Real men don’t use condoms?

Like many Indian women, my first sexual experience wasn’t pleasant. A truth that I camouflaged, even from myself, till I was able to process the guilt.Until I grew up, to stare the facts, in the eye.

I was about 23. We were in south Goa. The asshole (yes, I will be calling him that), took me on a romantic bike-ride. Treating me to a sumptuous seafood lunch, a couple of hours later. He was strictly vegetarian. He even took a bite of the prawn. It was a noble gesture, I reckoned. The man making an effort to love something I love. Talking to me about marriage. Kids. An apartment in the suburbs. Saying he would convince his folks (non-Bong and Brahmanical) that I could still work as a Lifestyle journalist. Late nights. Page 3 parties. Short skirts. The occasional fag. Male colleagues, and bosses.

The works.

I was happy. We kissed. It was safe.

"I’ve booked a room," he winked as soon as he had cleared the bill.

"For what?" I quizzed, cupping his face.

"It’s the last day, baby…and I’m sick of hanging out with your family and friends… I want to…you know…" he winked again, fidgeting for the keys in his pockets.

We had been dating for eight months. It was a long distance thing.

"What’s wrong with this room?" he screamed, an hour later, taking a big gulp of beer.

"It’s sleazy…you know…look at the sheets…God knows what happens in these kind of shady places…" I tried fighting my own doubts.

"Gosh you’re sounding like a real prude, who the fuck cares about sheets… let’s just have sex…" he removed his shirt in a tearing hurry.

It scared me.

It was the most alone I’d ever felt.

The meaning of nakedness. The first time a man had seen me this way. In a place like this. Wasn’t the first time supposed to be…umm… intimate, instead of intimidating?

"Hey, wait, stop… are you carrying condoms? What if…" I pressed his chest, the rest of my words trailing.

The asshole stared at me completely startled. Then laughing loudly, he announced, in a proud tenor, "Babe, don’t you trust me… I mean, c’mon, haven’t you ever heard the saying, real men don’t use rubber!"

And so we had sex.

It was quite simple, really. Looking back now.

The whole losing your virginity business romanticised and highly overrated. The chocolates and flowers deal. The sweet nothings and satin bed sheets. And strawberry flavoured contraceptives.

The asshole opting for a technique he then claimed he was a pro at – removing his organ just before he ejaculated. A tried-and-tested technique, a skill carefully cultivated and possibly practiced on several girlfriends before me, almost acrobatic, in a sense.

"See? See…real men don’t use rubber…" he panted, walking out, holding his member in his hands.

Like a trophy.

Like he’d just won something.

Won over something.

Now, wait a minute, before you decide this is another feminist rant, and before you start calculating why I didn’t walk out. Why I decided to have sex with the asshole, let’s get something straight.

This is my new column. This week, I’m talking about pleasure, and the price, we, women have to pay for it.

Don’t like it?

Deal with it!

On November 11, 11 Indian women died after undergoing a sterilisation surgery at a health camp organised by the Chhattisgarh government. The tubectomy operations were carried out on 83 women in just six hours. Just last month, our part-time house help’s youngest sister bled to death in a village in rural India, undergoing her third abortion. A young woman of 26-27, she had already borne three girls and suffered two miscarriages. "The health workers told her husband that they would give them a television set… and a cycle as an incentive… they are very poor…" our part-timer wailed, holding the phone to her breasts, after the news came in. Her words haunt me. Still.

It’s easy to blame the poor, I guess. Simple to think that there are two Indias, and that, we, in urban landscapes are better off, in terms of our smart birth control choices. Us, the direct inheritors of an i-pill intelligence, and yet there are stories that shock and sadden us unequivocally.

"I had three girls (our second born were twins)… and then I told my husband I didn’t want any more children. He yelled at me, and pushed me hard, when I said he needed to use the condom. We had been married more than five years. He always pulled out. And yet, I became pregnant after my first six months of marriage. I tried to explain that I had heard about the hormonal side-effects of long-term usage of the birth control pill. And we should atleast alternate between the condom and the pill. That it was only fair. That we were after all, educated. But, my husband reacted very badly to this discussion, saying I should stop reading women’s magazines. He even named a couple of my spinster girlfriends; saying they were teaching me to revolt, talk back. The argument ended with us sleeping separately that night. Like he was teaching me a lesson or something. The next year, my mother-in-law took me for a tubectomy, claiming sarcastically that I was crazy to suggest that her only son go for a vasectomy. I was humiliated, that this private dialogue between us, in our bedroom had been brought to her notice, like this. I later even confronted him about it. My husband said, 'you want to now prove I am a namard? Just because you can’t give me a son! God knows you must be having an affair… all this online editing work you do all day…' Forcing me to have sex with him, later. Something I had long stopped enjoying. I cried a lot. Shocked that inside the successful banker I married was a primitive, patriarchal beast… ironically… sex brings out the worst in a couple…it’s about politics… 'the ultimate power trip,' Shilpa, a 31-year, content editor from Bangalore, wrote into my inbox, an hour after I had posted a status about the women dying in Chhattisgarh. About the consequences.

Not adding me on her FB Friend List.

The truth is that India will soon overtake China as the world’s most populous nation by 2030. In fact, a recent article by the BBC, quotes a Planning Commission report that points to a "chilling" fact: the wide geographical disparity in the projected population growth. The four northern states of Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh alone said to account for 44 per cent of the expected addition of 370 million people to India’s population between 2001-26. Also, half of India's population lies in the reproductive age group, with more than 40 per cent of the population increase being contributed by births beyond two children per family. And finally, just over half of the 188 million couples are using contraceptives. The Planning Commission also admits that female sterilisation is the mainstay of India’s family planning programme, and yet, high levels of infant and child mortality and preference for sons over daughters means that women delay sterilization.

Look, let’s face it. Most Indian women continue to struggle bringing up contraceptive measures that can be employed by their male partners, more so, I’m guessing, in arranged marriages, where sometimes the partners have just met once infront of a large joint family, before the stereotypical "baat pakki ho gayee", nod by the elders of the tribe. The ceremonial mithai and frantic calls to the panditji. Proceeded by the very filmi suhaagraat – popularised by the Ekta Kapoor mega serials. The shy dulhan. The bed bedecked with roses. The doodh ka glass. The camera zooming in on a bunch of giggling sahelis. Standing outside a locked door. Bolted inside out. "Shiiiish…awaaz nahin karna..." one of them says. Her own eyes melancholic.

Sadly, sex in the real world, has no shubh mahurat. With a majority of women showing a willingness to pop in an i-pill or hormonal contraceptive pill, instead of talking their lovers or husbands to kindly use the condom. Despite, all the steamy Sunny Leone commercials. Sucking. Pouting. Licking off chocolate from each others’ lips. Despite, all its endorsements, and varied tastes and textures, the fact remains that the condom is symbolic of a larger gender debate that has, at its core, the notion of freedom – the right a woman has over her own body. Deeper issues of negotiating the terms of desire and the power of decision-making, as critical during love-making. No wonder then that India’s family planning programme also continues to be extremely sexist, with the responsibility being placed overwhelmingly on women to control their fertility.

"I recently skipped my periods and my boyfriend put the entire blame on me, asking me repeatedly if I had not skipped the pill? It was scary… this transformation in a man I loved. Going to the gynaecologist that we figured from the web, someone who didn’t know our families… lying that we were engaged to be married…the long wait to start chumming…praying I was not pregnant. 'Don’t worry I’ll take care of it...' my boyfriend reassured. Missing the point. Or maybe it’s not easy knowing a woman’s mind… her body…I mean what if I didn’t want to abort the child…the same way he refuses to put on a condom. It’s again about a choice, right? Men will never understand. And maybe, we’ll keep on falling for their false promises… as if their manhood is about a damn condom! Anyway, I began my chums... after some medication…" sighs Sunaina (name changed on request), a young BPO-employee.

A report in the Wall Street Journal about the 2012 report by the New York-based advocacy group, Human Rights Watch, hits the nail hardest on the coffin. "Because male sterilisation is not socially well-accepted, this almost always means female sterilisation," it says, adding that some Indian states have maintained targets for sterilisation, with local officials often using intimidation tactics to coerce women into undergoing the procedure to meet population-control targets.

"I too am a victim of the same i-pill syndrome, as my ex used to force me to pop one every morning, day after days for some good five years after the first time I got pregnant with him and he had to convince me hard for an abortion. But it took a longer toll on my health. It's hazardous. I am now incapable of conceiving with my current guy, in spite of endless attempts. Also it did contribute to alleviating my insulin level which in turn makes me urinate more than normal people, if exposed to cold or consuming sufficient water/alcohol or for that matter anything at room temperature or served cold. Nonetheless, now he completely negates being responsible for it and instead puts the blame on my alcoholism, though when he took me to a gynecologist, the lady mentioned specifically how i-pill has effected my hormonal balance and that it should be immediately stopped and precaution be used (she however also suggested to reduce intake of alcohol and smoke as it's only deteriorating the damage done through i-pill). Till the last time I was dating him, he never stopped forcing me to pop an i-pill every morning and never used a condom, while promising he will make sure he does that next time. However this ideology of males has ruined many a females and their reproductive cycles and physical and emotional well being, yet they never cease to take it as something dumb when we confront them. Probably the law should undertake something on this and ensure the health of our country's women stays intact as they are the ones raising the nation's future," a woman wrote to me.

A survey of more than 50 health and childhood care workers in two districts in rural Gujarat revealed that district and sub-district authorities still assigned individual yearly targets for contraception, with a clear focus on female sterilisation. "Almost all said that their supervisors or other higher-ups threatened them with adverse consequences if they did not achieve their targets," the report mentions.

When did our bodies become targets? Soft targets? What if we didn’t bleed every month? To become the butt of some corny PMS joke? What if our wombs had a voice of their own? What if they were a person? What if our marriages weren’t largely focused on progeny? What if childbirth was a deliberate choice? What if we could talk to a man as easily about our sexual feelings? Tell him the truth about what we wanted? To say it like it is, that a condom isn’t exactly as pleasurable to us, too. But we’d rather be safe, than sorry, and, that we don’t trust this overarching notion of male virility. The real men deal!

What if we could stand up for, when we had nothing? Except our bodies… even at the risk of losing?

A man? A moment? A misogyny?

I ask myself, writing this. Just before I come up with an ending. Struggling to find one…