T&T Part 2, Week 8 & 9: Project Tutorial & Progress

During these 2 weeks, I have concluded to create a video with the information gathered from my interviews and turning it into a display for the project. So the plan was to interview people with different beliefs and experiences toward premarital sex, but along the way, I thought about my specific context in which is why is premarital sex a taboo? So I thought if I were to break a taboo, Why not have a discussion? So I started off by recording a discussion between those people just to let them have an insight into the different perspectives of their opposites.

And one of the challenges in this discussion is to find people who are open and willing to share. After asking several people, some rejected my offer, in the end, I planned to separate the discussion within groups of the same beliefs. I started creating questions for the discussion and also games to let them get used to the topic. I'll be holding the discussion online due to the fact it's not appropriate to meet in person at this time.

Interview Outcome:

Group #1: Younger, Open-minded

In this particular group, they are strangers with each other, so I had a hard time preparing, thinking they might not open up as much since they don't know each other, so I incorporated a question game to break the ice, so they get to know each other better.

Findings: To summarize the discussion, this group is more extroverted in a way, so it helped me in gathering more information about the topic. They also gave the same answer when they were asked who or what influences them the most in this topic was themselves, and the elaboration is that they think that what other's think of them is not as important as what they want or think of themselves, to be precise they strongly highlighted that it's their life, and nobody can tell them what to do. And in this group, the participant's religion has heavily tabooed this topic, for it's a sin. But it didn't stop them from exploring because though their family aren't okay with this behaviour, they still follow what they want to experience. And talking about family, they have experienced similar judgement regarding the stereotypes and the double standards that they face from their parents and relatives, for example, one of their male cousins got married because his girlfriend got pregnant, and the elders then proceed to judge the girl for engaging premarital sex, as saying she was desperate.

Group #2: Younger, Conservative

For this group, they have been friends for quite long, so they'll be more comfortable sharing with each other.

Findings: From this group of people, they tend to be conservative, but not as close-minded. I would say they're more progressive in terms of the generation improving? One of the reasons I said that was because most of them agreed that sex is for pleasure rather than just creating life, and one of the factors that made them think that way is that when it comes to the younger generation, people happen to enjoy first only endure later, so it will take time for people of our age to be stable early, and with that, they might engage in premarital sex for pleasure more rather than to create life. Though they are not agreeing in some of the actions in premarital sex, they seem to be ok if they engage with someone that they are in a long-term relationship with. But they are not in an agreement if a person engages with multiple partners.

Group #3: Older, Experienced

An for the last group, it's quite of a mix of people with different beliefs, but all of them had more than one experience either before or after marriage.

Findings: Though most of them had experienced premarital sex, most of them agree that they would not let their children engage in premarital sex because of their experience with it. Though they might say that currently, the point of view toward premarital sex has improved by the years, they also thought that back in their generation, people also did it, just that never really talked about, which is why it's such a big deal back in the olden days, cause nobody is talking about it. But when it comes towards the double standards of the different gender when it comes to premarital sex, they don't feel like there's a comparison because in their generation, when you start to work in the society, people will expect you to have experienced in such activity just cause they see it as a way of maturity.