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First of all, the Kama Sutra book would have been published between the 3th BC and 6th century AD by Vâtsyâyana, a brahman i.e. a high-ranking priest from North India. The title Kama Sutra is in Sanskrit and means "A normative text made up of series or lines of essential rules (Sutra) concerning desire, love, pleasure and sex (Kama).».
The book Kama Sutra consists of seven chapters in total, including the one on sexual positions that have been popularized worldwide in the modern world. However, the general idea of the Kama Sutra was not only focused on sexual practices. Basically, this book was written to guide couples in their love life through the different stages of their life and had no illustrations.
The purpose of the Kama Sutra is to enable readers to attain the dharma that is, in the ideology of Buddhism, the right direction or one's legitimate right. The book chapters cover sexuality, seduction, marriage, relationship difficulties, courtesans, drugs or other additions that can improve sexual performance.
In fact, the Kama Sutra teaches pleasure and well-being in a relationship and in one's sexuality by conveying the equality of all. It is a work that was written for a general audience, therefore as much for women as for men, couples, married people or those who seek to fulfill their needs and desires for affection morally. On the other hand, it is treated by privileged and wealthy lovers as princes and high-ranking people. For example, the Kama Sutra answers questions such as: "How to reconcile? How to obtain sexual pleasure in the absence of a partner? How to succeed in your marriage?". We can therefore say that the Kama Sutra was a very avant-garde work for its time.
However, the Kama Sutra was translated into English in 1876 by Richard Francis Burton, who decided to distribute the manuscript mainly to men by cutting out the notions of pleasure and respect for consent. According to Wendy Doniger, translator and specialist in the Kama Sutra, Burton would have deliberately deprived women of the text explaining their sexual autonomy.
An example of translation from the original version of the Kama Sutra is that "the man tries to force the woman and impose himself on her" to demonstrate the lack of consent to the English version which was translated as "when a man is caught in the throes of passion" justifying sexual assault. Moreover, the chapters that were translated and popularized were the lines that spoke of sexual positions and sexuality only, leaving the rest of the book forgotten.
The place of women in the Kama Sutra is highlighted especially in the sexuality and courtesans section, including the king's daughters. We can observe the tone of the writing that differs between the young virgin women and the courtesans in the contributions of sexual education in the book. For example, chapter 3 guides young women to find a husband and have their first sexual relationship. On the other hand, one passage dictates that if women are taken by force by men who have not earned their trust, they come to hate sex. Therefore, according to Wendy Doniger, the Kama Sutra could be seen as a work that fights against sexual violence against women.
Vâtsyâyana also conveys feminist ideologies in his book, for the time, dictating that for a woman the sexual act does not only serve to make children. Also, he does not encourage punishments for women who will have sexual relations with a man other than their husband contrary to traditional ideologies. The author questions rather on the infidelity and dissatisfaction of women.
On the other hand, Vatsyâyana seems very traditional when he speaks of the rights of rich men to have all the women they desire and especially those who have a lower social status than them without necessarily having the consent of the women. We can then say that this contradicts the ideology that the Kama Sutra fights against sexual violence since this passage encourages sexual harassment and rape culture.
Also, in the Kama Sutra when the author discusses the missionary position associated with the conception position, Vâtsyâyana does not place it as a priority and indicates that sometimes the woman will take the man's place in a position above him. It is dictated that this change of position is equivalent to a change in gender role which is compared to homosexual relations.
The Kama Sutra uses the term "third nature" to refer to homosexuality to indicate a "third form of sexual behavior and it designates by a feminine pronoun a man of this third nature." It is also in connection with this category that the author will describe the sexual act of fellatio with more details than all the others. In this passage, a category of "third nature" is brought with a masculine pronoun practicing fellatio, but in the company of women as well, which Wendy Doniger questions as being a bisexual representation.
The Kama Sutra mentions so-called female homosexuality and the solitary pleasure of women as well. It speaks of the use of fruits and vegetables or the status of phallic male forms for sexual acts, but also of sexual practices between women.
However, the Kama Sutra indicates that these women would have sexual relations with each other since no man would be available, which invalidates the concept of homosexuality and the sexual desire of women between them. On the other hand, the author comes to specify that at times a woman will be able to choose a sexual partner, a friend or a servant with whom she will practice sexual activities in a hidden environment.
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