Moroccan Expert Calls for Sexual Freedom Amid Repressive Laws

"Sexual freedom should be a fundamental right. I am deeply convinced of this and my entire university career, my courses, my research and my writings have aimed to fight against the taboos that repress the sexuality of young Moroccans. Even today, they are forced to get married and start a family to legally live their sexuality. Otherwise, they risk falling under the law. Articles 489, 490 and 491 of the Penal Code respectively repress homosexuality, premarital sexuality and adultery. I have been demanding the repeal of these repressive articles since 2007," protests Abdessamad Dialmy in a reflection published in Le Monde Afrique.

The university professor defended his doctoral thesis on the sexuality of Moroccan youth in 1980. In this research work, which was published in Arabic in 1985 by the Maghreb Publishing House under the title "Woman and Sexuality in Morocco", the expert reported a "double religious and legal prohibition" for young Moroccans in matters of sexuality. "In Morocco, as elsewhere, the average age at first marriage has continued to decline. It is now 26 years for girls and 32 years for boys. While waiting to get married, and to reconcile desire and taboo, young people therefore practice relationships without defloration," he explains.

And to continue: "Of course, young Moroccans from the upper classes do not know these limits. They have broken the taboo of virginity and hymen preservation. Lesbians mutually deflower each other and refuse to conclude heterosexual marriages. Homosexuals marry each other by simply reading the first surah of the Quran (Al-Fatiha) in the presence of homosexual witnesses to give Islamic legitimacy to their union. For me, Morocco is experiencing a sexual explosion. Premarital practices have been generalizing since the 1970s."

The sociologist also notes "the development of prostitution and a more assumed homosexuality" as well as an "increase in sexual and gender-based violence, sexually transmitted infections, unwanted pregnancies, clandestine abortions, children born out of wedlock." However, Abdessamad Dialmy remains optimistic. Rather than advocating for "a radical sexual revolution", he calls for "legal reform, that is to say the recognition of sexual freedoms and the right to abortion, an educational reform that will establish sex education without taboo in schools and a cultural reform to build a non-violent masculinity towards women."