Sexuality

I wonder how much of this talk of ultra-conservatism and sexuality hyper-awareness is being created, and how much is reality. Rosemary talked to us about dressing more conservatively than the girls on campus do. Most of them wear short sleeves (practically tank tops; they're shorter than a babydoll cut) and skirts that flirt with their knees. Then she talked about not giving out your phone number or your address (makes sense), and maybe giving out your email. Unfortunately, I think a lot of the talk ended up having a negative impact on some of us when we met with the university students. Some of them felt like their personal space was being invaded because the students would lean in or talk at a close distance. One girl was even hesitant about giving out her email address. While certainly a lot of personal information can be found out through purely an email, it seemed like they were almost afraid of being sexually harassed just because a Sri Lankan boy knew how to write them an electronic letter. One of the girls even said, "Yeah, just give them your email but you don't have to write them back." What an indication of detachment! These students were real people, who, I would imagine, were merely in awe of interacting with Americans--something that doesn't happen regularly for them, if ever at all before meeting us for some of them, I'm sure. To blatantly ignore an attempt at communication and friendship seems... ignorant? sad? arrogant? All of the above perhaps.

Dressed like this, it's no wonder people
stare. Rosemary made me wear her pants
after seeing that I was, once again, wearing
those damn three-quarter trousers.

Another girl seemed intensely confused by our interactions with the university students. From her comments, it seemed like she had expected the males to only be interested in having sex with her, not with wanting to talk to her or find out about her. Weren't they supposed to like just sexually harass her? Instead they asked her about her studies, where she was from, and what she was interested in. It appeared, she noted surprisingly, that they just wanted to be friends.

It seems like the only thing that we've talked about so far is being hyper-aware that we're female and we have vaginas and all men want to do is stare at us and anything they say to us is a proposition for sex. Sure, we get a lot of stares, but even dressed conservatively and completely and utterly non-provocatively (even by local standards) we get a lot of stares. We clearly stick out like sore thumbs, even if we were to cover ourselves from head to toe and leave all to the imagination. We look different, we act differently, we walk and talk and interact differently--of course we're going to get stared at. And I don't think there's any shame in blatantly staring here either. They don't try to hide the fact, which makes it looks worse to us. If we "catch" someone staring at us and they quickly look away, we're flattered. If we find someone gawking, we call them a pervert and walk away in a huff.