Entering from the back: Safe or Unsafe ?

An estimated 90% of men who have sex with men and as many as 5% to 10% of sexually active women engage in sodomy or receptive anal intercourse.

Often referred to simply as anal sex, anal intercourse is sexual activity that involves inserting the penis into the anus.

Is Anal Sex Safe?

Anal sex has a number of health risks. Anal intercourse is the riskiest form of sexual activity for several reasons, including the following:

The anus lacks the natural lubrication the vagina has.

Penetration can tear the tissue inside the anus, allowing bacteria and viruses to enter the bloodstream. This can result in the spread of sexually transmitted infections including HIV. Studies have suggested that anal exposure to HIV poses 30 times more risk for the receptive partner than vaginal exposure. Exposure to the human papillomavirus (HPV) may also lead to the development of anal warts and anal cancer.

The tissue inside the anus is not as well protected as the skin outside the anus
Our external tissue has layers of dead cells that serve as a protective barrier against infection. The tissue inside the anus does not have this natural protection, which leaves it vulnerable to tearing and the spread of infection.

The anus was designed to hold in feces.
The anus is surrounded with a ring-like muscle, called the anal sphincter, which tightens after we defecate. When the muscle is tight, anal penetration can be painful and difficult. Repetitive anal sex may lead to weakening of the anal sphincter, making it difficult to hold in feces until you can get to the toilet.

The anus is full of bacteria.
Even if both partners do not have a sexually transmitted infection or disease, bacteria normally in the anus can potentially infect the giving partner. Practicing vaginal sex after anal sex can also lead to vaginal and urinary tract infections.

Anal sex can carry other risks as well. Oral contact with the anus can put both partners at risk for hepatitis, herpes, HPV, and other infections. For heterosexual couples, pregnancy can occur if semen is deposited near the opening to the vagina.

Even though serious injury from anal sex is not common, it can occur. Bleeding after anal sex could be due to a hemorrhoids or tear, or something more serious such as a perforation (hole) in the colon. This is a dangerous problem that requires immediate medical attention. Treatment involves a hospital stay, surgery, and antibiotics to prevent infection.

People enjoy it without knowing the consequences. Sometimes even ignorant kids become a victim to sodomy. It can damage the child’s private parts permanently apart from causing mental imbalance. It can lead to severe bleeding as well.

Everything that the gay or non gay couples enjoy in their bedroom can’t be left up to them in the name of privacy. Like watching porn and voyeurism are perversions even though the people involved apparently may not be physically or mentally harming anyone else. Practicing anal sex is also perversion. It might give pleasure to some or painful pleasure to others but on the long run, it is unhealthy as well as unhygienic.

Putting a check on such unnatural practice is necessary not only from social point of view, also from health point! It is important to discourage people from practicing anal sex if we want to control the spread of deadly AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases.

By: Dr. Florentina Monsoom Lyndon

Arrest of Devyani Khobragade: Few Critical Questions

Devyani Khobragade has done the impossible. She has enabled Rahul Gandhi and Narendra Modi to find common ground. The Indian deputy-consul general’s arrest in New York has caused a major diplomatic row. Modi tweeted that he had “refused to meet the visiting US delegation in solidarity with our nation, protesting ill-treatment meted to our lady diplomat.” Rahul Gandhi, Sushilkumar Shinde and Lok Sabha speaker Meira Kumar have also snubbed the delegation as a mark of protest. US Ambassador Nancy Powell had already been summoned to South Block. External Affairs minister Salman Khurshid has called it an “insult.”
India has also stopped all import clearances for US embassy including food and liquor. Yashwant Sinha has suggested that after the Supreme Court verdict, India could now arrest same-sex partners of American diplomatic officials.”‘Companions’ means that they are of the same sex. Now, after the Supreme Court ruling, it is completely illegal in our country. Just as paying less wages was illegal in the US. So, why doesn’t the government of India go ahead and arrest all of them?” said Sinha.

The story has quickly become one about national pride. How could India’s consular official be strip-searched and made to stand with common criminals and drug addicts by the police? While the treatment meted out to Ms Khobragade is being perceived as a major insult to India, we seem less concerned with the treatment meted out to her maid, the reason why she was arrested in the first place.
There are obviously questions about whether the correct diplomatic protocols were followed or what the difference is between diplomatic immunity and consular immunity. But that’s a process debate. There’s a more fundamental question here separate from the rule book of consular relations.
It is simply this.
Do Indians have a domestic help problem? And why do we not seem to get it no matter how many times we trip up? In 2012 Neena Malhotra, India’s cultural and press counselor in New York was ordered to pay out nearly $1.5 million for forcing an underaged Indian girl to work with little to no pay in their plush 43rd Street Manhattan apartment. She had been told she would be raped, beaten and sent to India as “cargo” if she left the home without their permission.
In 2011 Prabhu Dayal, the consul general in New York was accused of treating his domestic help as a “slave”. Santosh Bhardwaj, the maid in question, said in her lawsuit that she was forced to work long hours for $300 a month, her passport was confiscated and she had to sleep in a storage closet. She also alleged sexual overtures which Dayal vehemently denied.

Sangeeta Richard

Ms Khobragade is accused of visa fraud and exploiting her babysitter and housekeeper. According to the 11-page criminal complaint in her A-3 visa application for her domestic help, the domestic help alleged she worked far more than 40 hours a week and was paid less than $9.75 per hour as had been agreed to in a contract she had signed with Ms. Khobragade for her visa application. Ms Khobragade reportedly got her help to agree to being paid no more than Rs30,000 which works out to about $3.31 per hour. “Foreign nationals brought to the United States to serve as domestic workers are entitled to the same protections against exploitation as those afforded to United States citizens,” said Preet Bharara, the US attorney for the Southern District of New York. His office alleges Ms Khobragade tried to circumvent US protections for workers by submitting false documents and information while applying for a visa for “a babysitter and housekeeper” she brought from India.

Sure, this is not a case as egregious as the ones that erupted in New Delhi recently where an air hostess was accused of locking up her 12-year-old maid when she left the country or the 15-year-old being tortured by her female employer in a posh Vasant Kunj apartment in South Delhi. Nor is anyone accusing her of beating the maid with broom, forcing her to eat hot chillies and take freezing showers as perfume milllionaires Mahender and Varsha Sabhnani were convicted of.

During the Dayal case, his lawyer Ravi Batra alleged that the housekeeper was just trying to extort the couple. “This fraudster of a woman, seeing dollar signs, has hit on a ‘get rich quick’ scheme after a year and a half of illegally staying and working in New York: fraudulent defamation of a highly respected and honored member of the diplomatic corps,” Batra wrote. That is for courts to judge.
But India is a signatory to the Domestic Workers Convention. Should it not be concerned that its diplomatic officials, the ones who represent India abroad, embarrassingly run a foul of labour laws? And no, whether diplomats from elsewhere do the same or worse isn’t a good counter argument. Khobragade’s father, Uttam, a retired IAS officer has raised the point that it is numerically impossible for her to pay her nanny $4500 a month as required by US law when she herself is only paid $4120 a month. But that unfortunately for Ms Khobragade is India’s problem, not the United States, that it does not pay its consular officials enough to hire a live-in nanny. Anyway it’s not like there aren’t plenty of mid-career professionals in the US who work and clean their toilets and make dinner for their children on their own precisely because they cannot afford cooks and nannies. We cannot have the old world convenience of domestic help in the United States and not be prepared for the inconvenience of the price tag it comes with. We might come from a country where labour is cheap and none raises an eyebrow that millions of Indians come to our homes everyday to cook and clean, seven days a week, 365 days a year and have their pay docked when they fall sick and don’t make it to work. But that does not our cultural attitude towards domestic help will not cause a stink outside our borders.
Just because our diplomats’ nannies live in Manhattan and not a chawl in Mumbai does not mean that they should be grateful and not gripe about not being paid according to US Labour laws. The Indian government is perfectly justified in arguing whether or not the US went overboard when it handcuffed Ms Khobragade. It should definitely make sure that proper process was followed as befits a consular staff member. As consular staff member representing India abroad, Ms Khobragade enjoys many rights. The right to a domestic help at cut-rate wages however is not one of them.

By: Debashis
General Secretary, Rationalists’ and Humanists’ Forum of India