Selling sex toys maybe illegal, buyers don’t care
On the day she turned 40, Asha Saxena, an HR trainer and a single mother who confesses to being "sexless" for more than a decade, decided to break the "men-o-pause", by investing in a vibrator. Something that she’d read about in magazines like Cosmopolitan and seen in her favorite soap, Sex in the City.
"Initially I was hesitant to ask my colleagues to accompany me to Pallika Bazaar. Finally when I opened up to one, I found her response encouraging. She had been using one gifted by her husband, bought in Bangkok. Sometimes, she whispered, he asked her to touch herself, using it. On other occasions, he inserted it in her, masturbating in her presence. They also played sex games. And used edible body paint to stir up the marital fire," said Asha, whose trip to the air-conditioned, underground market in New Delhi proved less than memorable.
"From fur-lined handcuffs, leopard-print hunters and edible underwear, shop attendants said they sold ten to 15 sex dolls and more than a dozen vibrators every month. The one I picked up was initially priced at Rs 3,500, but I got it for Rs 750 after a hard bargain... The stares were hard to forget. The salesman even suggested that I must invest in breast-enhancing products, priced between Rs 200 to Rs 300, pointing to my chiffon kurti. Sniggering, one of them pointedly asked me if my "pati" needed any lubricants. With a wink, he told me I must try some sexy gum – the latest aphrodisiacal high... I guess it’s similar to a woman buying a condom or sanitary napkins over the counter, or asking for a vaginal intimate wash in a departmental store..."
It’s always embarrassing to broach sex, outside its narrow "normal" boundaries. Where pleasure needs constant permission and is always viewed as moral perversion, rather than a basic human need. If men can watch porn and masturbate, what’s wrong in a woman doing the same, or fantasising? In wanting to be handcuffed and pleasured, the way she wants it… or using a toy, alone…
Put off by her sex toy shopping experience at Pallika, Asha Saxena has since resorted to various online sites to fulfil her kinks. The e-commerce boom in India has also paved the way for a veritable jump in the sex toys’ market that’s currently estimated at Rs 1,200 crore to Rs 1,500 crore, expected to scale Rs 2,450 crore by 2016. It could even touch a high of Rs 8,700 crore by 2020, predict industry watchers.
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The trend that was initially aroused by e-tailers who specialised in adult toys, saw key players like Amazon and Flipkart penetrate the same space. Today, sites like ThatsPersonal, ImBesharam (endorsed by Sunny Leone) and Oh My Secrets, that solely specialise in erotic, adult products, are seeing a 600 per cent growth in terms of visitors and an annual sales jump of 400 per cent.
So, does this mean we are finally getting over our hush-hush prudishness? All set to broaden the limits of our sexual experiences? To push the play button and treat sex as more than a child producing mechanism that must come with societal sanction of what is right? To infuse in the bedroom, variety, vigor, vitality? To want a longer, stiffer erection? To indulge in role play? To talk dirty. To touch freely. To tease lustfully.
Are we on the tip of a silent sexual revolution that goes on under the sheets, everyday? A back to the roots passage resurrecting some of our primordial and ancient sexual forwardness, a cultural milieu that is more than touristy Khajuraho and Konark temple sculptures, running deeper than the Kamasutra, representing equal rights of pleasure for men and women, homosexuals and heterosexuals, alike. That celebrated transgenders as being a state, and not some birth defect – a shallow sign for shame and sin. That is free and fearless – sans the noisy interference of holier than thou priests, sexually sedate in-laws who ban a menstruating woman from entering both the temple and kitchen, nosy neighbours and precautious teenaged children who still sleep between their parents – the silhouette of a sexually oppressed race. That rapes. That letches in crowded marketplaces. That gropes in buses, on the Metro, schools, freeways. That goes scot free in horrific cases of marital rapes that mostly go unreported. That has the license to disrespect a woman. Lacking the responsibility to satisfy her longings?
Intimacy is a cuss word. Here. A taboo. A taunt. A totem.
Recently, Snapdeal and Chennai-based Ohmysecret.com, were dragged to court by a senior lawyer, Suhaas Joshi for selling sex toys and accessories. A metropolitan magistrate at Delhi’s Tis Hazari court has directed the Delhi Police to investigate the matter and submit a report by March. The complaint says that the e-commerce marketplace is abetting gay sex and exhibiting obscene products by listing lubricants and massagers/vibrators. The report indicating that the complainant’s intent was to "test the limits of India’s anti-homosexuality law (Article 377) that criminalises any intercourse against the order of nature. He feels there’s no clarity on whether products that facilitate such activity are legal.
"I think he’s made a valid point. I mean if Section 377 talks about homosexuality being criminalised, then how come sex toys or an anal lubricant is being legally imported and sold in the country. I think it would be good to have some clarity on this subject, especially since most of the Indian laws that regulate this domain are outdated and archaic," said Samir Saraiya, CEO, ThatsPersonal.
Section 292 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) mentions that there are no legal concerns on the actual sale of sex toys, apparels and ancillary sexual products. However, the concern applies only in the manner in which these sex toys/apparels and related products are displayed and exhibited for sale in India. Under Indian law, "obscenity" is an offence and the police can interpret this clause in as many ways. For example, displaying or openly advertising any of these products for sale via vulgar pictures or graphics could land retailers in serious trouble. Although neither the IPC nor the Information Technology Act, 2000 (IT Act) clearly define what "obscenity" is, Section 292 of the IPC and Section 67 of the IT Act (which corresponds to Section 292 of the IPC) relate "obscenity" to signify, “anything, which is lascivious or appeals to the prurient interest, or if its effect is to deprave and corrupt persons”.
Ironic as Bollywood openly endorses crass item songs that are blatantly sexist and stereotype the fairer sex as purely flesh and fodder for men. Where popular soap operas flourish in showing in-laws torturing their bahus, suffocating them in a plastic bags, immersing their fingers in boiling ghee, bringing in another woman to humiliate her, as well as making fun of women on shows such as Comedy Nights With Kapil – Indian television’s most successful comedy programme – that mocks them for being fat, buck-toothed, hairy, old, helpless. Not to mention transgenders and men dressed as women, dowry deaths....
With e-commerce cashing in on our sexual purdah, Saraiya, who used to be head of business development, Microsoft Singapore, says, "Five to ten per cent of global searches for sexual wellness products originates in India. But Indians aren’t comfortable discussing or purchasing sensual products openly. Partly because of our Indian upbringing that is queasy when it comes to sex and partly due to rigid societal inhibitions. I felt that sexual wellness would be a great category to start our e-commerce site with and innovated on the e-delivery model to provide our customers the ability to control the last-mile logistics."
And, while the pompous moral brigade might be tightening their buckles as we speak; Censor Board grapples with the release of international erotic film Fifty Shades of Grey, in India Khap Panchayats continue to revel in honour killings, and kissing freely is punished. Here, in the virtual space, at least, there is no policing of pleasure.
"I’ve just ordered a spanking paddle in soft, padded satin and faux leather along with metal handcuffs that are engraved with the logo, 'You. Are. Mine'. I can’t wait to submit to my very own Christian Grey. I mean after we watch our pirated DVD, I want to get in touch with my own submissiveness. Last year, it was the nurse uniform, for my partner. That’s the best part. You can be anything you want. Here," signs off 35-year-old Meera Verma (name changed on request).
Meera is bisexual.