This is going to be another one of those articles that is bound to infuriate the moral puritans of our society.

So before any of you start sending me hate e-mails, please take into account this health warning: This is not meant for those who are bothered by the thought that ordinary human beings have sexual fantasies and that some of us even have sex once in a while. With that out in the open, I would now like to proceed.

In the past, this column has looked at the other aspects of Malaysia from a historical perspective. I would now like to touch upon a recent controversy instead. By this I refer to the much-publicised mini-scandal that erupted in the wake of the "intimate confession" given by the Malaysian star Ning Baizura to FHM (For Him Magazine).

Some of you may wonder why I have decided to write about this after the event has passed for so long. The reason is two-fold: Firstly, I cannot bear to appear topical, and secondly, I also happen to be one of those old-fogey types who had no idea what/who this Ning was. Considerable academic research had to be undertaken before pen was put to paper, finger to keyboard.

And so it happens that a Malay-Muslim woman spoke at length and in some detail about her private sexual fantasies. In the wake of the interview and its release, Malaysian society and the Malay-Muslim community in particular found itself reeling with shock and disbelief. That a Malay-Muslim woman could have sexual fantasies was bad enough. That she actually spoke about it in public was even worse.

The response from the local vernacular Malay media was sadly predictable. The conservative Malay mainstream press went on a rampage accusing Ning of trying to get cheap publicity. Never mind the fact that these papers were also trying to score points in the cheap publicity race in order to recover from the losses incurred by the recent mainstream press boycott organised by the opposition parties.

Similar tone

But equally interesting was the response from the alternative opposition media and the popular Islamist press in particular. Going through the now terminated Al-Wasilah magazine, I could not help remark on how similar the tone of the Islamist press was to that of the mainstream media. Both were equally conservative, damning and, in the final analysis, shallow and nonsensical.

Al-Wasilah 's coverage on the issue included moralising sermons about the need for Malay-Muslim women to maintain good conduct and proper decorum in public (in order to keep up the image of the ummah before the penetrating gaze of the kafir ), to blanket condemnations of the West for being the real culprits behind the moral decadence and decline of our pure and wholesome Asian society.

In one of the feature articles in Al-Wasilah , a local Malaysian academic spoke about the matter at length and offered her own astute observations on the issue. Admitting the fact that some thoroughly immoral women do sometimes fantasise about "stars" like Shah Rukh Khan (another star I am not familiar with), she nonetheless pointed out that such fantasies amounted to khianat tasawurri (imaginary infidelity) against their husbands. Needless to say, this is a sin and is strictly frowned upon.

The Malaysian academic then added that those who went around talking about sex and their sexual fantasies are obviously the products of decadent Western culture (where a lot of sex takes place, apparently) and that this was not abnormal in the West where models parade around naked all the time. It reminded me of an Iranian feminist who claimed that in the West people were walking around the streets naked all year round - obviously she had never been to London or Berlin in the winter.

The cherry on the cake came when the same woman academic concluded that by talking about sex in public Ning had insulted not only her religion but also her race and her culture. These are the times when I can no longer tell where the boundary lines between PAS and Umno lie.

Throughout the Ning Baizura affair, most of the pundits failed to note one very simple thing: that behind the faade of the ever-docile, willing and proper Asian woman lies the other woman who happens to possess rational agency, free will and personal desires. She may desire to go out to work while her husband stays home to take care of the family. She may desire to leave her home and travel around the world.

She may desire to leave her legs unshaven, save the money she would have spent on cellulite creams and order pizzas instead. Or she may genuinely desire to get married, settle down and have five children. Once in a while, she may even have the desire to have sex with several men before breakfast.

No amount of self-righteous posturing, moralising and bible-bashing will ever be able to alter that reality for the simple reason that repression itself is a recognition of the thing to be repressed. We can only repress what is already really there within us, and the more we repress it, the more we confirm its belligerent existence.

Real crime

In this sense, the real crime committed by Ning was not that she spoke about her sex life or her sexual fantasies. Her mistake, if we can even call it that, was to admit to the fact that she was a gendered being with sexual potential that was not regulated by social norms and conventional values. In this respect, Ning's public "confession" brought into the open something which was meant to be hidden and kept outside, relegated to that other Malaysia whose existence we do not admit.

Even worse, Ning's public "confession" managed to destroy the facade of respectability (and it was always just a facade in any case) that kept intact the fragile consensus over what could be spoken of and what could not.

Being a traditional Asian society that prides itself with laudable "Asian values" like hypocrisy, routinised repression and double standards, it is understandable that some of us would not be too happy to know that our wives, girlfriends and daughters might harbour such licentious thoughts like those morally decadent women of the evil West.

Ning's open declaration of sexual autonomy, her assertion of her sexual rights as a woman and her open admission that she likes sex, have shattered the near-ossified idea that Asian women are merely the objects of sexual desire for men without having sexual desires of their own.

Like it or not, Ning's interview with FHM has brought into the open the fact that Asian women actually have sexual fantasies. To suggest, as some of our conservative counterparts have done, that this is all due to the nefarious machinations of Western media moghuls or the gnomes of Zurich, is to return to the mode of denial all over again.

The reality is that Asian women have sexual fantasies, have always had them and will continue to have them as long as they have bodies that function reasonably well. A close look at the history of Asian art and literature will tell you that women have always played a crucial part in defining the nature and content of sexuality in general - and not always as passive recipients of male attentions.

If Ning's confession was such a shock to so many people, it can only be a sad reflection of how repressed and hypocritical we have been about ourselves and to ourselves all along.

Human nature

Finally, before anyone jumps the gun and accuses me of trying to promote, justify or glorify such "immoral" acts, I would like to reiterate the main point of this article: Sexuality is a part of human nature and it happens to be one of the defining features of the sentient human being. The fact that we fantasise is proof of the fact that we possess rational agency, imagination and free will.

Of course, this does not mean that all our fantasies are necessarily wholesome or even interesting - and some of us are quite happy to settle down with a good book and a mug of Horlicks. But our sexual fantasies, like our dreams of a better life, a brighter future, a freer society and a just world, also happen to be a door to an alternative world that we all need.

We need such fantasies to remind us of the possibilities that are always there before us, should we choose to exercise our free will and fight for them. Suppression of such wishes and longings merely leads to a vicious circle where even the purest of desires can ultimately become twisted beyond recognition. Hardly a surprise then that "deviants" tend to emerge in the midst of the most repressive and conservative of societies.

Ning's interview and the revelations that came forth have forced Malaysian society to look at itself and take stock of some of its most basic moral assumptions. It raises crucial questions about our values, beliefs and who we are. Some of these assumptions have been seriously challenged, and a good thing that is, too, for the simple reason that they were based on erroneous premises that were hollow and weak.

We may not welcome such radical interventions into our moral and epistemological universe, but these things are bound to happen for the simple reason that such contingencies are beyond our calculation and control.

Thanks to Ning, our nights will never be the same again. This writer, for one, is grateful for that - despite the fact that he still does not know what she does for a living.

Editor's note : For those who are clueless about Ning Baizura and her infamous FHM [#1] interview [/#], check out this [#2] website [/#].