A decisão das autoridades indianas de proibir Savita Bhabhi, uma tira de quadrinhos on-line com uma dona de casa promíscua com um apetite insaciável por sexo, foi recebida com críticas na imprensa. Maryam Omidi avalia se a decisão foi correta.
O caso
Em 2009, autoridades indianas bloquearam o acesso ao website de histórias em quadrinhos Savita Bhabhi, que conta de forma humoristicamente as aventuras de uma dona de casa promíscua (Savita Patel) que tem um apetite sexual insaciável. O website achegou a atrair mais de 60 milhões de usuários por mês, mas foi banido sob a alegação de violar as leis anti-pornografia da Índia.
O bloqueio foi criticado por vários meios de comunicação, com jornais publicando manchetes como “Não deixe Savita morrer”. Punnet Agarwal, um dos criadores de Savita Patel, afirmou que “uma das razões para criar a personagem foi para mostrar que a mulher indiana também tem desejos sexuais também. A Índia é um país em que a repressão sexual é muito forte, e eu acho que a liberação vai vir primeiro através das mulheres.”
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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