SEX. What was the context in which you heard this word the latest? An activity performed in such a way that nobody comes to know? An activity to be performed only after marriage, between couples who have tied knots. This is exactly where our country lacks behind in teaching the adolescents the meaning and need for sex. It is a very controversial debate in India and it is imperative that we need to imbibe sex education in the teenagers of our country. Why are we scared of talking about sex? What is the twisted logic that leads our parents, teachers and education ministers to perpetuate the vicious cycle of cultural taboo and misinformation? What are the theories that are guiding the Orthodox population of our country in believing that sex is obscene and that it is not meant to be talked about in public or in front of kids?
One problem that the conventional group needs to focus upon is not to decide on the age to have sex or talk about it. For everybody’s information, you just have to be biologically able and mentally ready to have sex and don’t really have to seek the society’s permission for the same, irrespective of your age (after adolescence) and marital status. Society might tell you that sex is made for married couples and bachelors can’t have sex. You really don’t need to follow that until you have full protection. It is very important to have open conversations about sex so that it no longer remains a taboo and gets culturally normalized enough that couples don’t feel embarrassed to ask for protection, birth control pills or pregnancy tests from the pharmacists. However, it is impressive to see that a certain population has started talking about sex and having it before marriage. There are people who don’t sideline the groups who think sex before marriage is not a cultural stain on the reputation.
Apart from talking about it openly amongst each other, we need to start giving sex education to our teenagers who really need it and would do blunders otherwise. Sex education to children is required to prevent child sex abuse with them and because the children should know the meaning of good and bad touches, who are thinking well about them and who is not, they need to be safe even in their homes with their relatives. Now there are parents who think boys don’t face child sex abuse so it is not important to impart sex education to the boys of the family. Of all the Indian adult men surveyed by the Quartz India, approximately 18% of them reported to have faced forced sex and sodomy in their childhood, because of lack of knowledge about what sex is and how forced sex is not rape and an evil. Parents think it is a western concept and should not be adopted by our country because imparting sex knowledge to the children will only allow them to have more sex at an early age. Just to correct them, a large portion of the teenaged girls are being married before they actually should get married, ‘at an early age’ which leads to marital rapes. Therefore it is, in any case, important to let them know how forced sex is not sex, but rape. Start talking about it. Start talking about sex. It is important, for you, for us, for the succeeding generations, and so on.
