đ Explaining the body out of control
What do stories about sex with spirits say about the body?
Hi friends! Iâm Jeannette and this is the 10th issue of The Sex Beat, a bimonthly newsletter in which I document my research on sex. If youâre getting this in your inbox, you probably signed up on the website. If youâve changed your mind about getting these emails, itâs also super easy to unsubscribe.Â
Pix credit: Unsplash, Priscilla Du Preez
I've been dealing with chronic stomach issues that flared up to the point of uncontrollability in June (which is why I havenât been writing this newsletter). Eventually a doctor recommended I try this specific diet thatâs so restrictive â no garlic, no onions, am I even still Asian? lol â that I experienced visible weight loss after two weeks on it.
Thus far, Iâve been keeping it somewhat under control by 1) popping pills twice a day and 2) mostly eating Chinese soups (made with bone broth, quite delicious).
But what I began to think about as I endured this and continued working on my thesis is how one's own body is often a traitor. We have less control than we think over how it functions or what it does. And we very often cannot explain its quirks, deficiencies or excesses.Â
Death of a hypersexual man
The third chapter of my thesis examines articles featuring sexual relationships between humans and jinn. Some of these stories are told as âtrue confessionsâ on blogs or as feature articles in Malay literary magazines.Â
Other stories â like the ones I found on erotic / religious blogs â seem to be fictional and designed to be used as pornography / for religious teaching. But even then, the pleasure and horror are so intertwined that I canât even tell what the story is trying to achieve.Â
For example, in one story I came across, a man who has a reputation of flirting with every woman he encounters is sitting in a paddy field one night and since this is the tropics, keeps getting bitten by mosquitos.Â
He then says to the mosquito, âIf you want to drink my blood, give me a bidadari (could mean angel or fairy, but also used to refer to a beautiful woman). That night, a woman with otherworldly beauty knocks on the door of his hut. He eventually has sex with her.
The story makes sure to mention that she is a virgin and also that this man only manages to âlast 10 minutesâ (so I guess a pleasurable experience for him but maybe not her).Â
After she has disappeared, he goes to pee in the river. But the moment his urine hits the water, his penis begins to grow and grow and grow, snaking through the whole field. In the morning when his wife arrives at the orchard, she sees this âweird snakeâ so she chops it up.Â
The manâs penis only stops growing after he confesses to cheating on his wife but even so, itâs too late. The wife is crying, but he dies in her arms.
Can there be a more literal example of an uncontrollable body? And is this story for entertainment? As a moralistic tale? Or what?Â
Whatâs also interesting is that where this may be fiction, there are other stories in which people truly experience these hauntings. And I wonder if in these cases, the supernatural is also a way to explain the body out of control.Â
Jouissance of the Jinn
In Stefania Pandolfoâs Knot of the Soul, an ethnographic study of madness and other mental maladies in Morocco, Pandolfo tells the story of a woman named Hayyat who seeks healing from the Imam (Muslim religious leader) that he is shadowing.Â
The woman says that she feels ants in her hands and feet, a heavy weight on her stomach, and an inability to breathe. She experiences acute pain in her neck and shoulders, as well as hears voices, voices so physical that she could actually feel the voice âbecoming one with herâ (p. 274).Â
She also dreams frequently and in these dreams, she eats a lot â âcroissants and all sorts of sweetsâ. When she wakes up, she doesnât feel hungry and can even go without food for five days. Besides the eating, she also sees a particular young woman in these dreams every night. And every night she has sex with her. Hayyat tells the Imam that in her dreams she enjoys the sex.Â
In real life, although she is married to a man and has two children, she and her husband sleep in separate rooms and in fact, have never shared a room. Even when she is awake, she is not sure if she is a woman or a man.
The Imam tells her that she is possessed by a jinn and that the jinn possessing her is a man. Whether jinn or not, itâs obvious from the telling that whatever Hayyat was experiencing was causing her physical pain. Pandolfo writes:Â
For the Imam it was clear that what gave her pleasure was also what caused her torment, the violence she felt in herself and sometimes spilled out with and towards others, the pain, the choking and suffocation, and the desire to do away with her life were aspects of the same condition (p. 277-278).
In this case, although Hayyat feels pleasure, it does not seem to be what she wants. And she is unable to control these desires, which although may seem emotional, also manifest as physical symptoms in her body.
Verbalising the mystery
After I got a treatment plan from the doctor for my stomach issues, I began to feel like I had a semblance of control again. It was comforting to know that there was a reason my body was misbehaving.Â
And so I wonder if these stories of the supernatural are a way to provide that reasoning, without taking away the mysteriousness of the body. Because if weâre totally honest, the body is mysterious. Thereâs no one-size-fit-all medical solution that works 100% of the time for 100% of people.Â
Yes, Iâm a Science undergraduate with a deep love for prescription medications, but I can also appreciate the mystical (as long as it doesnât cause too much lasting harm like those mentioned in r/QAnonCasualties.)Â
And the uncontrollable body is not always a medical issue. Sometimes it could be a case of desiring the âwrongâ person or getting drunk (surely thereâs a reason theyâre called spirits).Â
References:Â
Pandolfo, S. (2018). The Jouissance of the Jinn. In Knot of the Soul: Madness, Psychoanalysis, Islam (pp. 272â279). Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.
On Pornography:
I really enjoyed reading this interview with Amia Srinivasan, in which she talks about her collection of essays The Right to Sex. She talks about how there is a need for ethical critique of pornography, especially because it is âa machine for reproducing ideologyâ. Although itâs a genre that lives mostly in the shadows (nobody will admit to watching it), porn is so ubiquitous that of course, itâs going to have an influence.Â
This article about Nigerian OnlyFans stars was interesting to me for a couple of reasons:Â
A queer influencer with a father whoâs a homophobic politician came out publicly on Instagram. His father expressed disapproval on Twitter.Â
An OnlyFans star who calls herself Nude Fairy mentions that thereâs a double standard. Porn creators face discrimination, but porn consumers donât.Â
Reading & Watching:
Andrew Huberman Talks About Testosterone Optimization on the Joe Rogan Experience. Huberman mentions Tongkat Ali, a Southeast Asian plant thatâs used as a supplement. There are studies showing that it increases testosterone and thatâs the context in which itâs being mentioned here. Some of the penis products I looked at for my research contains Tongkat Ali, which when translated means âAliâs stickâ lol. (Ali is a common Malay name.)
Nevertheless (2021). This story about two people who become friends with benefits would be a clichĂ© if not for the fact that itâs a Korean drama, where sex rarely happens. Itâs another example of how desire can get the best of you. If youâre interested to check it out, itâs available on Netflix.Â
The Farm. In this story, a young woman named Jane signs up to be a âHostâ at a high-end surrogacy centre. Itâs a job but as an immigrant from the Philippines, she experiences it very differently to what the other Hosts â white, not in desperate need for money â experience. Although the novel is fiction, some of its rhetoric made me think about the conversations people (including me) have with regards to sex work and its ethics.Â