Abstract
This chapter illustrates that the path to sexual intimacy is a path of negotiations that engaged with cultural as well as personal expectations and highlighted that bodily conduct in intimacy matters because “improper conduct” (væradi caryāva) could leave one compromised, and if compromised, that tarnishes one’s chances at living a good life, as they imagined it. While recognising sexual intimacy as a bodily need, my interlocutors condoned cultural codes of conduct that governed sexual intimacies. This chapter reflects on their discourses on sexual intimacies and suggests that sexual intimacy asserted the corporeality of the self, by embedding it deeply in relations of power and gender.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
Though my interlocutors argued that perceptions towards emotional well-being have changed and that university provides an open and encouraging environment to talk about emotional well-being, out with the conversations, I saw quite the opposite. It is very rarely that anybody admitted to seeking help for whatever emotional distress they were feeling. Further, those who did continued to face stigma, often being referred to as una kārayo (those suffering from fever) indicating psychosomatic symptoms that may or may not be associated with their afflictions.
- 3.
This notion of middle-class idea of privacy I rely on here, however, is far from uncomplicated. Levels of privacy a Sri Lankan would attribute to different spaces are diverse. Even within middle-class homes, where they have different rooms for different things, bedrooms may be separated from halls by curtains and/or doors, and householders would walk in and out of each other’s rooms without knocking on doors or asking for permission to come in, which suggest that practices of privacy are as complex and varied as demarcations of private space . I would like to thank Eshani Ruwanpura for elucidating this point.
- 4.
Amintha explained that it is clauses on Article 365A of the Penal Code of 1833 that the policy officers used to justify harassing young couples, which was amended (Penal Code (Amendment) Act No. 22 of 1995). However, another lawyer friend pointed out that she is not aware of instances where this clause was used to force marriage upon young couples who had been arrested.
- 5.
In 1978, Free Trade Zones, also known as export processing zones, were established as a means of attracting foreign investors are areas, where the investors were allowed a range of benefits. Majority of workers employed in these zones are women and work under conditions, which many describe as appalling. Narada’s reference to women working in the Free Trade Zones, who are referred to as kalāpe lamai, represents the popular public opinion which criticises these women’s lax and moral behaviour.
- 6.
Very few men considered sexual intercourse to have a bearing on their respectability . It was only Amintha and Aravinda who claimed so, through a debate about “taking what’s not ours to take”, which they generalised and applied to their friends.
- 7.
Hishani used the English word ‘kiss’. Code switching and code mixing were not uncommon, and often English words made their way into different conversations, even if the users lacked fluency in English. Hishani too was not fluent in English, and she told me that her ‘lack of English’ might tarnish her potential of achieving a bright future . She told me that she feels shy when she attempted to speak the few words of English she knew. Yet, when she spoke of acts of physical intimacy , she borrowed English words, as we saw earlier with the word ‘kiss’. She was not the only one. This switching between languages, I thought, could be explained with the degree of familiarity that is associated with them, because one hears these English terms more often and one becomes familiar with the English terms of reference to intimacy than the Sinhala ones. Moreover, I felt that people used the English words to talk about them as that distances the experience from their everyday language. In that sense, the use of this strange yet available language was appealing as it enabled them to speak about things that they are not used to or not comfortable talking about.
- 8.
Umba, ban language referred to a familiar and colloquial use of the Sinhala language, which my interlocutors at times referred to as the macaň language.
- 9.
Sampradāyika, parana, ādī were the words they used, all of which insinuated ‘out of date’.
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Sirisena, M. (2018). Balancing Between Pleasure and Propriety: Where, What and How. In: The Making and Meaning of Relationships in Sri Lanka. Culture, Mind, and Society. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76336-1_6
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