Tackling a Huge Taboo: Sexual Desire Behind Bars
Date:  11-19-2021

People in prison, and their loved ones, suffer without intimacy
From The Marshall Project:

For a de facto lifer like me, contact with family and friends is crucial to my mental health and survival. Visits and phone conversations are my lifelines out of this dark place. And when visits were cancelled due to the pandemic, daily calls kept me from becoming totally depressed.

One day, during one of those calls, a childhood friend asked me a surprising question.

“Tariq, what do you do to … control yourself?” she asked uneasily.

Our relationship spans continents and almost a lifetime, so we usually speak freely. But, you see, she and I are devout Muslims from Pakistan. In our conservative culture, conversations about sex are off limits unless you are someone’s spouse or a relative of the same gender. This question was even more complicated because she’s married.

Still, for clarification I asked, "You mean how do I control my sexual urges?" Continue reading >>>