La décision des autorités indiennes de bannir Savita Bhabi, une bande dessinée en ligne qui met en scène la promiscuité d’une ménagère à l’appétit sexuel insatiable, a été reçue avec des critiques de la presse. Maryam Omidi tente de peser les tenants et les aboutissants de cette décision.
Exposition des faits
En 2009, les autorités indiennes ont décidé de bannir Savita Bhabi, une bande dessinée en ligne qui met en scène la promiscuité d’une ménagère à l’appétit sexuel insatiable. La bande dessinée, qui raconte les aventures sexuelles de Savita Patel d’une façon humoristique attirait plus de 60 millions d’usagers par mois, mais était interdite par les lois indiennes contre la pornographie.
L’interdiction a été accueillie par de vives critiques de la part des médias. Certains journaux ont publié des titres tels que «Ne laissez pas Savita mourir.» Un des créateurs de la bande dessinée, Puneet Agarwal, a évoqué qu’une «des raisons de la création de SB était de dire que les femmes indiennes ont également des désirs sexuels. L’Inde est un pays qui demeure sexuellement réprimé et je pense que celles qui viendront briser les chaînes seront d’abord les femmes d’Inde.»
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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