Shifting Sexual Boundaries: Ethnicity and Pre-marital Sex in the Lives of South Asian American Women

• In Event: 598 - Section on Asia and Asian America Roundtable Session.
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 04. Sexualities and Gender

Abstract

Immigrants and their children engage in several forms of boundary making as a means of developing a sense of belonging and defining their identities in America. Second-generation Americans are at the crossroads between meeting their parents’ cultural expectations and selecting new ethnic options that may conflict with ancestral traditions. Women’s sexuality has often been a site for contesting and conforming to ethnic boundaries within immigrant communities. This article examines a case study of second-generation South Asian American adult women’s pre-marital sexual behavior to understand how gendered cultural expectations about sex shapes the ways in which they construct ethnic boundaries. Much of the literature on women’s sexual experiences in immigrant communities in America has focused on married women or on the emphasis of cultural constraints placed on women’s virginity. This study highlights a nuanced perspective for understanding how migration to the U.S creates cultural shifts in ethnic communities by examining how the American born daughters of immigrants define their ethnicity through their pre-marital sexual encounters.

Author

• Nazreen Sameena Bacchus, City University of New York-Queens College