The Indian authorities’ decision to ban Savita Bhabhi, an online comic strip featuring a promiscuous housewife with an insatiable appetite for sex, was met with a criticism from the press. Maryam Omidi weighs up whether it was the right decision.
The case
In 2009, the Indian authorities blocked access to Savita Bhabhi, an online comic strip featuring a promiscuous housewife with an insatiable appetite for sex. The cartoon, which chronicles the sexual adventures of Savita Patel in a jocular fashion, attracted a following of more than 60 million users a month, but was banned under India’s anti-pornography laws.
The ban was met with fierce media criticism, with newspapers displaying headlines such as “Don’t let Savita die”. One of the creators of the cartoon, Puneet Agarwal, said: “One of the reasons for creating SB was to also portray that Indian women have sexual desires too. India is a country, which is still sexually repressed and I feel that for it to break the shackles, it is the women of India who are going to come out first.”
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as a woman comic artist, I am saddened that this kind of pornographic comics would be censored, sharing the same fate as live pornography. I do believe that it is the freedom of the artists to express themselves, and the problems and changes in society. I just looked up some of the comics pages and hope those pages represent well the comic as a whole and that the comments I am doing are not misplaced. We see a woman free with her body, who likes sex and knows how to use her body to get what she wants. But I also saw that the majority of the sexual scenes are mainly giving pleasure to man.
What I conclude about it?
In a sense it is a liberalization of the woman and her body. She controls it, enjoys it and in a way uses men to satisfy her desires.
In an other way it traps her in the circle of having to pleasure man in any way, and that this is the way she will be able to go through life, get the social stands and works she wants and needs. She is trapped in a vicious circle that has been long set in our societies, that women should be pleasured in pleasuring men, and not by receiving direct pleasure themselves. Although I am commenting this particular case, this is valid for any pornography as the greater public is male and products serve consumers demand.
For it to be censored? Well, I do not think it should. It opens our minds to other facets of women, as the fact that women can like sex without being automatically treated as a prostitute or underdog. Even though it is true that her pleasure passes through men first which is one of the bases of pornography, I do not think it should be censored at all or at least in the same way. In this case there are no live women usually forced into prostitution to produce this content. Here no one is hurt, except perhaps the men who read this comic and will now have to turn to some other, perhaps worse, “product” to alleviate their sexual desires and fantasies.
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I’m a firm believer in the liberation of sexualities. I also believe that all sorts should be represented in the media, as long as no one was harmed and children weren’t exploited.
Especially as this added something more than just pornographic images, I think it’s a shame that it was censored