Let's Talk About Sex...

Baby… you know you want to. It’s a delicate subject, sure, but also incredibly fascinating. Comparing the sexual dynamics of an overly-religious, very repressed, over-populated country versus those of El Salvador should prove interesting. Just kidding. When it comes to sex, I’m glad I’m American. But I can see how both our sexual liberation and their sexual repression expose all the good things and the bad things that can be. I’ll try to keep this fairly restrained and not too graphic, but I should warn you now that this entry is not G-rated.

So let’s dive right in. Sex in El Salvador is full of ironies, not all of which I understand. In many ways it is more covert. People aren’t very open about their sexual conquests or experiences. You don’t see many people openly confessing whom they’ve slept with. So at first glimpse it seems more hidden. But it isn’t. Chambre (gossip) is infectious here. Somehow, everyone knows who is having sex with whom… secrets don’t last. So even if sex isn’t discussed in open circles, it is still discussed in private discourses. Thus an irony arises. People are too ashamed or embarrassed to talk openly with others about their sexual actions or desires; yet it’s all in vain because everyone talks about it anyway. It’s the white elephant effect: people feel there is something taboo or forbidden about sex, and yet they know it is prevalent and are drawn to talk about it anyway. And boy is it prevalent. Don’t let the repression fool you; the sexual voracity here is huge. It has to be with the birth rate here. People find their way to have sex early and often. A common event that follows suit to this irony: a young couple wants to have sex, but is too embarrassed to go to the clinic and ask for condoms for fear that the staff will tell and everyone will find out. A consequential pregnancy ensues… by which time everyone knows that they’ve started having sex in the first place. Yikes, when will they learn? There is a 13 year old girl this year (who looked to me like she’s 7) who got pregnant and left school. Her “novio” is this 18 year old schmuck who’s been seen spending time with many girls. Good riddance. I hope the best for them but am doubtful it will amount to much.

The spaces where sex takes place also exemplify the ongoing irony of how sex here is hidden… but not. Many homes have little to no division between public and private areas. A private master bedroom is a luxury here; many couples don’t much have the chance to put the kids to bed and then go crazy in their own room. I don’t really want to imagine it, but I do assume that there’s a fair amount of coitus in a shared room with the kids. So… while open conversations between parent and child about the birds and the bees aren’t particularly common, firsthand demonstrations in the hammock a few feet away probably are. Bleh! If the house isn’t available, the wide open outdoors offers a lovely alternative. Corn stalks and coffee trees provide adequate privacy and I guess set the mood to some eager young couples. If it’s raining? Well, a good old latrine should do the trick. I still have a hard time grasping this one. My tolerance of latrines certainly has grown after two years, but not nearly enough to have sex in one. I don’t know how one can stay aroused around such a horrific smell… but apparently they do. So again, the semi-private/semi-public irony rises. I guess a latrine and a hidden bend provide some privacy, but they certainly aren’t exclusive spaces. And in case you’re wondering, yes, I have accidently stumbled across some couples trying to have private time… or at least have heard some unpleasant noises while walking through our labyrinthine paths.

The reasons for having sex differ here as well. Not so much for guys… who seem to likewise extol the virtue of busting a nut and spreading their seed with as many partners as possible... Who would have thought? But for women… the want to have sex is affected by very different beliefs than our own. I honestly feel sorry for them, and thank my lucky stars that I live in a place where Sex and the City is celebrated. Religion certainly plays a part. For evangelical Christians, the sole purpose of a vagina is to serve as a receptacle for a penis in order to get pregnant and as a portal into the world when said pregnancy is complete. This means: no condoms, no tampons, no pap smears, and no masturbation (Christine O’Donnell would love it here). As you could understand, this cuts my work out for me… what with charlas about birth control, cervical cancer and less invasive forms of intercourse. But more than that… with these beliefs, women are fairly shortchanged, aren’t they? It seems there is little to no value of the female orgasm here; instead it’s considered a chance occurrence that just might happen on the way to baby making. Machismo fosters this conviction. Many men here believe it’s just great to receive oral sex, but to give it… HELL NO, that’s disgusting and degrading. Ungrateful bastards. So I get confused in comprehending why so many young girls jump into the sack early. I mean, sex, for them, really isn’t that rewarding. I think a great deal of them are pressured into it by guys, sensing that they’ll have security being a guy’s lover, and even more security if they get pregnant.

I’m sure there are women here who enjoy sex and are motivated by this desire to have it. But in all honesty, they are not very liberated sexually; indeed, they are oppressed. For example, another reason women don’t regularly get their pap smears, aside from the fact that it deviates from their vaginas’ objective, is that their partners don’t approve. Men apparently boast ownership to their women’s vaginas and don’t want anyone else, even if it’s a professional doctor, even if it’s a professional female doctor, meddling with their property. I think this deserves a WTF? Not having ownership over your own vagina? These women function as a tool to satiate their hombres’ sexual appetite, without much choice or enjoyment for themselves, and to pop out as many kids as they can along the way. I’ve done a lot of camps and other lessons with coming of age girls who seem pretty tepid toward sex, nervous for the fear that once they do it they’ll be subservient to their partner and his cravings, as if they have no choice in the matter. When rape is mentioned, their minds fill with visions of a horny drunkard attacking a solitary woman in the street. They don’t realize that most rape cases are committed by someone the victim knows, they don’t understand the concept of date rape, nor do they think that rape can happen by a boyfriend or husband. Honestly, it’s as if in having sex once with a guy they are signing away their bodies to be at their new lover’s disposal. That’s oppression in my book, and a damned shame.

Now, if I could be a man for a day and see the world through their eyes to try and gain some new perspective, I would. But, I can’t. So as an unabashedly biased woman, I know this next section about how men have sex here will be duly scathing. The rate of infidelity by men here is beyond compare. Actually I've read statistics that El Salvador has a higher rate than any other Central American country, which has a collectively high rate already. It’s so big that it’s shameless… people accept it as truth that men cheat, that they are supposed to cheat, and that to expect fidelity is just crazy. I’ve done several charlas in which I commend the benefits of mutual monogamy, but I usually end them with: But who are we kidding? Monogamy?!? Here?!? Hahahaha! Where a condom!!! Not that I’m mutual monogamy’s biggest defender. Personal opinions aside, what I find bothersome here is that the men are anticipated to cheat, while the women are expected to stay faithful. It’s the oldest double standard in the book and men here boast it about as often as Sarah Palin does to the phrase “small town principles.” It’s quantity, not quality here and every sexual conquest counts. In contrast to the vagina’s purpose, the penis is not applauded as the tool to impregnate; contrarily it is used to tally the number of partners a man can accrue. And it starts early. A girl’s virginity? Why it’s the most precious possession she has. A guy’s virginity? Well it’s the bane of his existence and proof of his weakness. So, if a young buck has reached a certain age and still hasn’t made full use of his loins, visiting a brothel to stage the blessed event is a common practice.

Of course I am making gigantic generalizations here. Not all men and women here conduct the kind of sexual behavior as I have written. But there’s enough of it about that stereotypes arise; and stereotypes don’t come out of thin air. It causes problems. For instance, certain men do not want to wear a condom because it makes them “less of a man”. Or, a man with a STD who wants to spread it to as many people as he can, because he certainly isn’t going down alone. Another volunteer here told me that in her community, an outbreak of Gonorrhea could be linked to one lothario who contracted it on a fun weekend in the city, and within a few weeks of coming back to his rural home, 18 others had caught it. Although it is more concealed from the naked eye, sex here happens often, with many partners, and in all sorts of forms.

Which brings me to my next topic: gay sex. Again, I’ll try to keep the terms here euphemistic and not graphic, but it’d be a shame to skip how Salvadorans approach homosexuality; I find it fascinating. In the rural setting especially, there is no open homosexuality, no “coming out” or having an open gay relationship. In urban spaces there certainly is more flexibility with this… in fact, many cities have open transvestites, which is completely out of the closet. But this doesn’t mean that gay sex doesn’t happen in all parts of the country. What’s ironic here is that men only consider it gay to receive, not to give. So, otherwise “straight” men (men who are married with children) regularly have homosexual sex but do not define it as such. Which, in a way, by not defining it as gay, it isn’t. I’m not sure the percentage of men who engage in this, but I bet it’s higher than what most people think.

It’s hard for me to talk about homosexuality here without feeling a bit culturally and morally presumptuous. I mean in a way, they have created a realm where gay sex can happen with little public stigmatization. But I can’t help but feel bad for homosexuals forced to put on a mask, forced to hide their inner desires and play pretend for the world. Not to mention, the gay volunteers who have come out back home, and are forced back in the closet here. Their task must be a hard one to bear. Once again in lockstep with the pseudo-covertness of sexuality here… many people suspect or know who is gay in the community, although openly discussing this does not happen.

Approaching sex here is a tricky task indeed. What I find, and this is emblematic of Salvadoran behavior on many fronts, is that in more personal settings people are remarkably open. I’ve been surprised at how frankly people talk about sex on an individual basis. But as soon as they’re in a public space, the pena seeps in and no one will talk about or admit to anything. I guess it’s something that they show up to the charlas in the first place, even if all they do is sit like vegetables. But warranting action afterwards, expecting people to actually start following some of the practices I advise, seems to be like wishful thinking.

I recently coordinated with a branch of Doctors Without Borders, who came through and gave a medical brigade. It was a big success in many ways. Tons of people showed up and received minor treatment for all sorts of ailments. The doctors were incredible, they were so open and flexible, and worked so efficiently with our unimpressive casa communal to set up different stations for various treatments.

Anywho, I specifically helped a group of female doctors who focus on women’s health. We quarantined any and all women, gave a separate charla for them in our warehouse space, and set up an improvised examination room for pap smears and breast exams using rope and blankets for curtains. The charla seemed to go pretty well… the women seemed receptive that cervical and breast cancer are serious, and that simple practices like the self exam could prevent a world of hurt. We described just exactly what the pap test is, attempting to absolve any fear that exists around it. I described how a pap smear takes about 5 minutes… and you only have to do it once a year. The Salvadoran nurses at our local clinic are very capable of doing the exam, though they rarely have any patients. A 5 minute sacrifice, once every year, that’s easy… right?!? Most of the women were open to this, and seemed to except in theory that doing your pap every year is good. But accepting this in practice is a whole different ballgame. I ended the charla with: Okay, so now we have many female doctors who have very kindly come all the way down here from New York to generously volunteer their time and expertise. So, guess what?!? Everyone is going to get their breast exam and pap!!! Sheesh… I might as well have burned the Bible in front of them for how scared they turned. Some women jumped on board and rushed to take advantage of the doctors, others tried to surreptitiously weasel out, and still others (ahem… Evangelicals) stood straight up and made for the exit. I literally had to guard the door and make sure that each woman got tested unless they could confirm that they had had their pap within the last year. I had to be a bit more calculating than I would have liked… but once the first few had done it and had broken the ice, the tension calmed and every woman got their test. There were women in their 60s, who had had heaps of kids, yet had never once had a pap smear or a breast exam. After they got it over with, all the women admitted that it wasn’t nearly as bad as they anticipated. No wonder… I mean, after having 8 kids, there can’t be enough traction left on that tire that a pap smear is going to bother it.

The point of this random and graphic tangent, is that while I was glad we were able to convince so many women to get checked this time, I am not so sure many will continue this practice on their own. I can’t be around and force them to get a pap every year, and medical brigades are a real rarity, so waiting for the next one to do anything is almost pointless. I had an AIDS workshop recently in which we all practiced putting condoms on cucumbers and bananas (a more than generous estimate for Salvadoran men)… and people loved it. We gifted almost 1,000 condoms to the community. BUT… will they actually use them???? That is the question.

Perhaps I’ve been able to change some minds, and I suppose that is something. There have in fact been some people who have come to me for condoms. And, for some guys with whom I have a great degree of confianza, I’ve opened their minds to think more selflessly about sex… convincing them that the whole experience is probably a lot better if each partner knows that the other is likewise enjoying it (subtext: RETURN THE FAVOR, ASSHOLES!). But until I can get a nationwide charla, with guest speakers: Hugh Hefner, Dr. Ruth, Bill Maher, Dr. Drew, Jenna Jameson, and musical guest Salt n Pepa… I think a sexual revolution in El Salvador will be years in the making.