Indian Sexuality's FUCC(ing) Questions for Marketers

Base image from Indian-origins.net

Hello again dear reader. I am back after a bit of a hiatus. I was busy with a brand consultancy project – for an online sexual wellness start-up; a project that brought up some exciting and interesting insights.   

For this essay I’ll be sharing my research on the Indian sexual wellness space: what I learnt from it personally, and the possible ways marketing could help usher us into India’s “second sexual revolution.”

For our research project I scoured through data that blended both secondary research (clinical and cultural studies) and direct interviews. In this piece, I have used ‘the sex products survey’ from thatspersonal.com to illustrate my points:

India and sex

Let’s begin with the juicy part of the project: Indians’ cultural attitudes towards sex. This threw up some interesting nuggets such as, smaller towns buy LOTS of sex toys, and women happen to be more regular shoppers of these than men!

Concerningly, Indians are getting more conservative about things like pre-marital sex and extra marital affairs, despite their own claims that they’re engaging in more pre-marital sex. On the flipside, Indians are more accepting of homosexuality, especially after article 377 got struck down

Sexual health – or the lack of?

Moving to sexual ‘health and wellness’; our findings were not as pleasurable. While clinical reports and cultural studies revealed dismal levels of awareness about sexual health as a concept, attempts to speak to both genders about the subject were racked with complications.

Let’s talk man to man

To begin with, chatting with men on sexual “health” was tricky. Men were naturally… touchy about discussing such matters. While conducting interviews, I had to tread carefully; I needed to be empathetic, not patronising, and definitely not overly curious - lest I was suspected of finding entertainment in a fellow man’s emasculating misery.

Predictably, men were quite aware of their sexual health or lack of, thanks to two major factors: One, the obvious anatomical functionality: erectile dysfunction and premature ejaculation being the most common. Secondly, the cultural narrative around masculinity and a man’s penis. It is the sceptre that seems to rule marital relationships, self-esteem, household and social standing among other men.

Understandably, ideas and any understanding of sexual health and wellness were largely anchored to functionality.

Heart to heart with women

Research on women was even tougher given the limited studies on female sexual health and wellness. Access to medical care by itself is a factor of a woman’s education, worldly exposure and family economics. Women's health falls woefully at the bottom of that list.

Terms like ‘female frigidity’ used in some clinical studies felt archaic and regressive. The condition was apparently ‘diagnosed’ when husbands complained of their wife’s ‘lack of interest’.

Below is a table from one of the few studies on prevalence of sexual problems in women attending outpatient gynaecology clinic of tertiary care centre in North India:

As per the findings, the sexual problems revolve around a woman’s interest and lack of pleasure, causing anxiety and low lubrication, which exacerbates the selfsame issue even further. This issue however, seemed to resolve itself in most cases with counselling about sex not being a sin, and explaining the importance of foreplay. (All this in the country where Kamasutra by itself is a woman’s pleasure-oriented text!) 

For direct interviews, I was unable to speak objectively to a sample of representative women outside my social circle due to the immense social stigma and judgement of a woman speaking to a stranger (albeit a well-meaning, curious market researcher like myself) about their sex life. So I resorted to speaking to close women friends about their confidential doctor-patient chats, then requested them to speak to their friends with permission to listen in.

The picture here wasn’t much better. Even in metros like Delhi, women reported discussions centred only on contraception if married, and if single, then were subjected to moral policing and judgement when discussing ‘pre-marital’ sex.

Where men and women are equal

While men may enjoy the perks of patriarchy, they stand equal with women on two counts:

One, sexual health for both genders is deemed unimportant and excluded from general wellbeing.

Secondly, treatment for sexual health problems are sought and considered important only if it hampers reproduction.

Thankfully, OTT platforms have taken the cultural lead that Bollywood passed up by openly talking about subjects such as sex, women’s orgasms, and homosexuality. Court rulings on live-in relationships and Article 377 have helped open some minds up to the idea of sexual agency.  

Signs of a sexual change

Encouragingly, younger India seems to be making a sexual u-turn, away from sex for purely procreation towards sex for pleasure! We are also entering an era where women and men have a more open and equal conversation about their desires and pleasures. Experimentation and exploration are becoming a joint hedonistic journey with a more open mind.

Fornication Under Consent of Culture – marketing implications

This got me thinking about how brands could reclaim the cultural narrative and guide these cultural shifts to nudge us Indians towards being more inclusive and progressive, in line with the current times.

Normalise – don’t fetishise 

The big one would be to ‘normalise’ matters considered taboo. Brands have normalised the promise of sex and innuendo to sell just about anything except sexual wellness. We just need to get marketers to expand their purview.

Psychology of normalisation - the more people see something in a regular context without fuss, the more likely they are to accept it. What is important is to just spark the conversations among people, from local trains to living rooms. The more we walk about things, the less they surprise or shock us.

This method has been demonstrated successfully by P&G which included LGBTQ families in their advertising communication. Story books in Scandinavian countries educate children about differences in male-female bodies from childhood – without stigma. While India is far from following the Scandinavian example, surely you get the idea?

(anti) Climax

We need to de-link sex, sexuality and sexual health from each other, and all three from their collective stigma. The sexual narrative in India today is a mix of misinformation and negativity.

We don’t have sexologists in India – but we do have doctors who know how the machinery works. Medical care is also geared up only towards reproduction and family planning.

Sex education is all but absent. The narrative is around sexually transmitted diseases, unwanted pregnancies, and social stigma. Consequently, people grow up reading advice columns and watching porn which teaches them sexual domination and violence – not mutual pleasure.

Our conservatism is thrown in our face when generations grow up associating sanitary pads with blue liquid, and condom ads show Sunny Leone trying to simulate an orgasm among pollinating flowers. Ironically buying either product is still considered embarrassing and packeted in black plastic!

What would be interesting to see is how marketers leverage changes outside the bedroom and influence the Indian cultural libido. Will women's empowerment lead to more equal sexualisation in communications? Will the 'sensitive man' use sex to express love and not patriarchy? Will India's second sexual revolution allow more leeway to FUCC (fornicate under consent of culture)!