Response: Let's Talk about Sex(uality)

What is sexuality? What makes sex healthy, normal, or abnormal? How much do society perceptions surrounding this often-taboo topic have to do with a white- centric view of sexuality? As Ali identifies, these are the consistent threads that run through today’s readings.

In Lusting for Freedom, Walker discusses her own liberating sexual experiences. Walker loses her virginity at the young age of 11. However, she does not see this as too young or taboo, as many others would view it. She states, “I never felt any great loss of innocence, only great rushes of the kind of power that comes with self- knowledge and shared intimacy” (Walker, 19). She then acknowledges that sex isn’t always such a positive experience for all young women. She blames the negative connotations surrounding sex on the social stigma attached to it by government controls (such as abortion laws) and religious mandates. Another issue prohibiting positive sexual experience is the threat of HIV/AIDS. However, despite the government, religion and the threat of disease Walker explains to her reader that sex is a healthy, positive, and normal thing. There is absolutely nothing about it that is abnormal.

In Tight Jeans and Chania Chorris, Shah doesn’t see sex and sexuality in the same free and loving light as Walker. Instead she speaks of reconciling her feminist ideals with her younger sister’s sexuality. Shah did not approve of her sisters “tight jeans,” “I knew, from the building tension in the house and my sisters growing narcissism and self objectification, that a feminist intervention was necessary; my class-privileged, sheltered life had actually provided me with a situation in which I needed to act” (Shah, 224). Shah failed in her first intervention attacking the tight jeans, but believed she had made progress when her sister came to visit her in Boston. However, Shah’s parents didn’t agree and sent her sister off to India for three months. Her sister returned from India and seemed changed. She had purchased a Chania Chorris, however, it was not a normal Chania Chorris, but a backless one. Much to Shah’s surprise her parents weren’t angry about this scandalous clothing as they were about the tight jeans. They were completely fine with sexy Indian clothing. Shah finally realized, “Like me she had to deal with her sexuality in the context of both white patriarchy and Indian patriarchy” (Shah, 227). Thus, the white ideal of sexuality was what offended her parents, not sexuality itself.

Another theme that is brought up by these two readings is the use of sexuality as a way to learn who oneself is. Walker illustrates this through her many sexual experiences. She recounts, “And, like all women all over the world, I had mastered the art of transforming myself into what I thought each man would fall in love with” (Walker, 21). By trying on these personas and rejecting them she was able decide who she was. Walker remembers never being able to just be one thing, she could never just be the cheerleader dating the football captain. Walker was a little bit of everything she thought someone might fall in love with. Shah learnt who she was through her sister’s sexuality. She had to reconcile between white feminist/ patriarchy and an Indian feminist/ patriarchy.