#footnotes: sex & love around the world (christiane amanpour)- episode 2: delhi.
An interesting documentary that journalist Christiane asks and investigates about love, relationship, sex opinions and cliches to lots of different people where are in 6 different cities.
Second Episode: DELHI
“The capital city may be more progressive than many parts of the country, but it’s still a place where intimacy can be governed by family, tradition, and religion.
I want to explore how women can find love and sexual happiness if they don’t always have the power to say yes or no.”
KEYWORDS:
📌Women who wore Saris all their life suddenly are wearing trousers.
📌 One group of women who found a way to out-pace some of this unwanted attention are the Delhi Bikerni. This all-female biker club takes on the traffic and goes on regular rides together.
📌 Delhi has since been described as the fourth most dangerous city in the world for women.
📌”We don’t have quite a culture where boys met girls naturally and had friendships, it’s always seen as a sexual relationship.”
And yet this in a culture that has literally more than 1,000 years of the Kama Sutra, erotica. Almost liberal sexuality.
📌Premarital sex is considered immoral by most people in India. Unmaried couples attempting to check into a hotel will often be refused a room.
It’s still very much a thing where if a guy has fucked around it’s alright but if a girl has, he’s going to have to be okay with this, rather than being not an issue at all.
A lot of Indian women end up discovering their sexuality online like through erotica, through writing, through porn.
Sex-ed in the country is dismal. The most popular way of learning about sex is mainstream porn where the woman has to be subjugated. It starts with like the women giving head. In the middle, the guy’s gonna go down on her for five minutes, then finally start having sex. Eventually ends up with a guy coming on the woman’s face.
The penis is still the center of attention.!
Actually, it’s not an Indian thing as it is a patriarchy thing.
📌 Busting myths to do with BDSM is one of the main reasons why the Kinky Collective exists. *Kink.
“This talks about the gender fluidity.”
📌For thousands of years, India has recognized the Hijra community.
They may be born biologically male, but they see themselves as female, or as a third indefinable gender.
Although India enshrined the right to choose a gender in 2014, Hijras still often live in poverty and suffer sexual violence.
The hijras are dancers, they are well-wishers.
The authentic profession of hijras is buddhi. Means that whenever there is a baby born, marriage or some sort of happy occasion, Hijra will go, they will play music, they will dance and give blessings.
Almost 80% of transgender are unemployed. So, the majority of them have to do sex work to earn their resources. And some parks in the night serve them as a professional space. It’s like an outdoor brothel.
Abhina Aher (is a transgender activist) : “ I’ve been part of the sex work to be honest. I’m a software engineer but I was not getting jobs. “
“When I started transitioning as a transgender person, I faced a huge amount of stigma in the workplace.”
“Every day when I used to go for the sex work, I did not know I was going to survive on that day.”
“I felt that somebody was really sitting on my ego and pressing it so hard, almost felt like I should commit suicide. I tried. I tried to commit suicide three times in my life.”
“We always had three genders. All hijra people are considered to be divine because they are in between. Neither male, neither female. And when you go through the castration process then you have no connections with the world. You become nirwaan. Nirwaan is someone that you become more closer to the god. “
Hijras were prominent people. The stature of Hijras actually came down under the tribal act. *The tribal act when the British came. When the British came, because when they came, they saw a temple of Hijras for the first time. For them, homosexuality was a big no when it comes to the Christianity.
“For us, the sex was not something which is taboo. This is one of the basic needs of the body. India’s apparently the only country which has sexual activity carved on the temple.”
“What matters is the person next to you is willing to accept you the way you are, with dignity and respect and treat you as an equal partner.”
📌 Sunny Leone was born in Canada, raised in America, and found fame here in India. She is a porn star.
📌 Caste, clan, religion, and arranged marriage are still the ties that bind for those on the outskirts.
One man who knows this all too well is Sanjoy Sachdev, a journalist and founder of the Love Commando’s, which has just one mission. To protect the freedom to love.
“We are attempting to save lives of young boys and girls who are in love. Because they are threatened. With violence, with killing, in the name of so-called honor. “
All over the country, they have 450 plus makeshift shelters. These are places of normal stay.
“Marriage is give and take.”
“I would suggest people, they should go against their parents and get married, really. Because if you feel you’re really happy with someone, that person is going to keep you happy all life long.”
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