People are not open about sex in India because they havenever heard of this topic ever openly. Whenever they have to talk about it theyneed to think thousand times. Considering this scenario, it has caused a lot ofdifficulties in the life of youngsters. In a survey conducted by the NationalInstitute of Health and Family welfare and suppressed by India’s healthministry said that a quarter to the third of the youngsters indulges inpremarital sex without having any knowledge about birth control or STDs.
It is stated that 17% of school children to 33% among youngworkers indulge in premarital sex in the North Indian population. The averageage of Indians having sex is 17.4 years for boys and 18.2 for girls. In Lucknowpremarital sex is more common than that in Delhi. In the reports, it was statedthat a third of respondents said they lack awareness of unsafe encounters.
Why this scenario is in India?
Well, how often have you heard of sex openly? The problem is here no one talks about it!Our educators, teachers, parents, and governing bodies never considering talkingabout this sensitive topic which is really important to be discussed. Indiandon’t like talking about sex and is considered a taboo, it is consideredagainst our culture, bad for society and corrupts the young people. Indiansthink that it distracts people from the right path, is a dirty thing, and issomething that ashamed people. This ultimately concludes that the reason whypeople are private about sex.
The next reason after people being characterless if theyhave sex is that people consider that woman should be almost asexual and if a womanis this then only the woman is good, pure, and chaste. Our culture only demandsus to be sexual only if one is married and just in case if it’s not the casethen it is lack of morals and harmful for the society as well as for thatperson too.
Was this quietness about sex, always there?
Just to surprise you, NO! The ancient texts such as Mahabharataand the Puranas are quite open about sex and portray a liberal society. So whathappened to this open and biased society? The Mughal and British Rules madepeople in India turn this way. Many others say that another reason is theBrahmin priests created draconian rules and these reasons turned India tobe so conservative.
Who can probably teach children about sex?
Mainly it’s the school, teachers, parents, or thegoverning bodies who teach almost everything about life and the basic thingsthat are necessary to know. Well, necessities change with the situations aswell as age. So when the children reach that particular stage why don’t theyall discuss sex, which in fact is really essential.
Why don’t parents talk about sex?
Parent’s think that the children are innocent and it isn’tthe right time to open up this thing but at one stage they will obviously losetheir innocence, which can happen anytime, so they make a long delay beforetelling about sex.
Secondly, they think that it’s ‘too embarrassing’, everyparent feels this way but no embarrassment should stop someone to discuss areally important subject. Some parents also feel that the children never askedabout it so they never told, if a child doesn’t ask about sex or relationshipsthat doesn’t mean they are not interested, which means that the parents need tostart the conversation first.
Some people say that the parents don’t know how to answerbut for this thing, you just need to be honest with which your students willfeel satisfied. And if you are not sure about the question just analyze it andsearch just in case and tell it to them honestly. Next, they think that thechildren will become sexually active which is a major tension of manyparents, well if they are guided in thecorrect manner and withhold all the information they will not be sexuallyactive but it would be the opposite.
Some parents think that they wouldn’t like to hear itfrom me, well well well children are most comfortable with their parents and theywould love to hear it all from you and they will surely trust what you say sogo for it. So now when they're all clear why not talk to your kids now? Justgive it a try!
Sex Education in schools: Thegrowing awareness of AIDS has caused people to talk more about sex which wasn’tthe case once, though while teaching about sex education it is common to talkabout teen pregnancy and HIV but still till now not many people are aware ofhomosexuality and menstruation. Even the knowledge about safe sex is notcomplete.
Despite regular news of child sexual abuse, theknowledge of right and wrong touch begins from grade 5th beforewhich a lot of children are already abused. The government of India initiated‘Adolescent Education Program’ (AEP) in 2007 in collaboration with the NationalAIDS Control Organization (NACO) and United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
This was an important initiative that aimed to ‘empoweryoung people with accurate, age-appropriate and culturally relevantinformation, promote healthy attitudes and develop skills to enable them torespond to real-life situations in positive ways. However, this program considersissues such as body image, violence and abuse, gender and sexuality and STIs,substance abuse, especially drugs and other unhealthy attitudes, the notion of‘consent’ and ‘attraction’ was neither introduced nor taught in this program.The program was not implemented and was banned by 12 Indian state governmentsas the program’s content was considered to be ‘inappropriate’. There has been the constant claim that the incorporation of sex education will increase‘risky behavior’ amongst adolescents and young students.
The government on sex: Nogovernment officer will ever talk about sex, the only way people live in Indiais that they pretend that sex doesn’t exist, which is really vague becauseignoring such a huge population should never be a thing. This strategy is of nouse because we are humans first and humans later so people will have sex and itis powerful so it has the force to bring people together despite all theprogress and other comforts designed, nothing can compete for the force of sex.
Whenever there is a rape case people say that punish orrather kill the culprit and this is what goes all the way round no one everthinks of debating on this topic or talking about it. A lot of changes arerequired in the way how sexual criminals should be punished but despite theright to freedom and the right to speak no one ever discusses it.
The major issues causing these problems are:
The first of the major problem is, the repression of sexualdesire, and secondly, Indians have no one to discuss it with someone or have a meaningful debate about the same. Talking of the drawbacks of this repression,it affects the youngsters mostly and leads to lies as well as hypocrisy.
The problem which arises when people pretend that sexdoesn’t exist is that no one till now knows what the right age of having sex is;thinking of the age consent makes people feel that it is just a license whichpermit people to have sex.
What’s the scenario now?
Though technology has brought everyone together andis the biggest tool in hand where the youngsters can talk about this issueopenly and freely, then only the anti-sex attitude can change. We need torefresh our societal morals and shift them from the traditional to the modernone and be more suited to the current scenario. People should start talkingabout sex and start providing the knowledge so that people learn to takeprecautions and know what is right and wrong. Discussing sex is a significanttopic and should be done.