We live in a society that still revolves around the binary of male and female, which is often confused with gender. Sitting across the table is my UGC admit card that has categorised my gender as female, not as a woman. Our progressiveness makes us include transgender people, but only under the category of sex, not gender. Not many seem to know the difference between sex and gender, and even highly educated, aware people often find themselves fumbling and mixing up the two. Sex refers to biological differences, while gender is how people identify themselves. This minute detail that I observed on my admit card led me down the rabbithole of how and from where exactly our knowledge of sex, sexuality, gender, and bodies comes from.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We can attempt to categorise this particular flow of knowledge and information into roughly two categories. The first is formal education which is heavily monitored and controlled by the government and society. The second is an informal, less controlled\/regulated medium which includes pornography, social media, and similar sources of information. Dealing with the formal mode, we get roughly three years of education on human bodies and reproduction. It is interesting to note that double the importance is given to various forms of plant reproduction as compared to human reproduction during these three years of secondary education. Our education about human bodies starts in the 7th grade, where a small chapter introduces us to the changes that occur during adolescence. In the 8th grade there is no dedicated chapter dealing with human bodies, and in the 9th grade, we are introduced to various forms of reproduction in plants and animals that continues over to the 10th grade. And that\u2019s it for formal sex education in India. Sexuality as a topic of discussion and education is entirely missing from school education , with even the term \u2018sexuality\u2019 not being mentioned anywhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
All of us have grown up laughing about various stories of our teachers getting awkward teaching the reproduction chapter in class. Ironically, the same chapter is one of the few topics that students actually read before class. Just a few days ago, a good friend of mine told me that his biology teacher skipped over the entire topic of reproduction. These limited chapters on human reproduction barely mention the term \u2018sex\u2019 and the tone is highly discouraging of sexual activity and premarital sexual activity in general, despite a high number of teenagers and young adults entering consensual sexual relations around this time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Our text books still seem stuck in the age of moral policing. With their constant repetition of words like \u2018emotional maturity\u2019 and \u2018responsibilities\u2019, these texts reinforce the stigma around sex. Instead of normalising and advocating for safer sex practices, they sound like typical neighbourhood moral policing. Sexual intercourse is referred to only in the context of procreation. Sex as a basic human desire finds no mention anywhere. Even the description of human sexual activity is absent in Indian textbooks, as compared to the in-depth description and analysis of plant reproduction (ranging from agents of pollination to detailed descriptions of the movement of pollen within the plant body). By limiting the entire scope of human sexual intercourse to procreation, Indian schools produce a class of young adults poorly equipped to deal with the varying demands of adult sex life. No one teaches young adults about orgasms, self pleasure, or safe sexual practices. My own 10th grade biology teacher warned the class against \u201cmisusing our reproductive organs\u201d to prevent \u201cwear and tear\u201d, crudely referring to premarital sex and masturbation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With already so little provided in textbooks, the authorities that be are determined on imposing more modesty. The latest victim of the governmental modesty police is the image of the famous dancing girl artefact from the Harrapan civilisation, which, in an attempt to alter history and earlier cultures to fit modern modesty narratives, was depicted as covered up with clothes, in a government regulated grade 9 textbook. Oh, how little the Harappan girl knew how she would get to experience modern day censorship!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While studying about reproduction is important, so is learning about gender and sexuality. All mention of gender is restricted to \u2018man\u2019 and \u2018woman\u2019. All sexual relations only find hetronormative mention. Discussion and knowledge about gender and sexuality find no space in educational spheres, and this causes effects that may be observed on two different levels. The first is that this exclusion marginalises young adults who do not resonate with heteronormativity or their assigned genders at birth, and further alienates them by giving them no formal acceptance in the system, with no support from their peers as well, as the space to talk about gender and sexuality was never created in the first place. Second, this this allows for pitting straight young people against their queer peers, and marginalising the latter even further.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With so much control on formal means of education, young adults often turn to questionable sources of information regarding these topics. The majority of our knowledge about what \u2018sexual intercourse\u2019 is comes from porn and online media. Porn dictates what we know about sex, sexuality, and bodies. Sex becomes whatever we see on screen, real or fake, exaggerated or not. Our introduction to queer sexuality also often happens via online media. Most of us have seen lesbian\/gay\/intersex porn even before we knew what these terms meant. Straight men, straight women, homophobic people, etc., often admit to consuming queer content while being hateful towards queer people in everyday life. Queer sexuality thus becomes a commodity like heterosexual porn for them to consume. Along with the rigid binaries of sex and gender, heterosexuality is constantly foregrounded as the default. An online image search of the term \u2018sex\u2019 opens a gallery of hundreds of images of only heterosexual sex. Our physical attributes become the primary markers of gender identity: a woman is defined by long hair, delicate features, often sitting\/lying next to a person with short hair and masculine features, i.e., a man, thus reinforcing social and gender roles subtly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Social media platforms like Instagram , Facebook, Reddit, X, etc, are micro universes connecting millions of people across the world, where information flows like a river. There is no fact checking. We often come across \u2018factoids\u2019 which are easily debunkable through a quick search on our own, but honestly, who is doing it? Are we conscious enough about the information we consume online? These platforms are where much of the youth of today is active. Liberals, queers, homophobes, feminists, anti-feminists, traditionalists etc, alike, all find a platform in these spaces to express their opinions and present facts as myths, and myths as facts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Movies are also a major source of knowledge-generation concerning sexuality\/sex\/gender. \u2018Chandigarh Kare Ashiki\u2019<\/em>, released in 2021 attempted to be progressive by showing a love story between a cis gender male (assigned male at birth) and a transgender woman but cast a cis gender female (assigned female at birth) for the role. This erases trans embodiment in society and denies work to transgender actors. Recently, while I was on a Hollywood spree at the theatres I noticed that the word \u2018sex\u2019 was muted in multiple movies, censored specially for the Indian audience. This caught me off guard as I realised that even the mere mention of the word \u2018sex\u2019 is not normalised.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The impact of living in such a system where formal channels of knowledge concerning sex, sexuality, and gender are heavily censored, is that we end up creating confused young adults who lack basic and important information regarding these topics. The available sources of formal and informal information determine the kind of knowledge we absorb. The lack of essential information around sex, bodies, sexuality, gender, from formal educational sources cuts young adults off early on from discourses around these topics, and adding on to this, the plethora of confusing informal information available online, results in repressed, confused adults who are hostile towards sexuality\/sex\/gender discourses. I have had friends who, despite being very socially aware, did not know that the vagina is not supposed to be washed with soap and they all took it seriously when I said that we clean it with a pipe from the inside and were visibly disappointed to know that we do not. In the 10th grade, the boys in my class were revolted when they found an unused menstrual pad between their books and proceeded to throw it at each other, jumping around in disgust. A friend of mine expressed her disappointment at sex and kissing not feeling exactly like butterflies in the stomach as shown in movies and books. These stories although personal, also reflect society at large.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Learning is a constant process and it is necessary to keep ourselves informed. To this end, we must be aware about the information we consume, and more so about what we pass on, making sure that our sources are genuine and factual. Ignorance is a choice we make for our own comfort, and it\u2019s time we break this chain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Cover image by Bob Brewer<\/a> on Unsplash<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ignorance is a choice we make<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":619,"featured_media":29581,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5450,8],"tags":[255,26,1200,5497,5498,106,5412,375,251,5519,35,408],"class_list":{"0":"post-29580","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-information-and-sexuality","8":"category-voices","9":"tag-comprehensive-sexuality-education","10":"tag-gender","11":"tag-gender-norms","12":"tag-information-and-sexuality","13":"tag-misinformation","14":"tag-porn","15":"tag-queer-inclusion","16":"tag-sex-education","17":"tag-sexuality-education","18":"tag-sexuality-misinformation","19":"tag-social-media","20":"tag-srhr"},"menu_order":0,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29580","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\/619"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29580"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29580\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29582,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29580\/revisions\/29582"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tarshi.net\/inplainspeak\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}