Women frigid, huh?

The past weekend I watched Underdog Entertainment’s production “Sex, Likes and Pokes”—a hilarious take on dating via facebook. Given that the production was put together in a short period, the play was well directed and acted. The dialogues punchy and earned many an audience laugh.

However, that is not the point of this post. I want to reflect on what the laugh legitimated. I want to ponder on what the play unconsciously conveyed. For this post I will focus on the portrayal of men in this play as hypersexual creatures and women as frigid, sometimes naive/dumb and sometimes manipulative creatures.

 Are women frigid, more importantly, are Indian women frigid? One is well aware of the discourse that white women have “loose morals” and are “easy.” Recently Kafila's Alexandra Delaney had an excellent post on how white women are viewed by Indian men which you can read here. In contrast, Indian women with the exception of North-East Indian women are often portrayed as frigid or sexually conservative.

It surprises me no end. The Sankya yoga holds the feminine as Prakriti (the dynamic one) and masculine as Purusha( the still one). In the Siva-Shakti combo, it is the female counterpart who is energy in motion while Siva is energy contained. Much of Manu Shastra and various other texts dwell on controlling the woman for she is considered to bristle with energy. This is, unlike, the portrayal of women in the West where women are considered the “weaker” sex. Please refer to Liddle and Joshi's "Daughters of Independence" for further reflections on this.

Controlling a woman has always meant in Indian texts as controlling her sexual energy for the seers knew that woman’s sexual experience is way more dynamic and complex than that of a man. In Aghora: At the Left Hand of God, Robert Svoboda writes about the depth and intensity of a woman’s orgasm that a man cannot fathom.  Similarly, research in the West has shown that unlike the one-pointed source of satisfaction for a man, almost all of a woman’s body is a sensual receptor. In a poignant scene in the television series "Friends," Monica and Rachel discuss the order of erogenous zones which bring each of them into best climax.

Not just the diversity of experience, a woman’s energy to sustain for long periods of time is also at times misjudged. Case in point-- Annabel Chong, a porn actress who took 251 men in a ten hour period to break a world record as a feminist statement that alpha-females exist. She received her bachelor's degree from the reputed department of Women's Studies in University of Southern California.  There are, of course, disturbing questions if this was indeed a feminist statement or if it was a re-enactment of gangrape survivor.

That brings us to Indian women. Can women clad in salwar kameez and saris and belonging to “decent” middle-class families be sexually liberated? It makes me laugh when folks consider women to be sexually liberated only if she was to wear a dress or a miniskirt with off-shoulder tops. That Shakti in India is demure. Suketu Mehta in his book “Maximum City” speaks of a rumour mill about middle-class Gujarati women in Peder Road having adventures with the electricians and TV mechanics.  I am also of the conviction that there is much more than meets the eye. Remember Aparna Sen’s Paroma? Remember Choker Bali?

None of the above statements is meant to portray women and more importantly, Indian women as promiscuous. Rather, the attempt is to disrupt the notion that she is frigid. She is neither frigid nor naive nor desiring nor does she lack curiosity. It is time for people to write Indian plays portraying Indian women a little differently.