… But Were Too Culturally Sensitive to Ask

Not long after I first arrived in Georgia, I was told by a well-meaning taxi driver that my dating options were somewhat limited. “In Georgia,” he assured me “you either pay for it, or you marry it.” The news came as a bit of a shock, after all, I had already been to Narikala fortress on a hot day, and almost fainted from the smell of teenage hormones, and I was fairly sure that I had detected some pretty overt flirting from a number of shop girls and waitresses. Furthermore, it was something of a disappointment, I had no wish to see the inside of a venereal disease clinic or a marriage registration office, but celibacy didn’t sound like a great option either.

Of course, I needn’t have worried. Georgia might not be a Club 18-30 holiday in Ibiza, but it isn’t Saudi Arabia either. Everyone knows Georgia isn’t the buttoned-down temple to sexual abstinence that it sometimes pretends it is, but we all go along with the myth anyway.

And that’s not the only aspect of Georgia’s sexual mores which is basically an act of collective self-deception. Take the traditional gender stereotypes—they just don’t make sense. The first is that Georgian men are lady-killers, Caucasian Casanovas who sweep women off their feet scores at a time—just like they eat khinkali (I have no idea who the man in this video is). The second is that Georgian women are the chaste, virginal, noble types of 19th century literature, who immediately turn into devoted mothers following one socially permissible night of passion after their wedding. As is plain to see, both myths are mutually exclusive, it’s simply not possible for Georgia to be a nation of Don Juans and Vestal Virgins at the same time, it just doesn’t add up.

The fact is that while these two mythological gender archetypes are mutually exclusive, they are also mutually beneficial. Georgian men are no more virile or dashing than men anywhere else, and Georgian women have precisely the same desires and appetites as women all over the world. The reason both buy into these cultural stereotypes is that it does them both a favour.

Although there is heavy social pressure on unmarried Georgian women to be seen to be pure and chaste, there is also something in it for them. Georgian men can be a more than a little pushy in their attempts to pitch woo, and being seen as anything other than Dante’s Beatrice is only going to encourage more unwanted attention. So, even if you’re more of a Sex and the City type of person, it still pays to come across as a Disney princess.

The same applies to men, but in a slightly different way. With so much riding on looking like a ‘real man’, Georgian guys know that to be seen walking arm-in-arm with a lady friend is to look like Tarzan and Tu Pac all rolled into one. Thus the myth of the saintly Georgian woman feeds into and reinforces the myth of the supremely macho Georgian man.

There are other cherished myths too, of course. That, for example, Georgian guys are super picky, and that if a woman isn’t a virgin, she ain’t the marrying kind. None of my unmarried male friends wants to marry a virgin, and when you think about it, that’s actually quite a weird thing to want anyway. Similarly, while none of my unmarried female friends is a promiscuous man-eater, none is obsessed with saving herself until her wedding night—in most cases it’s far too late anyway.

Opinion polls, pundits, politicians and even taxi drivers will all tell you that Georgia remains a very conservative place, where sex before or outside of marriage is completely unacceptable (well, unacceptable if you happen to be a woman). This is far from being the whole story— like the west in the period before the social and sexual revolutions of the 60s, there are still plenty of taboo subjects, and lots of people are terribly uncomfortable at the thought cherished moral absolutes might be changing. But just because people aren’t allowed to talk about it, it doesn’t mean it’s not happening.

This post originally appeared in Tabula magazine

The post Everything You’ve Ever Wanted to Know About Sex in Georgia … appeared first on The Faster Times.

But Georgians are not hypochondriacs, who constantly believe themselves to be ill. Rather, Georgians live in perpetual fear of disease, and the pills at home are like talismans warding off evil spirits. Georgia is a place where going out with wet hair is considered as dangerous as mainlining smallpox, and where a slight cold warrants a trip to hospital. In an ambulance.

Years after the rest of the world reaised that the only epidemic of Swine Flu was the epidemic of fear-mongering news stories, you can still see otherwise sensible people walking the streets of Tbilisi with disposable surgical masks (which are probably crawling with bacteria). There’s nothing wrong with taking precautions of course, but it’s these same masked men and women, whose fear of disease forces them to dress like Mexican bandits, who drive at breakneck speeds without seatbelts, smoke cigarettes like it was a competitive sport, and stroll out into oncoming traffic because they can’t be bothered to walk twenty metres to the next underpass.

In fact, for a nation perpetually stalked by the specter of illness, Georgians pay almost no attention to personal safety. Look at Rustaveli: city hall has erected massive iron railings, built concrete boxes for the trees and planted huge flowerbeds but still people clamber over this to walk out into the four lanes of fast moving and completely chaotic traffic. Even if they put up barbed wire, machine gun nests and placed anti-personnel mines, it’s a safe bet that the people of Tbilisi would still prefer to take their lives in their hands than use one of the four (count them) underpasses.

Speaking of city hall, they are repairing my roof. Right now there are ten men balancing on hundred-year-old beams four stories above the street. None of them is wearing a harness, and there is nothing to break their fall. Every day, rain or shine, they put their lives in danger—but I bet not one of them would ever dream of going outside with wet hair…

This article originally appeared in Tabula magazine

The post Pathological Fear: Georgia’s Sickening Germophobia appeared first on The Faster Times.

But as a guest of Georgia who has long outstayed his welcome, I’ve noticed a few things about the national cult of hospitality.

Everyone knows that in Georgia “guests are sent from god”. It’s a national adage you get told it in restaurants, taxis, even in the Lonely Planet tourist guide—one day they’ll probably put a sign up at the airport. But this overused catchphrase contains more truth than meets the eye. That French backpacker you just saw on Rustaveli? He may think that he’s here to go horse riding in Borjomi, but actually he is on a divinely ordained mission to provide Georgians with opportunities to show what good hosts they are.

In Georgia, hospitality isn’t really about the guest at all. The national pastime is in fact a chance for the host to perform his crucial social duty. As a guest, you are merely allowing your host to show that he’s a fully-fledged human being. This is especially true with foreign guests. In restaurants, for example, it’s very common for foreigners to be commandeered by the group of Georgians on the next table. The bemused foreigners are sat in the place of honour, fed semi lethal amounts of alcohol and forced to perform embarrassing toasts—it’s not very nice for the foreigners, but the Georgians can go home safe in the knowledge that they have been good hosts. Expatriates who have lived in Georgia for some time even have a word for this, a reflexive verb from the word ‘supra’: “What happened to you last night? You look terrible!” “Oh, I got supra-ed by some random Georgian guys at Khinklis Sakhli”.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with taking pride being a good host, and there is nothing really wrong with force-feeding khatchapuri to unsuspecting tourists. But next time you see that backpacker doing his fourth vakhtanguri with half a litre of wine, ask yourself if he feels ‘sent by God’.

This post originally appeared in Tabula Magazine

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