I have never ever chatted about sex or sexuality at the dinner table. Or anywhere near my family for that matter. Even typing this out feels illegal.
I vividly remember the first and only moment a family member remotely broached the subject of sex: It was after my oldest sister got divorced. She had walked away from a two-week marriage, over the course of which she was intimidated, held at knife point and deprived of any communication with her family and friends. When she was finally ready to remarry, though, my aunt said to my father: “Make sure to stress to the matchmaker that she’s still a virgin, that makes it easier to find good matches.”
In other words: It didn’t matter that my sister had experienced trauma within days of her first marriage. Never mind that she spent two weeks alone in a foreign country, where her partner took control of her cell phone and passport, limiting her ability to communicate or escape. It didn’t matter that she was well-educated, a successful banker and a kind and caring person. Her safety and personhood were beside the point. At least not in comparison to the fact that she was still pure.
I was 15. Talk about an overwhelming sense of anger and humiliation⏤a feeling of being diminished, at the very crucial stage of life when one’s identity and sense of self are developed. I did not have the ability to fully articulate these emotions in words, nor the autonomy to openly express it at the time.
Now, it is important to state that, as a young girl growing up in Singapore, I was never deprived of an education nor the support to pursue a career. My mother was a homemaker. Her father didn’t believe in choice⏤sons were to join the family business and daughters to be married off when they turned 18. Thankfully, unlike his father-in-law, my father did believe in choice. In fact, he never failed to stress the importance of being educated, financially independent and well-travelled, and he gave up a successful life outside of Singapore to raise us in the safe and progressive environment Singapore presented.
Yet here is where I began receiving mixed messages. Go out there, make sure you’re educated and financially independent! Take care of yourself, and dress well. Of course you can dress modern. But when our Indian culture, the broader society’s expectations and a woman’s body are brought into the conversation, the message almost always boils down to the same point: A woman’s value is attached to her sexuality. In whatever you do, make sure your family’s reputation is the priority, and that you’re still ‘marriage material’. Marriage seemingly guarantees everything, both in Indian culture and wider Singaporean society: lifelong commitment, a reputable standing in society and a legal pathway to sex that is free from judgement. In letting marriage dictate whether or not a sexual relationship is ‘legitimate’, and depriving women of the freedom to own their bodies and sexual desires, we deny women the empowerment that the Singaporean Indian society so prizes in other slices of life (think education, right to work, love over arranged marriage, among others).
I spent most of my teenage years feeling a persistent sense of guilt for being curious about sex. Why is a woman’s sex life dominated by patriarchal ideas of purity (and perhaps progeny) without considering consent and desire? Why is her relevance narrowly and overwhelmingly measured in terms of virginity, marriage and motherhood?
My upbringing forced me to choose: I either had to acknowledge the failure of my culture, and our society collectively, to empower young women, or live inauthentically as a ‘good cultured Indian girl’. Much of what informed my family’s conviction that none of us should engage in pre-marital sex was rooted in the cultural expectations our wider society continues to perpetuate. I believe that they would’ve held a different view, had they not been engulfed in cultural and societal pressures and fear of judgement. (I believe this because my direct family has grown to approach this subject slightly more openly today, even if still trepidatiously.) Yet, it was this very reinforcement of abstinence for women, coupled with minimal standards for men, and the lingering resentment of moral policing that led me to so swiftly drift away from part of my culture and question my identity as a good Singaporean Indian.
It took years to understand how wrong it was that I had never been shown a path to sexual pleasure without shame, neither at home nor in school. I understood that the hypocrisy of placing an entire family’s reputation on a woman’s virginity, and hence depriving her of a journey to explore her sexuality in a healthy manner, was unjustified. I knew that I should have been empowered, by my family, wider Singaporean Indian society and most importantly, school institutions, to make well-informed and healthy choices rather than one to solely protect myself from unwarranted slut-shaming behind my back.
Confusions emerged as I explored this journey on my own: What is sex? What does it mean to engage in healthy sex, and what are the risks? What is consent? Am I not engaging in sex because I was told not to or because I did not feel physically and emotionally ready to? How do I express boundaries and say no if I choose not to engage? How do emotional readiness and maturity affect the physical pleasures of sex?
Over the course of early relationships, I learnt more about myself: how a lack of conversations about bodily choices with people I trust impacted the way I communicated my boundaries to my partners. At times, I faced an inner conflict between the shame instilled in me and the autonomy I had slowly developed over my body and choices. The back and forth was debilitating, and it led me to ponder if this was why so many Indian women struggled in toxic marriages or relationships.
It took time, a whole lot of reading, constructive conversations with mentors, therapy and dating different men to overcome this. To fully understand that the core essence of me is influenced by my pragmatic approach towards what I envision to be a woman’s place in society, my experiences living in different communities and my observations of women expressing autonomy over their bodies and relationships. After a handful of failed relationships in which I either struggled to communicate my boundaries or my partner did not respect the need for boundaries, I learnt what it means to express myself clearly in a relationship. I now recognise the importance of being vocal about boundaries, and what is healthy versus what is not. I grew to be comfortable in my body, and to own up to my sexual desires and preferences in the rest of my relationships.
Even so, it all seems so tenuous to me. Why didn’t I get to grow up with feelings of accomplishment, contribution, confidence, curiosity, freedom and cultural pride? None of these things are mutually exclusive. And, most certainly, not one of these should outweigh any other in determining how ‘cultural’ or ‘good’ I am.
Much of the work I do today—namely my advocacy around issues including sex education, sexual assault, mental health and workplace rights—traces back to the hurt and resentment I internalised as a young girl. I often aim to fill this emotional void by speaking up in ways I wish someone else had done for me growing up. In presenting empathy and openness, I attempt to validate the feelings of other young Indian women who continue to struggle (often internally and quietly) with the complexities of staying true to their culture while developing a strong sense of self.
This is not so much about convincing every woman to engage in pre-marital sex as it is about changing the narrative around South Asian women’s pleasure, bringing more conversations to the forefront about healthy sexual boundaries in relationships and working on unpacking the deep-seated shame I once felt around sex as a single Singaporean Indian woman, despite being raised in an otherwise progressive country.
I take pride in my culture and identity as a Singaporean Indian woman. Yet, I wish my upbringing had empowered me to safely explore and express my whole unique personhood more openly.
Born in Singapore and raised by immigrant parents, Mamta loves to explore complex social issues—especially those that intersect with gender and race—and ways to create public value. This has been the crux of her career thus far, previously in the NGO space and now in tech. She is an avid traveller and baker, and has a keen sense of curiosity about diverse cultures, ways of life, perspectives and food.
