“I Was Scared That My Parents Would Find Out”: The Dating Practices of 1.5-Generation Bangladeshi Women in Toronto, Ontario

Women’s sexual behavior is regulated through notions of family honor, shame, modesty, and sexual purity in Bangladeshi culture. Little is known about the lived experiences of 1.5-generation Bangladeshi women who engage in premarital romantic/sexual relationships. Drawing on in-depth semi-structured interviews with ten 1.5-generation Bangladeshi women who immigrated to Canada as children or adolescents, this article uses a narrative inquiry methodology to explore their dating practices in the context of the sociocultural boundaries around premarital relationships. The findings offer a nuanced understanding of 1.5-generation Bangladeshi women’s dating practices using an intersectional feminist framework. Given the cross-cultural positionality of 1.5-generation Bangladeshi women, negotiating the dating arena can be challenging because of cultural value conflict and having to balance personal desires with expectations of chastity and heteronormativity. Participants’ lived experiences showed that they strategically negotiate cultural restrictions around dating and subvert the gendered and heteronormative expectations of sexual behavior. The findings have implications for utilization and access to sexual and reproductive health services for 1.5-generation Bangladeshi women involved in premarital relationships. The narratives of the women in this study challenge pervasive stereotypes of South Asian Muslim women as devoid of sexual agency.