Iranians Who Are Obsessed with Sex but Terrified of Talking About It

Mohsen Renani: These days everyone is worried about the dollar, and although my specialized knowledge is in economics, I am not at all worried about the dollar, because the dollar market has its own well-known rules, and the country's monetary sphere has its own authority, and that authority, advised by hundreds of people, is making its own efforts. If it is not being fixed, the problem must lie elsewhere. And most of us know where the problem lies, and much has been said about it, and because there was no receptive ear, we all grew weary and fell silent. But my concern has always been with spheres that have no authority, where the predicaments bite no one, and the neglect of those spheres is detrimental to our future development. We have spheres more sensitive and more critical than the dollar, most of which have been abandoned, and even the responsible officials sometimes deliberately cover them up. It is those spheres that are cause for worry, and we must think about them. This Nowruz, I had the opportunity to watch a documentary series by a young filmmaker concerning one of these silent crises of Iran. Watching that series reawakened the concern of past years and prompted me to write something about it.

Our society is one of the most problem-ridden societies in the realm of sexual matters, and also one of the most incapable societies in resolving the sexual needs of its citizens. This is while Islam, and specifically Shiism, is one of the most permissive Abrahamic faiths in the realm of sexual life. But we have neither adopted the Western model for resolving society's sexual issues, nor, unfortunately, have we been able to establish the very simple and permissive model of Islam (Shiism) in our social life. For this reason, we have become a complex and problem-ridden society from a sexual perspective, in which sexual oppression and injustice have become very deep and dangerous. Although this sexual injustice has existed throughout our country's history, today it has become very widespread. Once, injustice in the realm of sexuality and sexual life was confined to courts and aristocratic houses, and even if it existed at the societal level, its scope was smaller. Today, however, this injustice has a pervasive scope.

One example is that, according to the 2016 general census, there were about three million one hundred thousand women in the country who had lost their husbands due to death or divorce. The unjust tradition of our society is such that if a man loses his wife (even if he has children), he can easily and quickly remarry, and can even marry a girl who has not been married before. But the reverse of this tradition is hardly and rarely applied for women who lose their husbands. Therefore, a large portion of these three million one hundred thousand women will never again find the opportunity to marry and fulfill their emotional and sexual needs, and neither the government nor society has devised any solution to meet their needs. This is apart from the hundreds of thousands of girls who, because of two other unjust traditions—namely the tradition of "men proposing to women" and the tradition of "the woman being younger than the man"—never find the opportunity to marry. This injustice exists because the laws and traditions of our society have left open and respected only one path for meeting the sexual needs of its population and have closed all other reasonable paths. Imagine a law being passed declaring that people in society are only allowed to eat kebab to satisfy their hunger, and anyone who eats anything other than kebab to fill their stomach is a criminal. It is clear that people's physical needs, tastes, means, and abilities differ, and each person should eat food appropriate to their own circumstances. Thus, prescribing kebab for everyone is an injustice to parts of society. It is obvious that in such a society, the crime of "omnivorous eating" would become very widespread. Wherever you go, you see people secretly munching on something that is not kebab! The story of sexual need is of the same kind. Our society has placed one path before its youth: "permanent, legal, official marriage," and this with all the cumbersome formalities like various expensive celebrations, the parties' comings and goings, heavy dowries, terrifying mahr sums, and most importantly, enslaving laws. It is clear that with these economic conditions, the possibility of such marriages decreases day by day, and when society and the country's management system have not provided an alternative solution, society finds a solution for itself, first secretly and then gradually openly. "Prostitution" has been the historical, cheap, and readily available solution that has existed in all societies in response to economic and sexual injustices. "White marriage" is also a modern solution that a part of today's young generation in our society has chosen in response to sexual injustices and to escape incorrect customary laws and traditions. Quite simply, when we close off all legal, ethical, and humane paths for fulfilling one of the important human needs, the excluded and overlooked are forced to resort to unconventional solutions.

And the pity is that now, when our young generation has managed, at great cost, to free itself from the shackles of cumbersome historical constraints and traditions and create a solution for itself called "white marriage," our administrative and legal systems have still, to this day, been incapable of granting official recognition to this solution—which is almost the same as "nikah mu'atat" that has a precedent in Islam and has been endorsed by some Shiite jurists—and allowing those who wish to experience this path to at least make a simpler choice with more limited responsibility, with peace of mind, without the need for secrecy, within the framework of the law, and with the ability to officially follow up on the subsequent consequences of this method.

But the reality is that we are very incapable of making a decision on this matter. "Woe to us! Should we allow white marriage to become legal?"; this is probably the sentence that passes through the minds or is uttered by many of our officials and legislators when they think about white marriage. And of course, due to this very inability to find alternative legal solutions, white marriage or various types of relationships outside official marriage are rapidly spreading beneath the skin of society, and certainly many women in our society are harmed along these paths.

Now tell me, why does our society have no solutions and why does it not discover or invent new approaches to solve its own problems in this area? My answer is: because it is incapable; because it has not practiced dialogue on its serious issues; because in the realm of sexual matters, it has created such taboos and forbidden zones that it has been robbed of the power of dialogue in this domain. Indeed, is it not worth asking, "Why, in our society, which considers 'virginity' a fundamental value in marriage—and how many lives have been ruined because of it, and how many murders have been committed—is the necessary education about virginity not provided, and why, for instance, has no book, class, workshop, conference, film, academic meeting, or counseling center been established on this matter?" I believe that prohibitions and taboos are the principal obstacles to rationality in a society, and a society's inability to engage in dialogue allows these prohibitions and taboos to continue ruling powerfully for successive generations.

Now tell me, if society is incapable, why does the government not set about finding and introducing various legal solutions to resolve these predicaments? My answer is: because the government has been bogged down in the grip of the traditional jurisprudential and seminary system, mired in past centuries, and even after forty years, during which all educational systems and institutions have been in its hands, it has still not been able to create a discipline of "social jurisprudence" or "macro-jurisprudence" (akin to macroeconomics) in the university or the seminary to find jurisprudential solutions for resolving social predicaments of this kind and gradually achieve a system of thought in the field of "social jurisprudence" and "macro-management jurisprudence." Again, I see the root of this incapacity in the rulers' fear of "dialogue" about important issues. Our rulers are terrified of dialogue about our fundamental issues, and they have carried this terror with them for forty years, and for forty years they have kept us wandering.

Therefore, "incapacity for dialogue" as a national predicament is one of the main obstacles to our development; but when we enter the realm of sexual issues, it is no longer incapacity but rather resembles a kind of paralysis; and of course, this problem is not only in the media and the government, but the main issue is the inability of the family and then the school to create a calm and secure environment for dialogue about sexual matters.

The incapacity goes further, to the point that our families are even unable to teach children the names of sexual organs, and children must learn the names of these organs in the alley, at school, and in the obscenities that adults hurl at each other on the street. I do not know whether one can expect a society that readily utters the most vulgar obscenities on the street and where such vulgar obscenities are abundantly used in its business environments, yet is incapable of teaching its child the names of sexual organs within the family, to move toward an indigenous model for delineating its sexual system through a national dialogue? I fear that as soon as the dialogue begins, first sarcasm and then profanity will replace conversation.

We do not forget that the former president repeatedly said in conversations with foreign journalists that we do not have homosexuals in Iran. This statement itself exemplifies a kind of incapacity, where we do not even want to admit in thought that our society is a problem-ridden society and that our solution is still to cover up the issues. After all, is it possible that in a society where lying is widespread, bribery has become normalized, backbiting, malevolence, alcohol consumption, marital infidelity, and other moral vices are rampant and, in some cases, more prevalent than in other societies, one moral vice (homosexuality) would suddenly be zero? Let us not doubt that to the same extent that lying is more prevalent in our society than in others, other moral vices are also more widespread. And this in a society where the writings of its great literary figures are filled with love stories involving beardless youths, and where, for example, its great Saadi, in his facetiae, has numerous poems on sexual relations between men. There was a time when our solution regarding AIDS patients was also to cover up and deny the problem, and even now, its real statistics remain confidential. But let us move on.

Honestly, what percentage of our fathers and mothers possess the necessary skills for the sexual education of their children? And alas, this incapacity has spread to the managerial levels and government executives as well. And so it is that we dare not include a lesson, a book, or an educational session called “Sexual Skills” in our school curricula, so that our children might acquire the skills needed to cope with abnormal situations. Truly, why is the prevailing assumption among us, and even our elders, that “sexual skills education” means teaching children sexual promiscuity? Imagine if it were announced that firefighting classes must be held in all Iranian schools, and then we protested, “Oh, you want to teach our children how to set fires!”

Yes, those who obstructed sexual education for our children in schools will be held responsible for the children who are abducted, the children who, due to a lack of awareness about sexual matters, are incapable of protecting themselves, the children who are sexually abused, and the children who have been abused but hide it and therefore suffer further abuse.

It is time to free the next generation from incompetence in the sexual domain; and it is time to teach our children sexual self-protection; and is it possible to learn the skills related to sexual protection without talking about the issues surrounding it? As long as conversation about sexual matters remains taboo and forbidden and does not enter the home, the school, and the national broadcaster, there is no possibility of finding any solution for our present and future dilemmas in this area. Now that the government is preoccupied with its own affairs and its main concerns are focused on security issues, and it does not even have the power, energy, or opportunity to seriously address managing a great danger like the “water crisis,” and has therefore completely abandoned other important social problems to their own devices, it is the turn of families and civil institutions to roll up their sleeves, engage in dialogue about their social issues, and find solutions for them. Planning for the sexual education and skill-building of children under current conditions is beyond the capacity of official institutions and government bodies, especially the Ministry of Education.

Our society is one that is simultaneously undergoing transition in various cultural, economic, and political domains, and every transition leaves behind its own level of chaos, abnormality, or anomie. For this reason, in the sexual domain as well, society is entering a hysterical (emotionally-dramatic) transitional period that can be very harmful and costly for our children. So we must prepare and empower our children from now on to enter such a society. A few minutes are enough to abuse a child, but educating that child requires months of training, and repairing the psychological damage of abused children takes years. Now that our policymakers are terrified of addressing this issue and talking about it, we must start the conversation ourselves and help families and our children gain the necessary readiness to manage their own sexual domain. Therefore, to begin and to draw families’ attention to this important issue, my simple suggestion is to introduce the educational series “A Simple Suggestion” to every family you know that has children and adolescents under 15 years old. Also, recommend that every couple who will soon have a child, and every nursery school teacher and every elementary school teacher you know among your relatives and friends, watch this (free) series. And let school and kindergarten principals screen it for their educators and teachers. If only the Ministry of Education would recommend watching it for all elementary and preschool teachers. You can access all episodes of the educational series “A Simple Suggestion” through the link below:

https://www.aparat.com/pishnahad_sade

After watching this educational series during the Nowruz holidays, in a call I made to thank its director (Mr. Yaser Arab), I learned that, unfortunately, this series had no financial sponsor, and the IRIB and other cultural custodial institutions refused to provide financial support for it. Even after production, the IRIB refused to broadcast it. The director, of course, said that many managers privately commended me, but none were willing to offer financial support or institutional backing for its release through official media. And this, of course, is itself testimony to the incapacity of our policymakers and officials who, while believing that such a series is beneficial for educating our children, lack the courage to stand behind it, support it, and broadcast it on official media. Therefore, now that a young director has shown courage and diligence, has taken the camera into the hidden recesses of the unspoken secrets of Iranian culture, and has brought the issue of our inability as Iranians in the realm of sexual education into the light—especially since he did this without the support of any individual or institution and entirely with personal motivation and expense—he must be particularly commended. And so it was that I resolved to introduce this 21-episode educational series. It is clear that the narrative and approach presented in this series is, of course, one of the existing scientific approaches, and other experts and specialists in this field may recommend other approaches to the issue. But the very fact that a wide range of concealed, forbidden, and neglected issues have been raised in this series, brought to light, and have generated questions, is a major first step that paves the way for subsequent efforts.

Let us join hands so that the educational documentary series "A Simple Suggestion" reaches all families with children, all mothers and fathers who will soon have children, and all educators and teachers who work with children, and let us recommend that they watch it. If each of us ensures that we have caused one parent with a child, or one educator, or one teacher to see this series, we have achieved a "small success" which, when multiplied, has great national effects and can, like a domino, bring about intellectual and behavioral changes in Iranian families. God willing. .

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. A Simple Suggestion for Iranians Who Are Obsessed with Sexual Topics but Terrified of Talking About Them Mohsen Renani / 13 April 2018 .

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