Perceptions on sexuality and morality in Kerala

1. Dr. S
a
meen
a
M.S
04.04.2022
4.2PerceptionsonSexualityand
MoralityinKerala

2. • According to Michel Foucault in his, The use of pleasure (History of Sexuality)
‘the object was to learn to what extent the e
ff
ort to think one’s own history can
free thought from what it silently thinks, so enable it to think di
ff
erently’
• Sexuality and morality : Social relation of men and women in their normative
patterns; Peoples basic assumption about the world and its cultural symbols and
meanings attached to its normative patterns1. How gender worked at public
sphere
• The role of social reform movements in Kerala context
TheDiscourseofSexualityandMorality

4. • Much celebrated Kerala Model of Development; known for successful development,
gender equity and literacy rates,
fi
rst in institutional delivery with 100 per cent births
medical facilities etc
• But what about its public discourse on sexuality and morality?
• Intertextual and intermedia linkages between cinema and literature; print and
fi
lmic
forms of representational trajectories - cultural networks
• Non-normative sexual
fi
gures of the prostitute (cult representation of the prostitute,
Avalude Ravukal (1978); the limits of allowability by providing morally acceptable
endings; role of censor board; Not suitable for a family audience, sex, anti-
sentimental
• Kunjibi murder case (1987); custodian death of a prostitute and the afterlife of a
photograph; this human right violation that constituted a founding moment for the
feminist movement in Kerala

6. • The photograph by Choyikutty; "if the photograph had not been published, this
incident would not have become an event in history”
• The documentary
fi
lm Velutha Nizhalukal (White Shadows, 2006, produced by
Vanitha society, a state supported self-help group in Calicut reenacts in a
docudrama format the story of Kunjibi; narration of struggling sex workers
• Police violence and blatant state power levelled against sex workers;The Indian
state‟s position on prostitution is governed mainly by the Immoral Tra
ffi
c
Prevention Act (ITPA) enacted in 1986, a legislation that mainly aims to prevent
exploitation of minors and forced entry of women into prostitution
• Foucault, in Governmentality: how new arts of governance do not replace older
forms
• Police system as a sovereign and coercive form of power operates in producing the
fi
gure of the prostitute as well as the sex worker

7. • the autobiographical project of Nalini Jameela, a sex worker (2005) and its critique
of public health and rights paradigm
• 1990s- sexuality primarily through the global AIDS discourse (not as in the West,
where gay male body was in question; in Kerala, the discourse around heterosexual
unprotected sex, especially outside of the conjugal bond)
• Women as the reproductive unit of the family - picture of breastfeeding mother;
UNICEF and WHO designated Kerala as the
fi
rst baby friendly state in the world
(because of its e
ff
ective promotion of breast-feeding over formulas)
• transnational production Sancharram (The Journey 2004), labeled the
fi
rst lesbian
fi
lm set in Kerala. A study of the narratives of lesbian suicides recorded by the
activist group Sahayatrika (Co-traveller) and
• vulnerable the regulatory norms of heterosexuality

8. • Economic liberalisation and cultural impact of globalisation - Prohibition of the kiss
to the era of sexual liberation, as the progressive narrative
• Nivedita Menon and Aditya Nigam in Power and Contestation: India Since 1989, argue
that the new economies of desire and
fl
uidity of sexuality are linked to the
“unshackling of the imagination” due to the economic, technological, political and
media-related shifts in the post-90s period
• In the Public sphere of Kerala, sexuality as formative; public imagination
• The National Family Health Survey-3, conducted in 2007 ranked Kerala as the state
with the most media exposure in India
Glob
a
lis
a
tion
a
nd its imp
a
ct

9. • The dominant cast, middle class woman as emblematic of its progressive status
• Robin Je
ff
rey- argues that the Kerala woman has has a status that is superior to the larger
category of the “Indian woman”, as one “who has retained a position of autonomy unique in India”
• Countering these celebratory accounts, feminist scholars Praveena Kodoth and Mridula Eapen
argue that Kerala‟s example shows how access to modern resources can be made available while
maintaining dominant norms about femininity and domesticity, “there seems to be a generalized
social commitment to female domesticity in Kerala.”
• complex ways in which Kerala‟s narrative of progress is achieved through the disciplining of
women‟s bodies and sexual practices. As J. Devika and Mini Sukumar state, “patriarchy in Kerala
rests upon the agency of the “Kerala Model Woman‟ – the better educated, more healthy, less
fertile, new elite woman”
•
Disrupting the Ker
a
l
a
Wom
a
n

10. • J. Devika’s Kulasthreeyum Chandappennum Undayathengane?
• Traces the gender relations in Kerala, perspectives on sexuality and morality
• Deconstructing the masculinitistic ideologies and institutions that rejects the socio-
cultural and political existence and freedom of women, autonomy over one’s own body
• Problematising the popular and academic discourse; economic status of women;
Marumakkathayam, matriliny, marriage and family
• How women were marginalised even while decorating most powerful positions in the
society; Travancore her highness regent
• How religion, caste, literature and arts designated the quality of being noble to women;
men never had to face this moral constrain
• Women who achieved education, job and economic liberty were constrained by this
binary of Kulastree and Chandappennu; modern moral system

11. • Di
ff
erent discourses surrounding the dowry system; internalised patriarchy
• Motherhood and its politics
• The war around female body - Victorian morality, Brahminism, institutionalised by
caste and religion; purity and pollution, Channar agitation
• Covering upper part; not a part of tradition; both men and women used to show
respect by exposing upper part
• Gender discrimination in educational institutions
• Arts and culture,
fi
lm
• Women and movements; pennorumbettaal lokam marunnu

12. • 1893 painting by Raja Ravi Varma;
evoked by Indian and European style
• Raja Ravi Varma’s daughter Mahaprabha
Thampuratty and grandson Marthanda
Varma looking towards thae left at an
approaching father
• G. Arunima-There Comes Papa:
Colonialism and the Transformation of
Matriliny in Kerala. Malabar c. 1850–1940
• Anglo-Indian legal morality that
legitimised the changes in family,
notions of property, land rights,
sexuality, gender and caste

13. • Rekha Raj, has argued how Dalit and Tribal women have been excluded from Kerala‟s history of
development as upper caste women‟s issues are codi
fi
ed in Kerala public discourse as “women‟s”
issues; Upper caste-Middle class Hindu woman
• High rate of physical and sexual violence, both in public and domestic spaces; how the dominant
fi
gure of the “emancipated Kerala woman” informs the discursive formations of masculinity in the
public sphere
• The sexual harassment case of P. E. Usha in 1999 and its relation to a discourse of masculinity to
examine the complex, performative structures of gender in Kerala
• How women’s class, caste and community status are crucial to the operation of sexual morality and
respectability.
• The discourse of protectionism and chastity is primarily built around the bodies of privileged women,
while lower-caste women are positioned as sexually available
• women’s bodies function as the site of sexual anxiety within the “progressive”, public sphere of Kerala

14. The Paradigm Shift
• Sexuality is ‘shifted’ from a normative structure to super normative, such as the incredible mobility of
bodies and imaginations, the contemporary life style and fashion sense (even boy’s dress sense, hair and
beauty), dating with partner, sex from dark room to open area, porn site in
fl
uence and new kind of sex
positions (from muthuchippi to xhamster)
• These changes happened within the three or four decades, the public sphere of sexuality is changed
because of the changes in the perception of sexualities and genders.
• A) Changes in global scenario – Sexuality Revolution, LGBTQ movement.
• B) Changes in National sphere – the legal intervention of IPC 377 by Supreme Court and NAZ foundation
repeal campaign and a new life style concentrated on the metropolitan cities.
• C) Changes in the Kerala regional scenario- women empowerment programme, voice against dowry and
‘emergence’ of moral policing and its counterpart. Another hand these changes were happened due to the
impact of political development in recent times on sexuality and gender is mainly: The so called feminist
and its opposite movement. The politicalaisation of sex workers and its counter arguments (political
alliance between sex workers and LGBTIQ+ in Kerala). The queer movement and anti queer (moral
policing). Online visibility (social media activism), Kiss of love

15. References
• Navaneetha Mokkil Maruthur, Sexual Figures of Kerala: Cultural Practices, Regionality and the Politics of Sexuality,
P.hD. Thesis, The University of Michigan, 2010, pp.3-12. https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/ handle/2027.42/78876/
navnee_2.pdf
• J. Devika. 2010. Kulasthreeyum chanthapennum undayathengane?
• G Arunima. 2003. ‘There Comes Papa’: Colonialism and the Transformation of Matriliny in Kerala, Malabar c.1850-1940,
Orient Longman, Hyderabad.
• Velutha Nizhalukal (White Shadows) Dir: Santha Kumar and Naveen Raj. Produced by Vanitha Society on behalf of
KSACS. Malayalam/Color. 2006.
• Sancharram (The Journey) Dir. Ligy Pullapally. Malayalam/ Color. 2004
• Ittyipe, Minu. 2005. “The Life of the Silenced.” Tehelka July 30. “http://www.tehelka.com/story_main13.asp?
fi
lename=hub073005the_life_of.asp. Accessed on Sept 4, 2008. Foucault, Michel. 1994b.
• “Governmentality.” In Essential Works of Michel Foucault – Power, ed. James D Faubion, 201-223. New York: The New Press
• Arunima, G. 2000. “A Vindication of the Rights of Women: Families and Legal Change in Nineteenth Century Malabar”.
In Changing Concepts of Rights and Justice in South Asia, eds. Michael R. Anderson and Sumit Guha, 114–139. New Delhi:
Oxford University Press.
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