The Brave Pedestrian

In the context of the debate on whether there should be a strict law on MARITAL RAPE, here are my questions to all of you, my friends: Suppose I set out to WRITE A BOOK ON MARITAL SEX IN 21ST CENTURY INDIA on the subject, and for this purpose, I decide to INTERVIEW 101 COUPLES about the different kinds of sex they have with their spouse (e.g. oral, anal, mutual masturbation, consensual, perversions and fetishes, fantasies, use of sex toys, giving or taking sexual favours unde r moral/emotional compulsion or physical force (or freely and voluntarily), having sex without desire just to placate the partner, having forced and repeated sex using Viagra, etc. etc.) So, if I asked you and your spouse such candid questions, and expected very frank and straightforward replies on your sexual preferences... And if I also asked you questions about EPISODES OF VIOLENCE IN YOUR MARRIED LIFE -- about being at the giving end or the receiving end of the spectrum of violence, starting from mild...

I would like to stick my neck out and make A MARRIED MAN'S POSITION abundantly clear in the context of the MARITAL-RAPE DEBATE. Yes, I may end up being considered brutish, but still, I believe these are the down-and-dirty facts of life. Deal with it. The situation for a married man is like this: 1) Regardless of whether his wife has sexual needs or not, a man definitely has sexual needs. 2) If on a particular day, if the wife is not available for satisfying his needs (not in the mood, unwell, tired, generally unhappy with life, doesn't feel loving towards her husband, the presence of kids and relatives in the house are hindering, etc.), then a man normally waits... but there is a limit to his patience, and his patience wears down over a span of some days or weeks. 3) If the wife continues to be unavailable, and the days turn into weeks and months, then a) he must act like a monk and stay content with masturbation, OR b) he must find a suitable consenting sexual partn...

Maharashtrian married women routinely use "Murdya" or "Melya" (meaning a dead man, a corpse) for referring to their husbands. For instance, if a man is demanding sex and a woman decides to yield, she may say something like, "Ghe re melya" or "Ghe re murdya" (Take it, you dead man). It's a derogatory word, but generally acceptable, and men don't react to it very badly. Having such a vocabulary makes it easier for a woman to deal with her husband's pressure to have sex. By routinely referring her husband in the third person as "melya", she reconciles to a man's more frequent need for sexual activity as something that is part of his nature. She may not like it, but she resigns herself to it. She does not take it personally when he forces himself on her, any more than she would feel violated by, say, a child that insisted on suckling. The question of "marital rape" does not arise in this cultural context, eve...