Disclaimer: Dance families, families with young children.... read this before you let your kids read it. It's not that graphic, but might bring up things you'd rather not discuss with your children yet.
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I am incredibly excited about my ISP because it requires that I think. A lot. And given my choice of topic and constraints placed upon my research by Transylvania, it requires that I think a lot about God. And religion. And sex. And I thoroughly enjoy thinking about all three. Yay for ISP!
What I seek to find is the relationship of sexual practices to religious practices amongst women in Morocco. What is sex like for the woman? Is it pleasurable? Is it meant to be pleasurable? What is considered taboo? What is freely spoken about amongst women? How do men treat women, in the sense of them being potential sexual partners, outside the bedroom? How are they treated in the street? How do they navigate street harassment? How are women treated differently if they wear hijab or burqa, or if they don’t? Have women who originally didn’t wear hijab but decided to wear it—how have they been treated differently? What is important about virginity? How do ideas about virginity and loss of virginity relate to religiosity? What does the Qur’an say about virginity? About women’s sexual lives? What does the Qur’an say about men, and sex, and paradise? How do women’s perceptions of what men want effect how they perceive sex? Does sex scare them? Does the wedding night scare them? Does the wedding night feel blissful? How are they treated by their husbands, by their brothers, by their fathers? What do their mothers teach them about sex, about their wedding night, about their duties as a mother and a wife—domestic and sexual duties? If women choose to lose their virginity through sexual intercourse before marriage, how do they perceive themselves? How do others perceive them? If a woman’s virginity is forceably taken from her, how does she perceive herself, how do others perceive her? How important is the hymen in the definition of virginity? If a “virgin”, by American definition, uses tampons before she has sex, how is she perceived by herself, her community, her first sexual partner? What importance does society place upon virginity? What attributes are assigned to virgins? What must one do/be in order to be considered sexually pure? How does sex affect a Muslim woman’s religious life?
These are the thoughts and questions that run through my mind. It seems a topic pregnant with possibility and rich with opportunities for cross-cultural understanding. Damn, I’m excited.
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