Indonesia's Only Female Sex Therapist Goes Online
Asked whether it might be time to add sex ed to the curriculum, he said "No! ... I may be obsolete .... but I think this is something you should learn about naturally."
Young people have even less luck at home. For most, bringing up the subject of sex with their parents is inconceivable.
"That would just be too embarrassing," said Dianita Permani, an 18-year-old high school student in the capital, Jakarta.
"I'd rather talk about it with my close friends ... look things up on the Internet, read vulgar novels," she says with a giggle. "Personally, I don't want to have sex until I get married. But it is everywhere. I'll just have to follow my instincts, I guess, and figure out for myself what's good or bad."
Amirin hopes people like Permani will turn to her as a credible and easily accessible source of information.
Her podcast, which will be co-hosted by television personality Chantal Della Concetta, who has drawn some controversy herself for racy lingerie pictures in a popular magazine, will at first be a frank conversation between two friends. The first subject: Debunking sexual myths.
They include that putting a bead beneath a boy's foreskin will enhance his sexual pleasure, and that girls will be nymphomaniacs if they don't get circumcisions, which continue despite a 2006 ban. Folklore that gecko saliva could cure AIDS, in a country grappling with the fastest growing endemic in Asia, unleashed a wave of gecko hunting and a surge in prices for the reptiles a couple of years ago.
Eventually, the website will include a free online chat service. Both women are ready for criticism.
Though most of Indonesia's 210 million Muslims are moderate, a hard-liner fringe has become more vocal and violent in recent years, attacking bars, transvestites and anything else deemed "blasphemous."
The hard-liners also have succeeded in influencing politicians who — afraid of being labeled unIslamic — pushed through a controversial anti-porn law, used to imprison Nazril "Ariel" Irham, the pop star, even though it appears his sexcapades were never intended for public viewing.
