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...

Earlier, I posted a blog raising uncomfortable questions about why so many guys fantasised about their wives making love to some guy — boss, buddy etc. Why was such evolutionarily counterproductive behaviour as offering your own wife to some other dudes such a tantalizing thought, was the question raised. My touchstone is that unless a behaviour had evolutionary value or survival value, it would have died out thanks to natural selection. And while I’m at it, let me hazard a comment on how gay behaviour among both sexes made evolutionary sense, and helped the survival of those endowed with those instincts/impulses/desires.  (Please don’t mind me, darlings!) OK, here goes:  For a few tens of thousand years back there in the prehistoric past, things were pretty rough, especially during the Ice Ages. Most infants that were born — say 99 out of hundred — never made it into their teens. Most teenagers — say 70 out of hundred — never made it to age ...

One of my friends recently remarked in his blog:  “ Men romance and woo women, be thoughtful to them, take care, promise to protect them, slay dragons, scale mountains…. with only one goal on their minds – to get between the legs of the unsuspecting starry-eyed one. Women, on the other hand, allow men to have sex with them with the hope that somewhere down the line they will romance and woo them, be thoughtful to them, take care, promise to protect them, slay dragons, scale mountains. Thats how procreation continues and the two parties maintain some equilibrium!” From this, one would conclude that Civilization is based on two mutually complementary lies, or illusions. But my case is that our current civilization is based on an uneven contract  –  one side being socially enforceable, and the other side, not. Feminine strategy consists essentially of saying to the male, more with body language than anything else, “Marry me, commit to me and my offspring,...