India’s Intercourse Problem Just Needs Healthy Discourse, But Log Kya Kahenge?
Women are sexualised and objectified all over the world. India is no different. We objectify women in item numbers and advertisements, our movies have characters entering in dripping wet bikinis and we portray them as some kind of a prey to be chased after through five scenes and two songs until she gives in to the repeated persuasions of the male lead.
We have half-naked women in the ads for deodorants, colognes, men’s undergarments, and cars plastered on billboards across our cities. And yet, how many women still feel embarrassed by the men standing around the pharmacist when buying a simple pack of sanitary pads or tampons. How many would get a side-eye from the old man or aunty behind the counter when asking for condoms or a morning after pill?
To hell with that, when was the last time you bought a packet of Whisper or Stayfree and the salesperson DIDN’T hastily wrap it up in brown paper like it’s a baggie of weed sold around the corner from a police station?
We shame natural biological processes, so you can bet your ass that sex is rarely, if ever, discussed without a look that says “Don’t ask dirty questions.”
That’s why I loved Netflix’s new original show ‘Sex Education’. It’s a raunchy, brutally honest story of growing up horny, confused, and with no way to express any of it to adults around. You know, like your own teenage years.
In the show, Otis (Asa Butterfield) is a seemingly normal 16-year-old boy with a sex therapist for a mother (Gillian Anderson). Otis is a virgin, but only his closest friend knows a secret he thinks is even darker than that. He can’t wank. It’s not a health problem, it’s because certain incidents in his childhood have created a fear of sex, and frankly any physical intimacy with the opposite sex, or himself for that matter. And yet Otis is convinced to set up a sex clinic to help his fellow students, giving out advice learned from his mother’s sessions and research..
The treatment is different, but the sexual conundrums are the same as those we face in India. Dealing with kinks, gay and lesbian relationships, masturbation. Even the darker side of sex is represented: commitment issues, peer pressure, the hardships of getting an abortion and a heartbreakingly violent depiction of homophobia.
And yet, most of the kids’ problems wouldn’t have been problems in the first place if they’d just received adequate sex education. You know, just like India.
As an ICSE school student, I had no sex education in 10th Std in 2005. At the very least, I did have an in-depth Biology class. So we learned the mechanics of periods, ejaculation, sex, and pregnancy. On the other hand, years later, I still had to read up on how to use a condom, what a clitoris is, where to find the G-spot, and more. Not to mention after years of religiously-induced guilt, it was a while before I understood that masturbation isn’t bad and it’s certainly not shameful.
I’ve asked around and I’ve got a bit more of a consensus. A female friend that went through the Goa Board school system actually had a decently intensive class with doctors from the local hospital coming in to take the sessions. On the flip side, a co-worker from Mumbai had absolutely no sex ed growing up.
Meanwhile, another from a convent school had a weird compromise with professionals coming in to take sex education classes between grade 4th to 7th. But the kids of impressionable age were taught that celibacy was the only method of birth control. A fourth had his PT teacher take the sex ed class back in the late 1990s. And by that, he meant the teacher drew squares to represent body parts and left it at detailing sexual organs. (He provided handy reproductions of the diagrams)
In all these instances (save for my own curriculum inspired faux-sexual teachings) classes were always split for boys and girls.
Think about that for a second. Our country literally wrote the book on sex. And somewhere along the line, we made the collective decision to suppress the knowledge that’s so critical for kids going through puberty. We decided that it was all so shameful that we would never talk about it…..Until the few days before you get married. However, when relatives start making crude jokes about your wedding night and what the best practices, positions, and potions are to make a baby. Like b****, I could’ve used this knowledge years ago. Thanks to years of no open conversation and society-enforced celibacy, so many couples get married without ever having had sex before.
You won’t buy a car without test-driving, you wouldn’t even freaking buy a tomato without squeezing it first and you expect people to have a happy sex life without having it explored before?
Some might classify Netflix’s ‘Sex Education’ as a sex comedy. I say it’s really a mockumentary. No matter how silly or dire the situations in the show, there’s at least a glimmer of hope for the kids because they have at least one person they can turn to, in the form of Otis. But in India, in the real world, you likely didn’t, and your kids may not either.
You want to improve the treatment of women in the country? You want to stop seeing reports of rape, violence, and homophobia. Give the kids sex education. They want it more than you know and need it more than they know.
If your teen-aged son or daughter decides they want to have sex, they shouldn’t be hiding from you because they’ll get in trouble. They should be able to come to you knowing you’ll guide them to be safe, responsible, and sensitive adults.
