Notwithstanding the outrage over the health minister's remarks, questions about sex and intimacy are a grey area that many parents find difficult to traverse. Why teach kids about sex at such a tender age, the argument goes, and encourage them to experiment? The fact that kids have access to a lot of information online and through their peer groups is overlooked, sometimes wilfully.
It is only when something drastic happens do we gingerly acknowledge the need for sex education. After the rape of a six-year-old girl in a Bangalore school, I found many hoardings in the city advertising seminars where parents were invited to join their kids in learning about the difference between good and bad touch. But even then there is a discomfort, as though to say: this far, and no further.
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In my view, the debate over sex education focuses too much on the act of sex itself, and how best to explain it to our children. The chariness about shifting the discussion of where babies come from has taken away from other, more substantive dimensions of sex education. Sex education need not be about birds and bees alone.
Gender identity, for instance, can be an important lesson in sex education classes. What is gender? How does it relate to the sex of the person? What happens when the gender of a person is in conflict with sex? And so on. Indeed if sex education classes were about sexual identity and its many variations, that might lessen the stigma of prurience associated with them.
Kids will learn what they have to in their own sweet time. Often, the peer group might be the most comfortable space for learning about how babies are made. I have friends who are perfectly formed adults today - no trauma, nothing - yet they were watching inappropriate videos with friends from the age of 10 or thereabouts. I am not saying whether that's right or wrong, but there is no one way to impart sex education.
It would, therefore, make more sense if sex education was about opening up our children's minds to the diversity of sexual identities. Why just kids, even for adults the reaction to and treatment of the genderqueer take some getting used to. How wonderful it would be to have a sex-ed instructor say something like this: "When you come across a girl who dresses as a boy or vice versa, do not look for indicators of masculinity and femininity to judge how far or how well those indicators sit on the person. There are people who choose to change the sex they were given at birth. Such people are transgender. There are others who don't feel comfortable in their own sex but choose not to change it, preferring external manifestations to define their identity. Whether transgender or not, all of them are genderqueer. Be careful of statements like: 'Okay, he is a boy who is now a girl but he has transitioned so well.' That kind of statement, often said harmlessly for transgender people, must be especially avoided for the genderqueer, since there is no transitioning involved. Remember: they are who they claim to be, and it is improper to locate hints of their genital gender on their person when they feel it does not truly represent them."
Social conditioning often drills certain fake truths into children. That women are the weaker sex. That a man should not only be strong but also seen to be so. That gay men are effeminate. That it is okay to diss someone by calling attention to their genitalia. That the act of sex is a battle between the male and the female, and the male is the winner since he is the "dominant" partner.
Such thinking also gets reflected in the way we speak, especially in the choice of abuse. Many insults, across languages, choose to equate "defeat" with the idea of being submissive in sex. Such usage is so common that most people do not even realise its insensitivity. (This reminds me of the American campaign against the usage of "it's so gay" for anything dumb or stupid.)
If a sex-ed class could successfully impart the fluidity of sexual identity, and how sex is not about strength or weakness, we might have done some good work after all.