I had a chance to look into this question a few weeks back when we held a sexuality workshop at IFSHA with young college girls. Bright, confident, poised and enthusiastic. 18-19 years old, full of bubbling energy and zest with a bindaas attitude, all pursuing professional degrees. Stereotype gender role was not a cause of worry as most of them had overcome that barrier. As women they seemed to be quite sure of their independent identities vis-à-vis men in the larger context.

All seemed fine on this front. But when it came to their personal/individual selves a whole Pandora’s box revealed itself that was full of confusions, anxieties, dilemmas, insecurities and fears. On the outside everything looked calm, quiet and in control but within there was mayhem.

“There are so many things I want to change but can’t. Like I don’t want to be lovely. How does one do what one wants when everybody around you judges you!”

“ I feel restricted by expectations.”

Appearance anxiety- whether I’m dressed to be ‘hep’ or ‘cool’ enough to gel with the crowd, whether I’m feminine enough. Ethical concerns- whether I’ll be cheating on my parents by having sex with my boyfriend, will my personal desires hurt their feelings, what will people say if they come to know that I have sexual desires. The mind was constantly in a struggle over these unresolved issues racing in all different directions.

On the one hand is the modern mind that is exposed to feminism and its image of a modern woman. On the other hand are the personal experiences, messages, social coding that make up the social individual. And stuck between the two is the sexual self wherein lays the individual’s personal desires. The end result a mind full of commotion created by all the fragmented selves that we are carrying within us. A schism of values and desires where conditioned choices get interpreted as personal choices. Where issues of morality still govern our identity and behaviour.

“If my parents allowed perhaps I would have had pre-marital sex. But right now it is my choice not to.”

“I am struggling with balancing what I want and my parent’s dictums.”

“ I am confused over do I blame the values of my parents.”

As I sat through the workshop listening to the girls speaking about their confusions and struggles and the constant chaos that their mind was in when it came to their sexual being, I kept asking myself “From where is this anxiety and confusion coming? Morality, virginity, parental pressure and expectations, social messaging etc. are all external factors that are triggering the confusion. But today’s world provides us with the opportunity to push aside these barriers and move ahead. Then why this struggle?”

It had to be something much deeper. As I was trying to grope with this thought many issues kept coming up which where all indicative of the fact that the struggle over sexuality was much deeper. Issues like neglecting the body as having anything to with sexuality, notion of the body devoid of any pleasure and anxiety over the female body for its biological anatomy that makes it susceptible to pregnancy, fear of sex, of commitment, issues of whether homosexuality is ‘normal’, is it ‘natural’ etc.

Finally when one of the girls talked about romance and intimacy, the most potent and descriptive space for expressing one’s sexuality, that I saw clearly, where the struggle and resistance to acknowledging the sexual self was coming from.

“I’ve heard from my friends about relationships going bad and so I don’t want to get hurt. I don’t want to be used and abandoned.”

It was the fear of rejection. When I placed myself in their shoes I realized that the fear of rejection was powerful because we are constantly trying to mould our selves according to what others expect of us. Forever trying to arrange our lives to attain validation from others, peers, parents, loved ones- the list is endless. It is the fear of rejection, that hampers the individual from exposing the sexual self to ‘vulnerability.’

After all, the sexual self is unknown to most of us. We do not know what it consists of. We mistrust it, are suspicious of it, fear it. In the process we neglect, resist, suppress, create beliefs and opt for choices that try and keep the sexual-self locked within.

But given a chance to peer deep inside without judgement or moral traps transforms our whole being. For instance all the confusion and struggle that the girls initially began with while defining sexuality, changed with an exercise that allowed them to find out on their own without any pre-judged notions as to what constituted the sexual aura of a person. Here are some of their answers - persona, energy, connection, intensity, feeling of oneness, self-awareness, ease with the self, serenity, individual, does not exist in a mould, originates from a sense of loving the self, experiential, empowering, self-confidence and gender neutral.

With the progress of the workshop what became clearer to me was that non-clarity, feeling of being pulled in two different directions, feeling burdened with having to balance desires and expectations, discomfort with the body and its sexual desires, fear and mistrust of relationships in intimate spaces are all an outcome of the fragmented and incomplete selves and identities that we carry within us. None is an expression of our true inner core and we keep struggling in accommodating these fragmented selves instead. A tiresome and endless journey, which takes us further and further away from our being.

The being wherein lays our sexual core. Where decisions are not taken out of fear, guilt, shame, anger or revenge. Where intimacy begins first with trusting one’s own self and at being at ease with oneself; where vulnerability means being aware of your own emotions and needs; where sex is about pleasure, joy and love as well as making informed choices and respecting your boundaries and limitations.

True, as the girls rightly pointed out in their definition, sexuality is gender neutral. For the being is both feminine and masculine but in our attempt to accommodate our beings to that which our mind presents to us as memories of the sexual and to what is socially acceptable, we suppress or totally negate one for the other. The complete sexual being exists in its balance of the creative feminine and the rooted masculine.

To go through this journey of mayhem towards a more complete notion of the self was an experience in itself. It tells you how behind those seemingly ‘personal’ and ‘empowered’ choices, that many of us think we are making, actually lies the age old issues of morality which silently continue to haunt even the most educated and modern minds. It tells you how questions such as -Am I sexy, am I wanted, is pre-marital sex ethical/non-ethical, is homosexuality ‘normal’- are all rooted in our inability to connect our choices with our desires.

The question then is do we continue to allow others’ desires rule our choices or do we form our own choices based on our desires? Do we continue living a split life with all our inner guilt or do we allow our self to flow in its wholeness?