are Muslims, I assume all the men are circumcised. So there wouldn’t be much variance in opinion.

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So, obviously he doesn’t represent ‘all black guys’ or anything, but just in the context of this conversation with him.. its interesting to see that he too fell victim to the expectations set up by the average Caucasian porn vagina.

Of course, he’s not a dickwad, so he doesn’t have idiotic thoughts like ‘dark vaginas are loose’ or ‘dark vaginas give you STDs’ – for him it was a simple case of not thinking it through (apparently they can’t rationalize when aroused..heh… who’d a thunk), and expecting to see what he had always seen on screen. For the Pakistani’s previously mentioned, there was value placed on the lightness of the vagina. There was prejudice and disgust….

I conclude that a lack of exposure and (sexual) education/awareness are the reasons for difference in perception between the Pakistani men and my friend B. Despite the fact that B was taken aback because his expectations had been set up by pornography, once his logic kicked in… a variety in colours made sense to him. And that’s really all it is. People come in different colours, so do penises… then why not vaginas?

As I’ve mentioned time and time again. Pakistanis need more Sex Ed.
One basic tenet of sexual health I’d like to emphasize is: use a rubber people! I know of waaay too many Pakistani men that cheat on their wives with random women/men, and don’t even have the decency to wrap it up. Not only do they risk unwanted pregnancy…. But they bring home diseases to their wives. Sad part is, a lot of these women know what’s going on but are afraid to question their spouses about it.

So one step at a time towards sexual health. If we can’t teach these kinds of men to respect women yet. At least we can make them aware about the risks of unprotected sex.

Qondoms all the way! :)

Do you think education is important, when it comes to something like sexuality?

Ayesha, Female, 28
Immensely. It is a far more important aspect of our identities and perceptions of self than are religion or nationality or ethnicity. Under no circumstance should we internalize hatred or derision based on our sexuality, and that can only come through understanding and accepting yourself for what you are.

Layla, Female, 19
It is yes, but I’m still deciding on the right age to be educated. It all depends on the individual and how and what they do with the knowledge.

Ambreen, Female, 28
i think its extremely important.... its ur body u should know what u like and what u dont like

Mariam, Female, 26
Absolutely…its absolutely important…being educated about something makes it a little more real and less perverse…our country needs to do that desperately… because right now sex is seen as something sooooo dirty at the grassroot level…awareness on the topic is so flawed… its leads to a lot of frustration in our population…. Not just the men...the women too….this frustration leads to a level of sickness in the men especially in our country, that actually makes me want to kill myself…from time to time…. – I have been at the receiving end of some of these frustrations…and it really makes you want to … even if not kill yourself… kill them! It makes you want to completely remove yourself from it. I do not consider myself a part of this country for this reason essentially! Fine we have other problems… but this is not something that can ever be a part of my reality…and I think that its going to drag our country down…as it has. It can change… but its probably gonna take close to a hundred years…and I don’t have that kinda time. And this book… will have some effect… but generally the people who will end up reading this book will probably already be on the right track or some form of the right track….i think the people im probably talking about …which make up the majority of the sickness of this country…will probably not come across this book… or if they do…will probably not pick it up and read it. They’ll regard it as either rubbish or trash or promiscuous or whatever…so I don’t think it will change anything at the grassroot level.

Fatima, Female, 25
I think its something that lacks greatly in our country and it needs to be done because we are sexual beings…I grew up with confused sexuality… I didn’t even know what side of the sexual spectrum I was on – now I’ve figured it out... and my theory is that the whole world is bisexual…just to different degrees.

Sumeira, Female, 25
Of course it’s important. You should know yourself; you should know your body first. So yea – there should be that awareness, you should know what you’re doing. We don’t talk about it … and people don’t know – in this society most people are segregated…

Zobia, Female, 22
Absolutely! I think it’s really ridiculous how they don’t teach sex ed in Pakistan. It is extremely important in my opinion and can prevent disease, unwanted pregnancy and eliminate the completely unaware and unknowing attitude our people have towards something that is a part of everyone’s lives.

Saira, Female, 22
absolutely! yes! I think so.

Rabia Female, 23
Yes definitely. A lack of education on sexuality is what has caused it to become an increasingly ‘unmentionable’ topic. Raise the issue, address it in the right manner according to religious/moral guidelines if you’d like, but discuss it – spread awareness!

Farah, Female, 29
Yes – I think so . I’d love to help write a curriculum for sex-ed in Pakistan.

Sam, Female, 28
O yes. and its not like sex-ed is sexy, its actually anything but, its very scientific medical stuff. but it clarifies your basics and it really instills in you the kind of caution you should exercise. Like i said most info is pretty unreliable kids receive is through other kids or sources like porn.

Maliha, Female, 21
I do. I don’t know what the deal is with people who think sexual knowledge is all inborn. Anyone who thinks that should meet the couple one of my friends encountered in her clinic – they’d been doing anal sex for years and actually came to the clinic for infertility issues – when they examined the woman it turned out she was still a virgin. They’d simply been doing it wrong. Methods aside, its absolutely necessary to teach safe sex practices. That can be done easily in a normal school background. But something else that needs to be taught and needs a gentler setting such as the home is simply about how to respect one’s own body and be aware of it – as well as how to respect other people’s bodies and privacy…too little of that is done, which is why so many people end up confused and weird and may even be molested without understanding what’s happening.

Mahreen, Female, 26
To some extent, yes. Having a broader, more liberal worldview may make you far more open to different experiences, but then again I’ve seen lots of uneducated people having uninhibited, kinky sex.

Next time, what my male interviewees have to say about education & sexual awareness.

Brown girls shouldn't have brown Vaginas

So last time I finished up on a positive note, feeling warm and fuzzy about the fact that there are some great, non judgemental Pakistani men out there. Enlightened was even a word I had used. But you know, who am I kidding here…these types are not the norm. Hypocrite, and sexist dbag are words better suited to describe the average (straight) male-supremacist desi dude. The entire society is set up to create them that way, with this sense of entitlement....especially in regards to women. Culture and religion endorse it.

They can be judgemental in ways I hadn’t even fathomed possible. Just the existence of products such as this is testament to that:



What. The. Fuck. No, really... What. The. Actual. Fuck. Why on earth does the already sick desi obsession with being *fair* outdo itself yet again and transcend to a whole other disgusting level? Why? Why do we need to bleach our genitals to satisfy some ridiculous brown male fantasy of wanting a white vagina? That can't be safe.

White porn, is 'the standard' I guess....where a lot of young south Asian men learn about sex, sadly their logic can't extend to understanding that brown women will not look like the white women in porn. And ffs, most women of any race, don't look like women from porn.

Just like penises, vaginas come in all shapes, sizes and colours. If you expect a dark skinned girl to have a pale lady bits...you're out of your mind, just a little bit.

I recently had a discussion with someone who brought up how he had had a conversation about the colour of desi (south Asian) vaginas with other brown guys. He was pretty mortified by what he heard as well. He’s been nice enough to write an account of that evening for this post, pretty shocking to say the least:

A few months ago I was sitting with a bunch of men in a gathering where alcohol was in abundance and conversational restraint in dearth, so the topics naturally revolved around sex, and eventually, what was the best sex they had ever had. Descriptions of ideal sexual partners invariably involved skin tones and complexions and one such description produced a remark that would spark a curious discussion that is to be the basis of this write-up; said a middle-aged man with two wives and a legion of mistresses, ‘no matter how fair skinned a desi woman is, her vagina and nipples are always dark’.

This sweeping statement, which I can tell you from personal experience is factually incorrect, was met unanimously with agreement and approval.

From here on the conversation became exclusively about the colour of female genitalia. Many of the men sitting there were frequent visitors to brothels, and frequent visitors to foreign countries and, predictably, brothels in foreign countries. They also had wives, girlfriends and professed to engage in casual sex without monetary transaction as well.

Turn by turn they related their own stories of the darkest and fairest genitalia they’d come across. As skin colour is also deeply embedded with class and social stature, the most denigrating remarks were for the dark skinned sex workers or servant girls with whom they’d had sexual encounters.

Accusations of lack of cleanliness, hygiene and health were abundant. That they did not like performing oral on somebody with dark vaginas and nipples. The ideal colour was pink; it was repeatedly said that foreign men were ‘lucky’ to have convenient access to it, that the colour somehow made all the difference when it came to oral sex, and that generally their most pleasurable sexual encounters were associated with that colour.

‘The best sex we’ve had’ inevitably involved mentions of the pinkest labia or areolas; they were considered aesthetically more pleasing and therefore more arousing, and arousal played a key part in eventual satisfaction.

Two or three of them deemed that lighter skin around the breast and crotch areas was a sign of sexual health and that they were more suspicious of contracting diseases from darker coloured organs.

(lol if this was true, *all* light-skinned people would be STD free, and that is really really not the case. Idiots.)

One man said that, ‘darker vaginas tend to smell, and taste rotten’. This was a guy who’d never been with a ‘light’ genitalled woman, and was basing this opinion on his experience with pornography; that white men readily seemed to perform oral on fair genitalled women, whereas for him it was an ‘unpleasant’ activity.

(well clearly, you can always tell how a woman’s vagina smells by watching her in a porn video, And you almost never smell anything foul coming from the TV... so you can safely conclude that their vaginas don’t have a smell at all. Can’t argue with such airtight logic. What an intelligent fellow.)

Now I’m going to wager here that performing oral sex, on either gender, by either gender, is not everyone’s cup of tea (sorry if that ruined your evening tea) anyway. Or maybe he just wasn’t doing it right. But it’s curious that instead of exploring his own sexual interests and limitations he would blame, as seems the norm, the woman instead. In this case, the colour and constitution of her genitalia. That had it been more pink his experience would’ve been better somehow.

Another man said that darker vaginas were relatively ‘loose’. Of course the male fascination with vaginal tightness is nothing new, nor even culture specific, and requires an entirely different debate altogether. But this was just another example of attributing a perceived negativity about sexual organs to their colour. ‘Loose’ was his exact phrase, he didn’t even use an Urdu word. He said it quite confidently and when queried by me he could not qualify his statement, beyond saying that ‘they are’ and ‘ask anyone who’s been inside a fairer one’.


(by now, the level of stupidity has crossed every limit that my mind could’ve possibly imagined - However the upcoming sentence sums it up best)

At this point I considered it a small wonder that dark skinned vaginas weren’t held responsible for the rise in oil prices and power outages.

Of course, these highly sexually active men were also going around making snap judgments and generalizations partly out of necessity of habit; given their promiscuity and that they view sex as gratification only, not performance; they don’t have ‘partners’, they have outlets or victims or means to phallic relief.

(And sadly, the writer of this piece has captured the very essence of how too many desi men view sex...it’s a heartbreaking reality. Our cultures don't even recognize that marital rape is a thing, consent is not a concept stressed upon. Women suffer the most of course, but I imagine that something is taken away from the quality of such men’s lives as well. They will never truly know the joy of making love to a partner and not an object of sexual gratification. It must get lonely. But even sadder is the fact that they might be too stupid to realize it.)

So the sexual experience of the woman does not matter, and where one would rationally think that inexperience would actually lead to less pleasurable intercourse, they are firm in their belief that inexperience means tighter vaginal muscles and exponentially more pleasure.

Hence they say things like ‘a thin back means she’ll be tighter down there’. Or ‘thick arms and hands imply wider, unpleasurable vaginas’.


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Well. That was fascinating, disgusting and sad, all at the same time. A rare glimpse for us into the types of conversation that (brown) guys can have when no women are around. Thank you for that.

This conversation definitely sparked a lot of interest on twitter too, here are some interesting things people had to say;

Omair Zeeshan: illogical though. Darker skin has more evolutionary benefits. Should be hardwired to prefer

sharabi kababi‏: Let's face it (heh!!), no one's really examining vags, most of us are just happy to get it in :)

pathipen: Maybe I "knew" men who were more open minded.

Smacula: I think we are all to blame. Porn sets up unreal standards. We like unreal standards. We see real and scorn>>

Smacula: << in that way, porn is much like aunties. Who show off their unreal kids, and set unreal standards. #sorryButHadTo

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I will stress again, that our country is in desperate need of sex ed. We’ve seen what can happen when pornography is a person’s only source of ‘sexual education’ … it makes me sick to my core.

It's time to make sure we raise our sons to be decent men.

If the kinds of thoughts we’ve been discussing in this post seem at all familiar to you, or you see nothing wrong with them, you’re obviously an ignorant asshole. But I suppose it's a start you're here, reading this.

If after reading this you still think having such thoughts are ok, go lock yourself in your room...and don’t come out till you can shine your brown dick to gleaming white or a rosy pink. Just sayin’ ;)