Geographies of Sexualities

Today in class,we had a discussion on the relationship between geography and sexuality. After the discussion, I was thinking about how both are connected and whether there is any relationship...so I searched the net and looked at thousands of articles which talks about geographies of sexualities.To my surprise,the 128th page of The Penguin Atlas of Human Sexual Behavior contains a plethora of facts and data about sex and sexuality worldwide. Unfortunately, the data used in the atlas was not often available for each country in the world .It provides a fascinating insight into the cultural geography of sex and reproduction.
Maps in the atlas provide information about the age of first sexual intercourse worldwide for several dozen countries where data was available.
According to the atlas, on any given day, sexual intercourse takes place 120 million times on earth. Thus, with 240 million people having sex daily and a world population of just under 6.1 billion (as of 2000), about 4% of the world's population (1 out of every 25 people) is having or had sex today.
Most people would expect that the discipline of geography has little or nothing to say about such topics. They think of this academic discipline as a dry almanac of remedial factoids about state capitals and the Corn Belt; or worse, they reduce it to only the physical branch of the discipline (the study of landforms and earth processes). Yet Human Geography, the social scientific and humanistic side of the discipline, actually has had quite a bit to say about sexuality issues.
Geography's main contribution to sexuality studies may be summarized in its emphasis on spatiality. Geography insists that all social relations are spatial, and that this matters profoundly. In other words, they do not exist--nor are they best understood--in some abstract purity. Instead, they must be understood relationally and situationally in both space and time, and at a variety of spatial scales from the globe to the body itself. Hence it matters where things take place in order to understand what they are.
While work on sexuality and space grew through the 1980s, it was not until the mid 1990s, with the publication of Bell and Valentine's Mapping Desire (1995) that the subdiscipline took hold. Sexuality and space is now a strong and vibrant part of urban, cultural, political, and feminist geographies.
Five themes (location, place, nature-society, movement, and regions) exemplify the geographical imagination, and illustrate how geographers have researched sexuality.
One thing that struck me was how all the sexual practices we follow unconsciously in our daily lives are important to us....starting from the colour of the dress that we choose to wear..the feminine colours ...the gendered way of looking at things.....,the institution of marriage which is nothing but the limitations put by the society to have sexual practices and to reproduce within the members of the same caste groups.I never had this insight how since childhood our sexualities are imposed by the society,through our parents and the social practices... the taboos that we have about sex ....how we never talk about it. The debates over sexual education in school, overlook or ignore at a basic physical desire though it is related to our mental wellbeing. The house can be a space of silence as nobody talks about sex in the house and the workspace,the streets can be so sexual....the billboards,the posters...

Space,Identity ,Territory and Power

Happy Independence Day to all!
Today in India,we celebrate Independence Day with great fanafare!I was just talking to a German friend of mine who asked me what do you people do on Independence Day?I realised one thing that my country's Independence Day is special to me ,but not to him...
If we look at a country ,it is a geographical space ,may not be always a territory ,it can be the lived space...you can call it a place....or the image of India in one's mind..the image of Bharatmata..what we call the imagined or the perceived space.This space or place(i would like to call it a place) gives everybody a sense of belonging ...a identity and this identity gives you the power.Thus we derive power from the territory that is the tangible space that we live in ,which gives us a sense of identity .This power that comes from the sense of belonging to a particular place distinguishes us from the rest of the foreigners.In my space, I can exercise my power,show off my strength and celebrate the day as I wish to...marginalising the others....here the struggle comes in between the self and the others ...the identity crisis leads to war..and power relationships change with the change in space.

Ma

Like most of the Girls even I have a special attachment with my father.Since childhood my father was my role model,always wanted to be a professor like him someday.Even I want a husband who will have the similar features of my father in terms of nature and character and will be loving and caring like my father.Most of the time I dont give too much of attention to my mother.Well,she is my best friend,you can say,i love her as much as i love my father,and fight with her most of the time.But if you talk about giving attention to her,it shifts to my father.Even when I talk over the phone,after 5 minutes,i ask her to pass over the phone to my father,or enquire,wether my father is home .Sometimes she gets offended,sometimes she refuses to give,and sometimes without saying a word passes over the phone to my father.Today early morning a strange thing happened.I woke up in the morning to study but then again went off to sleep.I had a very weird dream in which I saw myself and my mother walking down the streets of Delhi,going to the market and shopping as we do most of the time in Kolkata whenever i get a holiday,then eating out at my favourite joints in Delhi.On our way to hostel we got surrounded by some hooligans with pistols and knives.I rushed to the nearest police booth to ask for help,when i turned back,it was too late!I cried out in my dream for ma..i woke up perspiring,looked all around,i was not at home,my mom was not around..an empty room with only me...i tried to call home at 5' o clock in the morning,there was some problem in the network,i called 5 times,still couldnt get connected,started crying sitting on my bed without realising that it was just a dream.Again called home,my father picked up the fone,asked him,where is ma,is she alright?For the first time,couldnt wait to talk to her.Her voice never sounded so heavenly and indispensable as it sounded today in the morning.After that she called thrice to check if i am alright..Missing her so much throughout the day..missing her soothing touch and that warm hug ......

claiming the space

Today I took the metro from central secretariat to vishwavidyalaya metro station.The trains generally are not that crowdy from central secretariat as this is the first station,generally it gets filled up from rajiv chowk or kashmere gate.In the metro whenever I travel I get bored with the continuous announcments "please offer your seat to the old,physically challeneged and someone in need"Today from kashmere gate a very old gentleman boarded the train with his daughter and he seemed a bit sick,after gtting up he asked two ladies sittng in the seats reserved for old and physically challenged to get up,to my surprise the young girls denied to get up and laughed at the old man saying that we always have to get up though the seats are ours!they didn't realised that they are sitting not on the seats reservd for ladies! After this someone from the other side got up and offered the old man a seat,and when the girls realised they started laughing at their mistake!No one even cared to say a word to them . I felt vry disgusted with the two girls and just remembered how in kolkata we used to offer old people seats in trains,buses and metros even without thinking twice ! So what is the need of reserving seats in the metros when no one really cares about them! Reserving seats for the ladies are of no use as the ladies dont claim their seats most of the time,even if they are facing too much problem in a crowded train with mens taking advantage ,as sitting in a reserved seat hurts their ego,and today I found that the senior citizens are also denied their right to seats!Delhi is strange and insensitive in many ways.