Sex And The City Of Gawks
By Prerna Kherajani, Final year MBBS
Shamana Khan, Final Year MBBS
Sex (sɛks) noun :
A three letter word, short, crisp and triggering enough to stir up a giggle when used by any person, anytime and anywhere.
21st century, the era of producing babies without actually involving the confluence of two bodies and we are still stuck at not being able to ask for sanitary napkins at the chemist shops, “Mumma, can you ask Papa to bring the napkins wrapped in some newspaper? I’ll use a cloth instead until then”, said Zainab, a 22 year old entrepreneur! “Where do babies come from?”, an innocent question that is almost always met with an excuse to not answer it or labelling them as “God’s Gifts” is just the tip of the iceberg we seldom take care of. Just like these questions, a hundred of them are unmined and their double is undiscovered, kept hidden and prohibited to even talk about.
Stuttering at the words like periods, menstruation, sex, even when it comes in civil forms that had the word ‘gender’ in it’s place before isn’t a new saga for the world and the society but are we bringing any change? Well, the world sure has shrunk due to globalisation but at the same time the curtains of open mindedness and acceptance are still yet to unravel. Looking down the history lane, we sure did bring a huge impact with education and social interactions buy why this hesitation?
We consider ourselves liberal because we’ve supported and promoted movies like “Pad Man” and have accepted the content it advocated, we also joke about “Sex” casually in our circles, but when it comes to Sex Education, why do we fall short of it?
Why is sexual education given a backseat?
Why is society and their cultures adamant and reluctant in accepting normal human physiology? Why aren’t we more open to the world that talks about pleasure?
Because of the stigma attached to this topic, we’ve create a society that’s unaware of the concept of “Consent” and “Safe Sex”. Headlines about incidents getting birthed due to these untouched topics frequently flash on our screens. Swear words that demean bodies have become a part of the culture and when talked about the process of changing it, we take a step back!
As medical professionals we see a number of young girls walking everyday to the Gynaecology OPDs and at times in the emergency department, with an unwanted pregnancy or an STD leading to Pelvic Inflammatory Disease and then Infertility, not an once in a blue moon scenario isn’t it? A normal human mind goes through a lot of difficult turmoil. Today, when teenagers experience the lack of a firm support system, especially the absence of one that encourages and welcomes discussion, they reach out to their one omnipresent and omniscient companion. You guessed it — the Internet. While there is a plethora of fascinating and enlightening information on the internet, there is also no dearth of misleading, ambiguous, transphobic, bigoted and harmful content on the web, readily available for mass consumption.
Here our major role is not just to address these issues but also try to make the conversations healthy and open. Using words that are comfortable, using local language and humility can make the circumstance a little more easy going!
At last, instead of hiding our faces when talking about this small three letter word, let’s try to be more accepting for tomorrow your kid might ask you, “where did I come from Mama!”
