Comment by todayiamme | Hacker News Reader

Comment by todayiamme | Hacker News Reader

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You know it's fascinating how prudish a culture seems to be ties in to the levels and statistics of sexual abuse. In india words like sexual expression are a sin and a culture has emerged based on the obsession that sex is dirty. Which is centered around the glory of men and the purity of misogyny.

At the same time India by some statistics ( http://www.icrw.org/publications/international-men-and-gende... ) has the highests amounts of sexual abuse amongst it's peers like Brazil (which when compared to india is far more liberal and words like sex aren't dirty things that should be accompanied with rinsing your mouth to get rid of the impurity... ). It's just hard to believe that 25% of males surveyed have committed sexual violence compared to 2% in Brazil. This also jives with my observation that women aren't viewed as human beings over here by most people, but sex objects that are to be used for pleasure. It's just sick.

I wonder if there is more than just coincidence going on over here and if all of this feeds into one another...

I think it must be more complex and subtle than that. Isn't India the home of the Kama Sutra? Like, if any country can claim to be the world experts on sex, it's India, they even beat the Dutch.

I think the issue is this: India has been historically openminded about sex, before the British rule. The current situation, i.e., a social taboo to even talk about sex are remnants of the British rule in India: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_sex_in_India#Colonia...

India was under British influence and control for 250 years. It seems a little strange that the Victorian Era which lasted for 70 years and the more conservation period only 50 years or so had such a strong influence on such a large and diverse country. Moreso because the Victorian era was preceded and succeeded by rather liberal periods in British society which were by Victorian standards, positively scandalous. Why did Indian society also undergo similar periods of liberalisation if British rule was so influential. Perhaps Indian society was already conservative and the Victorians simply re-inforced this.

The wikipedia articule seems to use revisionist language and lacks sufficient references so I would be interested if there any historians present with better information.

There are more than a billion people living in India. I don't think you can say much about them collectively, aside from obvious banalities.

Kama Sutra is about 2000 years old in the current form, according to Wikipedia 2 CE. To put this in perspective, this predates the Muslim/Mongol invasions by about 1000 years, British invasion/colonization by 1700 years etc. Societies change.

Didn't you study history (or at least the Indian version)?

The Indians welcomed the muslims because although they were happy playing sittars and doing yoga they missed contact with the wider world and so welcomed the rich ethnic diversity of the mughul empire and then lived happily together in peace and love until the British deliberately caused religous strife in 1946 by forcing the muslims to move to Pakistan.

See also - how native american tribes lived in peace and harmony together and at one with nature until the British arrived.

Agree with you!! With all my lack of respect - what a loads of b%&^$£s. I have been following all this fuss about .xxx and I think - all this people are driven by we-have-to-do-something-with-it approach. :)

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