A woman takes part in a workshop on sexting safely and responsibly in Mexico City, on August 27, 2018.

Marytrini Aguilar, a 43-year-old Mexican woman with a stable marriage and two grown children, may not be what most people have in mind when they think of the word “sexting.”

The monstrous feminine: a vessel for male pleasures, her “promiscuity” often cited as a symptom of feminine malaise and corruption. This hypersexualisation of the Oriental female was used as a rhetorical strategy to heighten the nature of her angelic nature of her Occidental counterpart.

Nowadays credited to a fifteenth-century Egyptian polymath called Jalal adʹDin al-Suyuti, “The Book of Exposition” is an exploration of promiscuity under the societal constraints of the Arab-Islamic world, using bawdy and salacious scenarios to stimulate and evoke fantasies in the readerʹs mind.

© Aarthi Parthasarathy

Royal Existentials is a weekly web-comic series that uses Indian vintage art and imagery as a backdrop for contemporary dialogues. Members of the Mughal family contemplate on conflict, problems of patriarchy and feminism. The miniature paintings tell ironic stories of Queens and Handmaidens who talk about smashing Patriarchy.

Copyright: Soofia Says

“I wish I could take my daughter and run away from this country,” said the woman. “But my dear, every situation, every place has its own set of 84 problems. Only the nature of problems are different.” said the wise old man. Such words of wisdom and depth left her speechless, albeit for a minute. She mumbled, “Well, then I want to choose a place where ogling men are not one of its 84 problems.”