Somalilia/United Arab Emirates - Americans are not the only ones obsessed with sex and politics. Sex has forever been the bane and blessing of humankind. It is the cause of man's fall. Kingdoms have been turned to dust because of sex. There have been epic conflicts and thousands of ship launched for the sake of a woman. Both female and male sexual organs have been worshipped at times. Holy places often bear the structure of female reproductive organs or are decorated with representations of them. Great works of literature such as Shehrazade's Thousand Nights and the Kama Sutra have been woven around sexual escapades.
Since sex has preoccupied humanity since time immemorial, why do Americans now appear to be more obsessed with it than the rest of world? The answer is that sex has been turned into a multi-billion dollar industry in America. Where would Hollywood be without its sex-laden blockbusters? In America, the word "sexy" has replaced "beautiful." Americans describe everything from women, men, cars, houses, clothes and ways of talking and walking as "sexy."
This is why the rest of the world that watches TV shows like "Sex and the City," "Desperate Housewives" and MTV thinks of America as a sexual paradise where everyone can have sex anywhere with anyone. Arab students arriving in the United States may be shocked to discover that every American woman doesn't readily open her legs for them. From afar, it is difficult to see that Hollywood fiction is not what real America is all about.
Freedom of expression makes sex and politics even more conspicuous in America. The Americans say aloud what the rest of the world hushes up. Where else but America can one find packed theatres of men and women together watching and applauding Eve Ensler's play "The Vagina Monologues" (TVM), celebrating V-Day or saying the F-word every minute like a prayer.
One may argue, on the other hand, that wealthy, elite Americans use sex to opiate the unassuming American public while raiding their pockets and their votes.
Indeed, politics in America is sexed up to make it marketable. Unless political issues are presented in a sexy way, most Americans don't glance up and wouldn't know Lebanon from Libya, or Dubai from Doha.
In the Third World, because politics is the only contested source of income, people are more politically engaged than Americans. Talk to a Somaliland camel herder, a desert Arab Bedouin or an Afghani mountain dweller and they will tell you when and where the great events of modern history took place, from the great World Wars through Vietnam and the Cold War days to the present escapades in Iraq and Afghanistan. In a world where the daily transmissions of the colonial BBC in their native languages is the only source of entertainment and information, these poor people are more versed in world politics than the American people whose daily livelihood rarely depends on what their politicians do outside their homeland.
In the Muslim world where political tyranny reigns, it is only through sex that people can vent their frustrations. Even when they talk about politics they conceal it in humorous sexual anecdotes. No wonder they have invented the belly dance.
Unlike Americans Muslims still prefer to talk about it as the thing "Down There" as Gloria Steiner writes in her introduction to TVM. Nevertheless, the Muslim world's obsession with sex is unparalleled. Observe the following lines by Sheikh Nefzawi:
I, fight,
Against Turks, Arabs and Persians?
Never!
Love is my preference,
Work of the flesh, my joy,
Without fear or favor.
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