She had never envisaged that her unawareness and naivety would lead to her devastation. The day she entered the world of social media, she didn’t know she was going to get entangled in that fabricated virtual loop.
It was a Thursday evening when she sat before her desktop to browse through the internet. For the first time ever, she had discovered what sexual arousal felt like, what an active generation of sexual hormones was like, as she went through uncensored sensual images. At the back of her mind, she feared getting caught by her parents, and because of that fear, she cleared the ‘history’ searched all over, believing that what she was doing was ‘wrong’.
Gradually, she started talking to boys through social media sites, like Facebook. Talking to people of the opposite sex aroused feelings in her. She felt a certain sense of attraction, which was only natural. She got into an intimate (virtual) relationship with a boy, which her parents eventually found out about. They brutally beat her up, and that led to her committing suicide. Alas! What Was Her Fault?
Sex-education has been severely restricted and is not availed by the majority of adolescents when they need it the most. What was so ‘shameful’ for her parents and so embarrassing for her, was something which should have been discussed long back. For children, particularly in India, uttering the word “sex” in front of parents is a sin. Sex-education is practically unheard of in schools, which primarily is the root cause of multiple problems.
In this era when we talk about the assaults being done on women, the innumerable rape cases, and the rapid rate of cyber-crime, why can’t we just sit down and talk about issues openly, and find the reasons and causes of mishaps? Why aren’t adults or parents questioning themselves and their inability to discuss things with children openly, instead of blaming teens?
If, and only if, we could come out of the shackles of shame, and clearly discuss things with children and allow them to have access to sex-education at the right time, maybe we could stop other such suicides in the future.
We need to start talking about feminism, patriarchy and hegemony at a very basic level, so that we could contribute towards building a better nation. We can’t be blaming our children anymore for things they get involved in, when they don’t even understand the consequences of their acts.
Intimacy is openly discussed by an individual, that too with his or her partner, only after performing nuptial rites, which is precisely why sex is nothing short of committing a sin, for many adolescents.
In India, sex education stops when the teacher skips ‘The Reproductive System’ in the 10th standard. If pathfinders cease the growth of knowledge, where will the followers go? Yes, we do need sex education in schools, but we need it at home first. We need parents to know the names of their wards’ teachers, we need families to question day care centres, to question other children and their own as to what goes on there.
The time has come when we need to open our eyes, open the gates of knowledge, break through the walls of mortification, and take a vital step in making children aware of sex education at the right time to decrease the ever increasing rate of rape and cybercrime all around. Sex education should be included as a compulsory subject. Period.