What The Fuq| By Dr. Rajan Bhonsle, Dr. Minnu Bhonsle & Dr. Aman Bhonsle| Book Review| Progressive Or Regressive?

 

"What The Fuq" keeps you curious throughout. I have learnt multiple new and interesting things about sex while having a fun read. I am glad that there are such books which discuss sex, a taboo topic in India so freely, empowering it's normalization. However, there were certain aspects of the book which I found were problematic on multiple levels. 

First things first, it was heart breaking that there was no inclusion of alternative sexualities in the book. Not just that, the language seems to be empowering heteronormativity too. Pronouns like "He/she" were used everywhere instead of  the gender neutral pronouns "they/them." 

Here are some examples of things that are problematic in the book and should immediately been updated. 

• In question 8, a mother has asked about her 14-year-old son masturbating. In the answer, I read, "it helps boys to organize their sexual urges and patiently wait for a heterosexual encounter while they are still growing towards becoming responsible and mature men." Seriously? How can we establish that they would only wait for a heterosexual encounter? What is this labelling? 

• In question 13, while answering about nightfall, the author mentions, "Boys at this age begin to begin to develop strong sexual attraction and feelings towards girls." Please imagine a teenage boy who has started just feeling towards guys instead of girls reading this? They would be shattered and start feeling that something is wrong with them.

• Question 27 is about masturbation myth and the authors have kept it men centric and completely forgot to acknowledge that women also masturbate and it's completely fine.

• The answer to question 158 disrespects polyamory/polygamy as a lifestyle. It reads, " Multiple partners may be common in animal world but it is not so for humans." While cheating should be condemned but polyamory/polygamy with mutual consent of all partners deserves equal respect like a monogamous relationship.

• The publishers should update question 194. It still informs the readers about what is punishable under section 377 which has already been scraped on September 6th, 2018.

Apart from these examples, topics like Erectile dysfunction to emotional intimacy over sexual to women psychology got repeated many times. What bugged me as a reader more was that the content was often copy pasted in every such question. There was no newness to it. So, for a person who is reading the whole book, this could impact their experience. 

Conclusion: "What The Fuq" is progressive because this attempts to normalize sexual health conversations in the society. But at the same time, it becomes regressive because it is set in heteronormativity. It is an interesting book but it needs to be re-edited, and made more inclusive of alternative sexualities. I feel the problem of repeated content occurred because the questions were segregated on the basis of different demographics.  A more holistic approach could be to have questions regardless of their demographic segregation. This way, the content can be non repetitive. Secondly, every reader would be more curious to read the whole book rather than the only section of demographics they fall in.