What makes you think “even as the world looks like it’ll burn down any minute, these people make me feel like there’s hope for CSE”?
We asked this question of our team in order to write this article because sexuality continues to be taboo, especially so when we speak of children and young people. But India being the land of multitudes, there exist many multiple realities of everything, including the state of sexuality education. If there’s anything TARSHI knows from our 30 years of work, it’s that islands of hope and pockets of progress exist across the country. There are individuals, collectives and organisations that are doing their best to create an ecosystem that supports the education of children on gender, sexuality, health, consent, safety, relationships, self-esteem and confidence in themselves.
As an organisation that adopts an affirmative approach to sexuality, we celebrate these islands and pockets, no matter how small or concentrated they are, even as we continue to dig in our heels and address the broader inequities that detract from CSE being a reality for the country’s millions of children and young people. So here are four stakeholders – in no particular order – who give us hope and encourage us to continue our work. We acknowledge that this selection is by no means a representation of the many things going on in India, and that it may have an urban leaning – but that this, too, is a snapshot of the state of affairs as we see them.
- Schools that are at various stages of integrating CSE
TARSHI trains educators on CSE and has resources they can use to overcome their hesitation and prepare to talk about various sexuality-related topics in the school setting. A range of schools get in touch with us: from those that call us for a training, panicked, after an “incident”, to those who want to take steps into initiating a CSE programme, to schools that want to strengthen what they are already doing with, say, their counsellors or a core group of teachers, and take it to all their staff, including admin staff and wardens. We know this can’t be easy for schools – they are already having to deal with changing education norms, prepare students for stiff competition, and teachers have to manage all this and more. And yet, we are encouraged when schools gather teachers for a training on CSE – teachers who give their best to challenge decades of social conditioning related to sexuality – to address what they see unfolding in the lives of their students. We are encouraged when they spiritedly explore the possibilities of having gender-neutral uniforms or toilets in the school, and when they take our resources or follow up on our training to develop a curriculum for their school. We are encouraged when teachers share how they turn to students when they (the teachers) don’t understand something: one school got class 11 students to help teachers understand the “what and why of pronouns”. Schools also strategise about how to engage parents who may sometimes be uncomfortable with the school teaching “such things” to their children.
We know that oftentimes schools are not able to get into “comprehensive” sexuality education and may end up sticking to “safer” topics like menstruation or gender roles. That said, many of the educators we interact with have a deep understanding of the complex realities for today’s young people and what they see and express, especially online. The hesitation, fear and discomfort over sexuality is not easy for many to get over, but we are encouraged when we see them make an attempt, listen to their peers, and acknowledge that “these things do happen in my school”.
- Peer organisations on the CSE journey
A benefit to being three decades old as an organisation is being able to see how far things have come. As one of the early NGOs in India that prioritised sexuality education, we love that we now have a lot of company! Peer organisations that are taking sexuality education to children and young people give us much hope even as we, as a country, have not made much headway with formal policies on sexuality education.
Across India we see NGOs large and small increasingly acknowledge the importance of talking about sexuality in ways contextually relevant to their communities. What especially encourages us is that these organisations may be working with children and young people on issues other than gender or sexuality, but understand and try to figure out entry points for conversations on these topics. We see how they take the time to understand community needs, build trust, rope in parents for support, and begin introducing gender and sexuality in incremental ways. They create or translate and localise CSE content, and develop experiential, safe ways to engage children, young people and parents through board games, theatre, after-school education, and sports. They work hard to create spaces that children, young people and parents want to engage with continually. Even if the entry points may be menstruation, exploring (binary) gender roles, or about public health services related to sexuality, they find ways to gently push the envelope over time to look into sexual rights, body autonomy, and consent. Slow, steady, grounded, and committed, they do the best they can to talk about these topics while navigating resistance from community stakeholders or being prepared for potential backlash. Their experiences give us enormous strength, courage and motivation to continue our CSE work – we are not alone in our vision for CSE to become a reality for children and young people!
- Parents
When it comes to NGOs and schools working on CSE, an image often conjured up in many people’s minds is that of angry parents storming the NGO or school premises. The image may not be entirely untrue or far-fetched, unfortunately. But we’ve been lucky enough to interact with some incredibly curious and supportive parents who want to create and hold safe, affirming spaces for their children. Memes abound about “gentle parenting” or millennial parents who are trying to parent differently, but we see that many parents are genuinely interested in and eager to be well-prepared to respond to their children’s evolving needs – parenting that they themselves may not have got. Yes, a part of it might be motivated by fear and their desires to protect their children in a world that’s rapidly changing and beyond their understanding. Even so, we find that many parents recognise the importance of engaging with conversations on these sensitive topics. They may be surprised by their children’s world views, articulation of mental health needs, or even their kids’ lingo (“6 7”, anyone?), but parents understand that if they are not in touch with what’s going on, they risk not being able to truly understand and support their children.
In TARSHI’s in-person and online sessions, parents actively try to learn and ask us questions about bodily changes, digital security and safety, emotions, identities, and bullying. Mothers ask how (not whether) to talk about bodily changes, periods and gender roles with their sons. We’re stoked to see more fathers joining our sessions too (not enough fathers see parenting or talking about sexuality as a shared responsibility, but we must recognise small wins). In fests where we talk about our books on sexuality education, young parents (or sometimes folks who don’t yet have children yet but plan to, at some point) curiously browse our books and ask us questions. Some parents actively encourage schools to initiate sessions on CSE. A parent told us that they had started using the proper terms for the genitals with their child (instead of using euphemisms) and was also negotiating this with elders at home who were uncomfortable with using these terms.
We still need many millions of parents to accept the need for CSE. But we do feel encouraged by the growing acknowledgment among parents that talking about sexuality can no longer be avoided. They know that otherwise their children will go looking for information from their friends or online, and that what they find may be inaccurate or even harmful.
- CSE content creators
“Will masturbation make me weak/infertile/is it wrong?” Some version of this question is likely to have come up for anyone working on sexuality decades ago, and even today. TARSHI answered this and many more questions on our helpline that ran for 13 years from 1996 to 2009, and our founder Radhika Chandiramani responded to sexuality-related concerns in the Mid Life Crisis column for The Asian Age newspaper from 1999 to 2002. We were not alone – there were other NGOs, helplines, sexuality educators, of course. And now we’re super happy that there is a new stakeholder in the mix: social media content creators on CSE.
Many individuals passionate about CSE – often spurred by the lack of information and perspective they felt in their own lives growing up – create informative, fun, nuanced content on social media that makes young people pause, learn, or reflect. These content creators are mostly young people themselves, and/or are doctors, parents, sexuality educators, sellers of sexual wellness products. Staying strong through trolling, abuse, threats and unsolicited dick pics, they put in time and effort to communicate important concepts in 30-60-second reels, carousel infographics (or whatever formats hold sway at the time), or even lengthy Reddit responses. They reference pop culture and movies to spark discussions, and patiently respond to offensive or angry comments. Their content spans the spectrum of information on HPV vaccines to misconceptions about penis size, to how to click and share nudes safely, to how to not be creepy when asking someone out. They help bust the idea of all things sex (apart from heterosexual sex for reproduction) being “western” or “against our culture”. There’s humour, anger, passion and patience in their content. There’s vulnerability with the sharing of personal experiences, there’s safety offered for other people to share their questions, their experiences and expressions of sexuality.
The importance of these content creators in a growing online country like India can’t be underestimated. In an informal dipstick survey TARSHI did in 2025 on young people’s sources of information on sexuality and SRHR, we learnt that Instagram, YouTube, Reddit and Google Search were top sources. Parents and teachers tell us regularly about the kinds of interesting and new (and positive) learnings that young people bring them from these sources. We do acknowledge that sometimes information from content creators may stray into incorrect or mistakenly discriminatory territory, especially when they are not actively connected to conversations or formal learning opportunities on SRHR and CSE. That said, we’re thankful that there’s a growing community of content creators supporting the other stakeholders in this CSE journey.
What next?
Social impact work is hard. It’s even harder when you work on sexuality and dream of a world for children and young people where they feel safe, included and affirmed for who they are. Where they don’t feel ashamed or scared about their questions – or choices – and know where and whom to go to when in doubt (or crisis).
There are many stakeholders that share this dream and are working actively, in diverse and creative ways, to realise it. This gives us hope. This is change from bottom up. Schools, teachers, parents, other NGOs, content creators. They are not confined to particular zones. A teacher may be a parent. A doctor may be a community leader. A stay-at-home mum may be a content creator. They create currents across zones. They make and expand affirming ecosystems.
Ramya Anand and Vani Viswanathan together shaped the ideas and structure of this article, with initial inputs from Ayesha Khaliq, Nandhini Jaishankar and Tanvika Gulyani from the TARSHI team.
Cover image by Linus Nylund on Unsplash
