Indonesian Girls
Let’s call her Amy. Amy is a working girl closing in into her 30s. Amy have had boyfriends yet she never had sex. She told people that it was due to her Christian belief. It’s easy enough to believe, she seemed pious. She is always calm and polite. She never wears something revealing nor tight. She is an average girl, with an average height and weight. She is not drop-dead gorgeous, but she is kind and nice to look at. Amy has a colleague named Becky. She is considerably voluptuous yet shorter than average. She grew up in a Muslim society.
Amy and Becky grew up in the considerably conservative communal society, albeit different ones yet shared many similarities.
Amy told Becky that her virginity is something she is getting tired of justifying to people who asked. She thought, “why is my choice of not having sex needs to be questioned all the time?”
Becky asked her, “of course it is none of everyone else’s business, but since you have shared some of these stories of your ex, do you mind me asking if there has been any sexual trauma that you have had?”
Amy : Well, it is not trauma. But when I was in second grade, boys were telling me that they like me and they wanted to see me naked.
Becky : WHAT THE FUCK? ON SECOND GRADE? YOU WERE WHAT, 7 OR 8, YEARS OLD?
Amy : Yeah. All through out growing up, people at school have been expressing how they like my body and girls said they would like to have my body. They are staring at my boobs or just even staring up and down. I hated it.
Becky : I didn’t think it was trauma either. But when I was in middle school a strange man groped my boob hard that it hurt as he passed while laughing. I felt so mad and so violated. I still remember. A decade later, until now, I still couldn’t let my husband touch my boobs without him having to approach my boobs like coming across a wild beast and not trying to spook it while maintaining eye contact.
Amy : I sometimes still froze when my boyfriend hugged me. He knew of my issue.
Becky : My therapist said that our brain noticed the sense of fear and danger and so it reacted according to the default settings. The amigdala doesn’t have logic, it doesn’t recognize the person who does it, it recognizes what it does to your body. Period.
Amy : That’s why I never wear anything revealing. I hate their eyes on me.
Becky : I get it. I hated it too. A senior mentor of the same faith told me that we shouldn’t worry about how men look at us but instead we should worry about how we entice men. So I decided to hide my body so they don’t stare at it by wearing a hijab.”
Becky : Well honestly, when I see a group of men in my vicinity, I feel uneasy. I don’t know why. By the way, I think what you experienced is trauma . And maybe you should see someone about this if this hinders from having an intimate relationship.
Amy : Maybe. You know my family thinks I am ugly because I have darker skin. They think I should do something more to my face.
Becky : Ah, they think like you should compensate for you ugliness?”
Amy : It doesn’t matter if I am doing well in school. What matters if there is anyone interested in me romantically for marriage prospects.
Becky : Same. My Mom said that maybe no one wants to be my husband because I can’t cook, I don’t iron clothes and clean. She was also worried how I will please my mother-in-law because I don’t wake up early in the morning.
Amy : They didn’t think that my parents should put so much money on my education.
Becky : They put so much worth on attractiveness and I was confused how to get a boyfriend. I was friends with a lot of guys yet they saw me as one of the guys. They consider someone a girl when they are sexually attracted to them. I was confused. Wait, aren’t I supposed to NOT entice men? Yet in order to be who society wants, that is to be married, I needed to radiate some amount of sexuality? How? I have been hiding it for years. That is such a contradiction.”
The truth is, Amy thought that actually, even though she got married she’d still be terrified of having sex. She knows that her friend Becky couldn’t even look directly at the penis the first times she is with her husband. She thinks her fear is not that big of a deal and maybe even a quite common issue. We were told to be scared of sex, if it is even being said. When Becky was young she hated her ass because other kids mocked it because it was protruding.
Becky’s Mom kept saying, “don’t worry, you’ll love it when you are married.”
Becky, “why?”
Becky’s Mom, “you’ll know it later when you are married.”
Becky, “what happened when you’re married?”
And Becky’s Mom never answered.
It is weird that the women in our society are expected to be chaste, pure, innocent. Growing up we were told to avoid the men and relations with them. But then, suddenly on the wedding night, we needed to flip 180 degrees to please our husbands. When you are told to avoid and fear something for MORE THAN 20 YEARS and suddenly one day everybody told you to love it, that’s quite impossible. The very next day, somehow everyone thinks it’s OK to ask how was the sex explicitly or implicitly.
This is a true story that happened recently, in 2021. I am sure it resonated with many women. So, no, insecurities is not just one person’s problem not being able to be confident. It is society’s problem. Society made Amy have intimacy issues, more than a decade of being sexualized and objectified did that to her when she didn’t even know what sex is and who she is.
No, Amy and Becky was never sexually assaulted. Yet they are afraid of men. Why is that? Because maybe we say that when a woman get raped, it is her fault for wearing revealing clothes. Because maybe we expect these kinds of behavior from men. This is also telling women that men is n strange men are bad menIt shouldn’t be a surprise.
But who is society? Me, you, her, him. We are accomplices, at least silent ones. The kind that doesn’t at least question openly but remain in silence. Yes, you might not be the one that pointed the finger at that someone but you most likely at some point, be the one that are laughing about it on the side or from the outside.
I know I have been a party of a group that made fun of a classmate with an unusual color spots on her face. I didn’t say anything but I sure as hell didn’t comfort her and told her that, “no, that’s not true, you are not ugly.”
I was in the group that commented on some guy’s unironed shirt by saying, “His wife is not doing a good job. How come she let’s her husband with an unironed shirt.” I forgot what I did but I remembered that I didn’t defy them. I am ashamed to say that I might let out some chuckles.
When people, I mean mostly my family, call me weird, disgusting, fat and short, no one said that I wasn’t. I was wounded by my family but when I came out to the world, there was not enough antidote, it exacerbated the wound instead. No one ever said I was beautiful when I grew up. I started hearing it when I was 25 when I moved to another country. Since then I started to get used to the idea of maybe I can be beautiful but it is still a long way to go. I still don’t know what to do when my husband tells me I am beautiful.
Imagine people who has never gotten a chance to get out of that toxic society or even interacted with someone that doesn’t have that toxic mindset. So you need to tell more nice things about your friends and family to their faces because believe me, I know how much they need to hear it.
How can one believe of one’s goodness if all they ever heard in their life is the badness in them? It is time to rethink about our way of thinking and behavior.
We are a nation of insecure people who grew up feeling never good enough due to never ending criticism and compliment deficit. We ended up being people who enjoy other people’s downfalls. Other people’s downfalls makes us feel better because at least we can say, “oh thank God, at least we are not like them. We are better than them.” That’s why we enjoy gossiping so much. That’s why we like to be in other people’s business so much. Some, even most, insecure people can’t be happy and satisfied on their own, they need someone else’s dirt. Just like bullies.
