Real men are never afraid of sex!

Back in the old country, we boys and girls operated in gender-segregated worlds.  The school was coeducational, but boys and girls dared not to speak with each other.  It was not until the reunion thirty years later that we were able to even understand how much of a missed opportunity it was to get to know fellow-classmates for the wonderful (or, in some cases, the unpleasant) humans we were and are.

I suppose that segregation was nothing but a reflection of the traditional fear of sex.  And that fear of sex meant that the lives of girls were a lot more tightly circumscribed compared to the relative freedom that we boys had.  Even in the most enjoyable parts of childhood that had nothing to do with sex--like bicycling around or playing outside even after sundown--we boys were freer than girls.

College life was no different--men and women kept to their own kind.  It did not mean that the men ignored the testosterone that was rushing through their bodies.  After all, biology is biology.

At least all those were decades ago.  That was a world before the internet.  We didn't really have an idea of how young men and women in different parts of the world dealt with their biological triggers.  Now, the proverbial genie is out of the bottle.  Which is why a report like this, from another part of the world, seems so bizarre to me:

More than 30 college students were arrested, interrogated and within 24 hours were each given 99 lashes for attending a graduation party that included men and women, Iran’s judiciary has announced.

WTF!

College graduates got together to celebrate and to party, which then resulted in 99 lashes each?  That is 99 lashes more than what they deserved.  How terrible!  What happened at the party?

more than 30 female and male students — the women were described as “half naked,” meaning they were not wearing Islamic coverings, scarves and long coats — were arrested while “dancing and jubilating” after the authorities received a report that a party attended both by men and women was being held in a villa on the outskirts of Qazvin.

WTF!

Torquemada, er, the prosecutor, adds this:

We hope this will be a lesson for those who break Islamic norms in private places

WTF!

In "private places."  Adults--college graduates.

If these college graduates wanted to live alone?  Apparently it is not a crime.  But:

In Semnan, several “polluted singles houses were cleaned” and 97 people, including 10 women, were detained.
Col. Mojtaba Ashrafi of the Semnan police told the news agency that the raids were carried out over a 48-hour period, after the authorities monitored for several weeks 58 homes in which single people were believed to be living.

WTF!

I am quite prudish myself.  But, what adults do is none of my concern, as long as they don't force me to do what they want to do.  Why should it bother the bearded mullahs that college graduates might want to live alone and party with their friends?  Maybe the old men didn't ever go to coed schools!