Malaysia’s Weird Relationship With Sex: Sexually Repressed, Yet Sex-Obsessed
“dia tu gatal, kene kawin awal” “batuk batuk ni, kene buat cpr” “perempuan tu janda, mesti pandai main” “Kalau pakai macam tu, memang mengundang” “Kalau tak nak bagi, jangan marah kalau dia cari tempat lain.” List of double meaning jokes. I am sure there are hundreds more. Growing up in Malaysia, I grew familiar with these statements. They are everywhere. In conversations, in school, online. It is quite interesting to me because Malaysia is a country that is mostly religious and modest, yet sexual innuendo jokes are so normalised in our everyday life. We don't really talk about sex, but somehow we are always joking about it. In comparison to Western countries where you might hear someone casually ask “when did you lose your virginity?”, I think Malaysia has a very strange relationship with sex. We are supposedly very conservative about it. We don't want young people talking about it. We don't even like naming body parts. Vagina becomes “bunga”, penis becomes “burung”. We te...
