Can We Challenge The Moralistic Terror?

My Friend wrote this a few months back:-

Hi,

An event that happened recently in my locality provoked me to write this.

Police caught a girl and a boy from her rented house, charging ‘immoral sexual act’, while they were talking sitting in her room. She is Tamil, and was studying at a private institute for film editing course in Thrissur city. The boy who visited casually was her friend. As she is staying alone, some one phoned to police. Our ‘great duty-bounded police’ came there right away and took them to police station. Police demanded to pay three thousand Rupees not for charging case. When the frightened two somehow paid the money, they were allowed to go. It is not an isolated one. Everyday same type of events happens in our society?

Is there any law preventing private communication of opposite genders? Even if they do sex, has society any right to interfere? Who gave the power to our police to spoil personnel freedom? In fact there is no such a law. Our hypocrisy and illiteracy of sex or undemocratic concepts and lack of dignity are the cause.

It is true that Kerela society needs a sexual revolution. It is a stupid notion of our society that if someone needs sex he or she should get married. This idiotic concept together with chastity of women imposed by religions is the main element that hinders individual freedom, emotional expression, sociological communications and privacy of individuals. These beliefs also deny basic sexual freedom to people who may be single, divorced, physically imitated, chronically ill, lonely or whatever.

No doubt, sexuality is the most creative force in the universe and its full manifestation is essential for individual, interpersonal, and societal well-being. Its full development depends upon the fulfillments of basic human needs such as the desire for contact, intimacy, emotional expression, pleasure, tenderness and love.

As our society doesn’t tolerate these needs and doesn’t respect autonomy over one’s body, naturally this leads to physical, psychological, intellectual and spiritual distress in a person. These negative attitudes that are criminalizing every consensual sexual activity outside marriage, act as barriers in making healthy friendships even in communicating freely. Extreme forms of alcoholisms, severe psychosomatic problems irrespective of age, gender and class, etc disproportionately observed in kerala are attributable to the above-mentioned intolerance toward sexual behavior. Hence, for sexual autonomy is a prerequisite of all healthy human endeavors.

All political parties in Kerela are identical in this aspect. They already gave up social reforms and only concentrate on power. So, let us avoid them. But it is paradoxical that our ‘Marxists’ of all variants are no better than religious fundamentalists in this. At the very moment that they hear the word ‘Sexual freedom’ they will be panicked just like seeing a ghost, or they will relate it to some imperialist agenda. So let us leave them to history. They will be changed by the course of time. Our feminists blame male domination and globalization for everything. It is a sort of reduction of subject matter. Definitely our society is a male chauvinist, but their treatment is only for symptoms not for disease. Nowadays, they turned just like moral police and their duty is only to find out ‘illicit sexual relations’. No one expects a rebellion from these mother superiors. So leave them to the moral pit.

1. Sexual rights are indivisible part of human rights.

2. The right for sexual self-determination.

3. The right to engage in sexual acts or activities of any kind whatsoever, providing they do not involve nonconsensual acts, violence, coercion or fraud.

4. The right to be free from persecution, condemnation, discrimination, or societal intervention in individual affairs.

5. The recognition by society that every person, partnered or unpartnered, has the right to the pursuit of a satisfying consensual sociosexual life free from political, legal or religious interference.

6. Against all kind of discriminations based on sexual orientation.

7. Our legislations should be changed to protect lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgendered people from discrimination in the workplace, in the house, in the access to services and other areas of public life, including marriage or registered cohabitation

8. The right to sexually associate freely. This means the possibility to marry or not, to divorce, and to establish other types of responsible sexual associations.

9. The right to control conception.

In order to ensure a healthy sexual society, the following sexual rights must be recognized, promoted, respected, and defended by all persons through all means.

When I discussed these thoughts with my friend s some of them suggested that a Sexual Rights Forum is necessary, based on this understanding in kerala to defend the individual’s privacy. Firstly I don’t know how to organize such a group, apart from that I don’t know how many people feel that it is necessary? If no one feels its necessity, no need to organize. In the case of sexuality, we have a fake face. We fear to discuss it openly even if we agree personally. So I scribble down these ideas to discuss, interact, and to be shared and criticized.

My views maybe wrong, immature, and non-academic, you may have a different opinion. If you agree that we are a rotten society in the realm of gender relations, definitely you might have thought about it. How can we make our society a healthy one?

Can we use orkut for a healthy dialogue? I am a novice in this digital space. Please send your views and pass this text e-mail to e-mail to all your kerela friends that you are keeping touch in orkut community.

Don’t’ forget to write your opinions, whatever it is to vimaltcr1970@gmail.com

Regards,

I replied somewhat like this:

There is a strong case for dealing with this kind of illegal and oppressive police actions as mentioned. That the(Kerala) society at large feels protected by such interventions by the custodians of law&order is evident in the absolute silence/acquiescence found everywhere in such matters. Apparently, there is a consensus that the violators/breachers of the heterosexual - monogamous family modes of behaviour need to be taken to task, in spite of our pretensions of idealism. By default, the leftists and "feminists" play the roles of willful collaborators in moral policing in the name of preventing abusive practices like penvanibham .
Coming to the question of a healthy dialogue, first of all we have to take stock of the present situation. We must look into the existing structures of moral regime, in which women are seldom allowed citizenship. For all practical purposes, women become entitled to the rights of citizenship only through the medium of heterosexual- monogamous family. Any claim for / assertion of autonomy over the body by a woman is invariably challenged not only by the bigotist traditionalist, but also by the self styled leftist, feminist and even by the human rights activist of Kerala, for that matter. Perhaps this may be the reason why a couple of different sexes cannot even imagine of availing of a hotel room or any other place to reside unless their legitimacy as man and wife is proved before everybody concerned.
In my view, the political / human rights/gender struggles activists who are genuinely concerned with such issues should daringly come together to break these undefined yet intact borders of morality. They should take the lead to weather, to bravely face the accusations of breaching the unwritten codes and rather invoke the written law that is applicable to all citizens alike.
In doing this, they should stop merely shedding tears about sex-racketeering , though organizing women around such issues are welcome. They should stop portraying women as subjects, as poor victims, by which women are practically denied any space outside the family. For instance, activists could avoid sleeping in separate rooms arranged for men and women. Social workers and activists belonging to different sexes sleeping in hotel rooms not to be considered as bad for reasons of 'public morality and safety' and such practices are instead to be welcomed and promoted in view of more healthy and enduring changes in the attitudes.
Citizenship to all ,and hence equality before law and equal protection of law to all. Freedom of expression, freedom of movement and all the fundamental rights ensuing from the constitution to everybody who may be concerned with genuinely exercising them. No moral policing please!

K.M.Venugopalan
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