{"id":27532,"date":"2024-12-18T13:01:00","date_gmt":"2024-12-18T07:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/?p=27532"},"modified":"2025-10-27T12:09:21","modified_gmt":"2025-10-27T06:39:21","slug":"editorial-parents-teachers-and-cse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/editorial-parents-teachers-and-cse\/","title":{"rendered":"Editorial – Parents, Teachers, and CSE"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Each time a child or adolescent asks a question that may be (even indirectly) related to sexuality, many parents and teachers get squirmy and nervous. This may be because they themselves do not have the information required, but in most cases, it has more to do with the \u2018hush-hush\u2019 that surrounds sexuality. After all, a child\u2019s asking \u201cHow are clouds made?\u201d does not evoke the same anxieties as \u201cHow are babies made?\u201d We are taught shame at an early age, and we then transmit it on. This need not be the case, and in a fascinating interview with Shikha Aleya, Ketaki Chowkhani<\/strong>, author of The Limits of Sexuality Education<\/em>, offers us the refreshing possibilities of the erotics of sexuality education<\/a> and the fact that \u201cthe entire school curriculum and life itself is suffused with sexual meanings\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Avoiding answering questions about sexuality means losing the opportunity not only to impart accurate information but also to create a space of trust and safety for young people. Antara Buzarbaruah<\/strong> makes a compelling case for the significance and relevance of comprehensive sexuality and personal safety education<\/a> and why it is not \u2018only\u2019 for children, and how parents and teachers also need to be educated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Parents often pass the buck to teachers but also offer resistance when teachers step up to the task as Ayesha Khaliq and Nandhini Jaishankar<\/strong> find. They tell us about the experiences and challenges that sexuality educators from different parts of India face while navigating conversations on sexuality with young people<\/a> and the strategies they use to address changing and disparate needs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sexuality educators like everyone else need resources too. ElsaMarie D\u2019Silva<\/strong> reviews Neha Bhat\u2019s Unashamed: Notes from the Diary of a Sex Therapist<\/em> and recommends it highly as a transformative work<\/a> and as an essential tool for those seeking to educate, understand, and embrace the many facets of human sexuality<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sahana G<\/strong>, in a thoughtful piece, writes about her mother and her eight-year-old self, about how each of them grew up in a Bangalore that was transforming in different ways, about how \u201ceach generation pushes against the boundaries inherited from the last\u201d, and, most of all, about the courage to ask and the courage to answer<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This time we have three fiction contributions, each of them also in some way about the courage to ask and the courage, or lack of it, to answer. They are placed under the category of fiction but are actual depictions of the varied realities that we currently live in. Two are about \u2018the talk\u2019 as it happens in school settings. Aradhana Phadke Sardesai<\/strong> writes wryly about the annual sex ed workshop that a group of school kids attend as they go through grades 7, 8 and 9; what they are taught is far less than what they already know, none of their questions are answered, and, of course, there are no birds, no bees<\/a>! But it can be quite different from this, and Taarina Therese Chandiramani<\/strong>\u2019s story is a heartwarming illustration of what happens when \u201c\u2026she\u2019s not here to shame them or lecture them. She\u2019s here to give them words when they have none.<\/a>\u201d Drawing us into the landscape of a dream, Abishek Philip<\/strong> delicately uncovers the complex relationship between social conditioning, emotional vulnerability and intimacy. He writes of the weight of the \u201cwords I left unspoken when the moment called for honesty\u201d and his decision to choose vulnerability over silence<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Hindi we bring you a translation of Riya Parikh<\/strong>\u2019s article on creating safe spaces for children to see things in a different light<\/a> and of Simran Sanganeria<\/strong>\u2019s article about the audacity of sexuality educators<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As we look to a new year, may we be blessed with the ability to hold space for questions about sexuality \u2013 those we are asked by children and adolescents and those we ask of ourselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Cover Image: Teo Georgiev<\/a> for Fine Acts<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Each time a child or adolescent asks a question that may be (even indirectly) related to sexuality, many parents and teachers get squirmy and nervous. This may be because they themselves do not have the information required, but in most cases, it has more to do with the \u2018hush-hush\u2019 that surrounds sexuality.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27536,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65,4627],"tags":[4628,255,214,66,784,26,1200,837,268,99,25,251,2501,2310],"class_list":{"0":"post-27532","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-editorial","8":"category-parents-teachers-and-cse","9":"tag-birds-and-bees","10":"tag-comprehensive-sexuality-education","11":"tag-cse","12":"tag-desire","13":"tag-femininity","14":"tag-gender","15":"tag-gender-norms","16":"tag-gender-roles","17":"tag-masculinity","18":"tag-relationships","19":"tag-sexualities","20":"tag-sexuality-education","21":"tag-sexuality-educator","22":"tag-sisa-spaces"},"menu_order":0,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27532"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27532\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28731,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27532\/revisions\/28731"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}