Indian Men Have Less Sex Than Other Men: Could Violence Against Women Be To Blame?
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The inherent romanticism that lies in Indian culture might not translate to sexual desire when it comes to Indian men. According to an annual global health survey by Men’s Health magazine, Indian men have sex less than once per week and an average of three sexual partners in their lifetime.
Some believe that the strict culture in which Indian men and women are raised leads to a suppressed sexual appetite and desire. Others believe that it might be a lack of privacy and the fact that families all live together, thus causing the low rate of sex.
“Many Indians do not have enough privacy to have sex as often as they might want to because the live in noisy 'joint family' homes with their parents and adult siblings,” said Bobby Varkey, managing editor of Men's Health, to the Telegraph. “The taboo against sex outside marriage may also explain the finding,"
Varkey also notes that there is also a link between the lack of sexual activity and the nation’s chronic problems with rape and violence against women. In the past year, countless cases of rape in India have been brought to light. Last year, there were over 24,000 reports of rapes, according to the Indian government’s official records; this, of course, does not account for the thousands of unreported cases.
Thirty countries were included in the study, with over 50,000 participants.
“Unlike so many other sex surveys, our poll is not information-heavy, and neither is it just about charting changing trends,” said Jamal Shaikh, editorial director of Men’s Health India. “We have tried to examine how men from different parts of the world are better than others in certain aspects of sex and relationships, and then tell you how to learn and improve.”
Indian women, on the other hand, are more sexually open than their male counterparts. The survey also found that because of lack of privacy at home, Indian women were six times more likely to have sex in the back of a taxi than American women.
In a 2011 survery, 15 percent of men between ages 18 and 59 were found to have a low sex drive, according to The Times of India.
Despite this information, Dr. Ranjana Kumari of the Centre for Social Research believes that generalizing Indian culture as sexually repressed and frustrated would be misleading. “Ninety five percent of Indians are in arranged marriages and 50 percent of them are hitched by the age of 18,” Kumari said. "Sexual access is very much there for men."