India is the second most populous country in the world. However, despite the large population, talking about sex remains a Taboo. Sex education, in India, is seemingly non-existent. Animated with misinterpreted truths and bolstered by our environment and society; even uttering the word “Sex” aloud can turn the air in a room thick within seconds. So much so that a small cough can pierce through the silence, the discomfort among the people is evident.
The land where “Kamasutra”—an ancient text on sexuality and eroticism—originated, ironically considers sex a strong taboo, and sexuality is never spoken of in homes, let alone publicly. Children are virtually never told about it, which can lead to serious problems and complications later. Let us take some instances –
Painting a Picture
A young child (let us name them A) goes to school. Happy and filled with excitement, waiting to start conversations with friends, discussing ideas, mischiefs, and everything else happening in their lives. A hears a new word – “porn”, from somebody bursting with a lot of excitement. Although A is cautious about new things since A’s been taught so by their parents, curiosity is an overwhelming force and A wonders what it could be.
In another instance, A is sitting on the couch watching television with parents when an advertisement for “sanitary napkin” pops up. “Papa, what is this? And what is that Blue Liquid?” The father turns red, looks at the mother and says, “You don’t need to ask such questions!”, successfully pushing the matter under the carpet. The child is left without an answer once again.
Later, A grows and reaches an age when the school textbooks have a chapter on ‘Reproduction’. Ideally, the teachers should teach their pupils about reproduction and cover the chapter. By now, A and his friends all have a vague idea about the topic and have certain ideas in their minds. The class is excited to see how the teacher handles this topic and what new they get to learn. Unfortunately, the whole chapter is skipped through and thrown through the window. Yet again, poor A receives no answers and is forced to think how something (that perhaps everyone experiences) is not to be discussed. Although this is not the case in every single school across India, this is definitely a very common scenario.
As children grow, they are exposed to a plethora of information. They go through physical and emotional changes and start developing feelings of sexual attraction and curiosity. As a result, there are numerous questions that arise. However, most of the time, these questions are not addressed by the parents or teachers. The most common answer they receive is – “You’ll know when you’re older”. Children need answers, and when they fail to receive them, they explore their means. Forbidding or shunning only adds to the burning curiosity, creating a perpetual and vicious cycle that spreads and spans for generations to come. A who is now an adolescent, is denied proper answers. Subsequently, he succumbs to an unregulated platform, where disturbing and illicit content is at the forefront of it all. The child does not realize the difference between real and fake and finds this to be highly rewarding and continues to engage with this platform. There are whispers, gossip, and discussion about all these topics across the school, spreading misinformation by sharing what they read or saw from unverified sources. This leads to a lot of misconceptions and sets unrealistic expectations, reinforced by A’s previous experiences, lack of information, and exposure to internet pornography.
A proper and formal sex education would have helped A to understand these matters better and help all children and adolescents to differentiate reality from falsehood and avoid having unrealistic mental pictures.
Why do we need formal Sex Education? Does it create an impact?
For generations, we have been shoving talks about sex and reproduction under the carpet. “If it has worked so far, why do we need a change?”, some may ask. But has it? Studies show the kinds of problems and issues a lack of sex education can lead to –
- Over 50% of the girls surveyed in rural India and 6.7% of the girls in urban India were unaware of the meaning of menstruation.
- A disturbing 53 % of children between the ages of 5 and 12 have been subjected to sexual abuse.
- Of the surveyed children who reported experiencing severe sexual abuse, including rape or sodomy, 57.3% were boys and 42.7% were girls.
- 18% of the girls in India are married before the age of 15 and 47% before the age of 18.
The case for why sex education is of extreme importance is highlighted in the above points. With sexual abuse being a statistic that seem to be rising by the day, most of the times a child is not even aware about what is happening to them, that it is abuse; and ends up considering it to be normal. Therefore, the appeal for sex education to children “being too young” falls flat. Having awareness of these issues helps the children understand what they are going through, teaches them to recognize abuse when it happens, and helps everybody else in times of crisis.
Sex education vs. Old age ideologies, normalised culture, and stigma
In India, and in many of the South Asian countries, there exists a twisted perception about the meaning of sex education. Sex education is perceived as a way of telling people about sex, and just the act of sexual intercourse. People tend to believe it will expose the child to the ideas of sex, and they might want to experience it at a young age. And South Asian parents, who are extremely focused on their children’s studies and academic achievements, think it will only cause more distractions and lead to nothing good. Exactly therein lies the problem. Sex education is not just about sexual intercourse. Sex education is much broader than that and encompasses a large group of subjects such as –
- Gender and sexuality
- Human sexual anatomy
- Sexual and reproductive health
- Sexual and reproductive rights
- Birth control, safe sex
- Age, maturity, and importance of Consent
- Hormonal changes related emotional reactions
Sex education teaches us to understand our bodies and accept it. It teaches us to not be ashamed of our bodies and sexual orientations. It teaches us the responsibilities towards our relationships, be mindful of how we handle them, and the respect we need to treat our relationships with. Sex education breaks the bubble of misinformation and lack of knowledge created by the society and opens our minds to better mentalities. It helps enhance our personalities, and teaches us to be empathetic, understanding, accepting, or in better words, Humane.
Misinformation being spread like wildfire
Most of our information regarding sex and the closest related thing to sex education that we have access to is media and pop culture. From movies and television programs that normalize rapes, assault and domestic violence, to internet pornography with glorified unrealistic bodies, our ideas about sex is heavily distorted. Adults realize that these are unrealistic and harmful. However, with no effort towards educating the younger generation themselves, it can create issues. The children and adolescents, who are easily influenced and believe most things they read and watch on the internet, end up having a completely wrong idea about gender and sex.
We all know that adolescence is a crucial period of an individual’s life. It is a time when personalities and mindsets are developed and shaped. The mind is open to new ideas, and at the same time susceptible to dangerous ideologies. Despite knowing this, our society does not prepare the adolescents on any matters of sexual education; the taboo is just too strong to shake off. The result of our negligence plays a detrimental role in how teenagers are introduced to the topic of sex; adolescents end up resorting to the lustful crutch which is available at the few clicks of a mouse button—Internet Pornography.
Apart from the moral implications that internet pornography raises—such as human trafficking and exploitation—there exist several problems it can give rise to. Here are some other eye-opening statistics. Neurological studies from over 3 dozen neuroscience-based studies on frequent porn users & sex addicts have shown and proven that pornography can have these negative effects –
- Sensitization (cue-reactivity & cravings): Brain circuits involved in motivation and reward seeking become hyper-sensitive to memories or cues related to the addictive . Regular porn viewing has been associated with higher craving of porn and less interest in one’s actual partner.
- Dysfunctional prefrontal circuits : Leads to weakened willpower, impairs decision making ability and hyper-reactivity to addictive cues (one cannot say no to cravings).
- Desensitization(decreased reward sensitivity & tolerance): This involves long-term chemical and structural changes that leave the individual less sensitive to pleasure, therefore one needs more stimulus to gain the same amount of pleasure—a similar mechanism to alcohol and drug abuse.
Similarly, the above given issues are also aroused by movies and television programs that have been portraying physical and sexual violence as a casual and common incident since decades. Many Bollywood movies start with a rape scene, or a scene including sexual/physical abuse. In most of them, the solution is shown that the victim of the sexual abuse must marry their abuser.
Teasing and cat calling girls is portrayed as an act of love. Consent is paid no attention or respect, with dialogues such as “लड़की की ना में भी हाँ होती हैं” meaning “A girl’s no means a yes”. The idea of a perfect female body—the glorified 36-24-36—is perpetuated as the norm and the perfect male body—huge biceps and V-shaped torso—is made the “Macho” image. The violence we see on-screen desensitizes us and leads people to take these matters, which are of serious weightage, very lightly.
In many cases, this can directly result in a range of mental health issues such as clinical depression and generalised anxiety. It leads adolescents to developing an unrealistic body image, which can cause unnecessary trauma about not “looking perfect”, “being unattractive” and feeling out of place. Porn videos do not contain a disclaimer that they are staged and scripted, which leads growing teenagers to believe that they are real and the mental picture of “I am not perfect” arises.
Combating the Problem. What can we do about it?
So, what is the solution? Should we put a ban on Pornography and Bollywood? That would not bring much change since they are large and established industries and will continue to flourish. We need to tackle this issue at the base, which is our perception of sex and ideologies surrounding it. When we let kids learn about the matter on their own, they generally end up in the wrong sources. The internet is full of outdated information, illegitimate sources, negative picturisation and pseudoscience. Although there is better, more scientific and fact-based information available on the internet, the falsehoods and negative sources are more appealing and glorified. It doesn’t help that the society we live in is perpetrated with religious beliefs surrounding sex and reproduction, with children believing they appeared into the world as a “gift from God with no part played by their parents” or “the moment you marry, you automatically get pregnant” and menstruation believed to make females unholy and untouchable, even though it’s a part of the human reproductive cycle.
Sex education can help us combat and slay these beliefs, false ideologies and therefore should be spread wide and used to educate young children, adolescents, and even parents and the older generation about subjects revolving around sex. The stigma associated with the word “sex” needs to be removed, and it is only possible through a proper, formal and extensive sexual education.
The picture, as of now, seems grotesque and hopeless, but change has started. Many organisations are now starting to put more focus on sex education and working with educational institutions in order to normalise talking about it and bringing proper facts and information to youngsters and grown-ups alike.
The YP foundation based in Noida has designed and implemented a progressive curriculum for sex education. The programme teaches gender equality, sexual diversity and consent among other subjects. It incorporates role play, art and games to engage 12 to 20 year-olds across the 14 classes it runs.
Here at Badlaav, we are also working towards a taboo and stigma-free society. We regularly take sessions with school children on sex education. We talk about adolescence and the changes associated with it, menstruation, and sexual health. We work hard to make sure that children understand and perceive these things as normal and are thus able to break free from the shackles of their upbringing. They can raise questions, learn more, understand better and as a result, better able to recognize reality from glorified falsehoods. It does take time to gain their confidence and make sure they are comfortable, but once that happens, there is no going back. This is what we are advocating, to break the stigmas of menstruation and sex in the society and teach masses the importance of doing so.
To break this stigma, we as individuals, can always make sure to address the questions of the young minds around us, be it our siblings, cousins, nieces or nephews or even our children. The internet is a great tool that can be used to educate ourselves, spread awareness and ultimately play a vital role in this noble cause. We call it a “noble” cause because a society free of taboos and stigmas allows people to learn, grow, and flourish. After all, what holds a great deal of importance in our lives? In our hearts, everything that we want can be traced back to spreading love and building valuable relationships. Sex education teaches us to do just that. It is the cure to prejudice, insensitivity and negligence that is present in our lives. When people have a clear idea about the topics regarding sex and reproduction, they have a better mentality not only about their own bodies, but also about their community and relationships.