In March 2004, Chennai said no to the staging of Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues . In January 2014, a decade later, an auditorium full of people sat in rapt attention at The Hindu Lit for Life 2014, and applauded appropriately as Naomi Wolf, author of The Beauty Myth and Vagina: A New Biography, took them through the intricate and intimate sexual pathways of the woman, and beyond.
Clearly, that is flattering, both for the city, and the speaker.
After a detailed introduction by Anita Ratnam, Wolf, resplendent in red, peppered her lecture ‘Beyond the Vagina: Thoughts on Sex and Sexuality’ with a generous slathering of humour, extreme frankness, decoding complex medicine, and oh, yes, sometimes, even a few giggles when the occasion demanded some explicit explanations. How refreshing to listen to a feminist who can giggle when discussing intimate details, but that’s what the third wave feminists are about. A deviation from the “essentialist definitions of women” that the second wave feminists propounded, Wolf and her sorority sought to redefine, in language and in content, the idea of a woman.
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“As a feminist, I always knew I had to write a book about the vagina. It’s like Voldemort — that which cannot be named!” she began, touching the right chord. Over the next hour, she traversed intimate feminine spaces, drawing from science, human anatomy, medicine, logic and reasoning.
Over the last 20-25 years, there has emerged ‘absolutely mind-blowing information (neurobiological) about female sexuality.’ Sexual pleasure empowers a woman, “If people have access to it, they cannot be constrained so easily.”
Female sexuality does not need a lot of bad experiences before it switches off, she argued. “It has that kind of memory.” Rape, for instance, remains with the woman many, many years after it has taken place. “There is no such thing as non-violent rape or harassment. New science shows that rape stays in the body and the mind, even 30-40 years after assault, unless it is dealt with.
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She quoted a new finding from a survey in Germany where researchers say you can measure rape in a woman’s saliva. The study which compared survivors of rape in war with survivors of torture (non-sexual) showed that the cortisol stress chemical levels in the saliva of raped women was much higher than among those who had been tortured.
“The anti-rape protests happening in India are a role model to the rest of the world....We’ve got to change the definition of rape: it is not just a sex crime, it is a form of mutilation, an assault that is permanent,” she said.
In an equally lively interaction, after her talk, Wolf heard questions from young women and men, some of them searching for answers in a culture specific context. A recurring theme was the silence surrounding issues of sexuality and sexual behaviour in India. “India is in a state of profound change. I don't think Western sexual behaviour is ideal. Hooking up with everyone is not healthy,” Wolf said.
And then, solid tips for parents, “No matter what you do, your children are going to be exposed to a whole lot of information.” An environment in which children cannot talk about this is not healthy, “Silence doesn’t protect our kids; it derails their lives. You can strengthen your children from within.” We need to talk about values, ethics, responsibilities, especially since we live in a world of diseases.
(With inputs from Zubeda Hamid)