ABSTRACT
In discussing female sexuality, single women in Mataram speak at length about guarding their reputations, elevating their marriage prospects, the importance of family honour and kinship, and their desires and desirability. Their reflections on desire constellate around the multiple desires for sexual exploration and pleasure, marriage, motherhood and romantic love. The dilemmas women voice most frequently arise from their attempts to negotiate these desires through social structures that regulate their sexual autonomy and require single women to pursue their sexual desires in secrecy. As Fine asserts above, young women’s consideration of their sexuality is informed by a multitude of interrelated beliefs, values, emotions, relationships and bodies, and is moulded by the historical specificity of their social, religious and cultural milieu.
