Let's talk about sex.('Sex and the Citadel: Intimate Life in a Changing Arab World')

• Published in: New internationalist 2014-03 (470), p.40
• Main Author: Feki, Shereen El
• Format: Magazinearticle
• Language: English
• Subjects: Arab people; Arabs; Communication in sex; Forecasts and trends; Gays & lesbians; HIV; Human immunodeficiency virus; Market trend/market analysis; Sex communication; Sexual behavior
• ISSN: 0305-9529

I spent five years travelling across the Arab region talking about sex, including Morocco, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Lebanon. My problem was not getting people to talk about sex, but getting them to stop. People were very eager to ask questions and to speak openly about their experiences. I think that was because I come from a background of public health - I'm an immunologist - and also I'm half-Egyptian and a Muslim, but I look Western. Often women don't speak openly because they're afraid of being judged and they thought, with me coming from the West, they could speak with no judgement. The problem in the Arab region is the gap between appearance and reality. It's not that people aren't doing what people are doing all over the world. It's that they feel reluctant to speak openly about it. Between 30 and 60 per cent of young men will say they've had sexual relations before marriage, but upwards of 80 per cent of young women say they haven't. Which begs the question: who are all these young men having sex with? Virginity is defined as a piece of anatomy, an intact hymen, so many young people are engaging in alternative forms of sex: anal sex, oral sex or 'superficial relations'. I met a woman in Morocco who had had a one-night stand. They had superficial relations and the man had ejaculated on her legs. When she went to a doctor, she had absolutely no idea she was pregnant. The thing she kept saying to me, which was her point of pride, was: 'I am still a virgin.' Even though she was pregnant.