Service Providers on Sexual Concerns

The major points of discussion during this subtopic have been to do with various services on sexuality which are available including helplines, medical and psychiatric services, and counseling.

On the e-forum it emerges that even today most of the sexual concerns of women in the South and Southeast Asia region are largely to do with their reproductive health and rights. The approach to sexual concerns has mostly been medicalised, categorizing most of these concerns and problems as disorders. There was a great deal of discussion on how these concerns differ across genders and sexualities for e.g. the popular notion that a man's sexual 'urge' or 'need' is greater than that of women.

There were discussions about the AIDS and Sexual Health Info Line in Canada and the TARSHI helpline in India. These are helplines on which callers remain anonymous. A number of questions were posed by the participants regarding how callers present their concerns, whether women call up the helplines as much as men do and whether the presentation of the concern differs across gender. A few of the participants observed that anonymity tends to encourage more people to call up voluntarily and share their concerns/problems. According to one participant, the foremost reason for seeking anonymous services is 'the need for information, reassurance and counselling on issues that they cannot speak about with anyone else in their lives'. Further, another participant shared that 'because these helplines are voluntary in nature, the callers have the choice whether to call back or not'. She added, 'it is also important for counselors on helplines to keep talking to the callers irrespective of whether they condone their (the callers') actions or not'.

Myths and Misconceptions on Sexuality across Gender

It is interesting that many callers call because they are not sure whether their actions are right or not. Many of the callers believe that their actions such as masturbation or deriving pleasure out of sex are actually 'wrong'. According to the participant, 'there are callers both men and women who believe that sexual relationship initiated by women is wrong' or that 'it is wrong for men to be sexually attracted to older women'. There is an overall stigma attached to acknowledging one's own pleasure. Of course there are also calls from men who say that they like to touch women in buses and public spaces and flash their genitals before women and girls. Also, many men who call up the helpline complain that their wife/partner is 'not cooperative' totally disregarding the consent of the partner or the fact that there is often no negotiation or communication when it comes to issues of sexuality. During these calls the counselor remains non-judgmental but talks about how sex could be more pleasurable when there is consent and no coercion is used, trying to make callers aware that they are violating other people's rights. This kind of non-judgmental stance makes the callers' more receptive and open to change.

Participants also say that fewer women are known to call the helpline and many of those who do call hesitate talking about being abused especially if the abuser is a family member or the husband. Many of these women who call are often more worried about the repercussions, if they were to quit their partners, on their social and financial life.

These examples show the lack of safe and non-judgemental spaces for people to talk about their sexual concerns and the fact that people are trapped in the images or identities that society has constructed for them. In some societies, these 'identities' condition a woman to be submissive and not take the initiative in sex, similarly they condition men to be more 'masculine' with all the baggage that entails.

Models and Frameworks on Sexual Concerns

As one of the participants has pointed out, education and awareness can go a long way to inform people about their rights and at the same time not violate the rights of others. Media promotion on issues of sexuality could also help in dispelling a lot of myths and misconceptions attached to sexuality. Another participant has responded that 'men will be more likely to participate responsibly in reproductive health (which is largely regarded as a woman's domain) if they begin to do so at a very young age'. Another participant observed that 'programmes should also aim at understanding and learning about young men's perceptions of their roles and responsibilities as sex partners' in order to make successful interventions'. Participants then discussed frameworks and models which categorize and group sexual concerns and place them in hierarchies of sorts such as the medical classification by the American Psychiatric Association for its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Disorders which divides sexual problems into various categories of sexual dysfunction. There was also a discussion on the critiques of these models as well. Another model discussed was the New View of Women's Sexual Problems. Though an excellent critique of the medically order, this has its own shortcomings as it homogenizes women and men within water-tight compartments and leaves out all those people who may not conform to binary concepts of gender and sexuality.

Arpita Das (Moderator)
The South and Southeast Asia Resource Centre on Sexuality