Chapter 2: Sex and periods
Mr.Naive: So how are you?
She: I’m having blood running down from my uterus.
Mr.Naive: You are on your…..
She: Name it has. Like you do.
Mr.Naive: Haan but Bhaiya baju mein bethe hain. It won’t look good.
She: What would not look good? The typing? Is he reading your chat?
Mr.Naive: No. But I’m not hiding it as well.
She: So WHAT! It’s a normal thing. Your mom has it. Your dadi had it. Tabhi tum paida ho pae. It’s period. Menstruation. It’s natural and normal. Treat it as it is.
Mr.Naive: …..
*Caption*-
If I make you to read a headline in front of your parents:
*Centre has cut off the GST from Women Sanitation Pads.*
Some/most of us will hesitate. If you will too hesitate, Indian ‘youth-society’ is not as much developed as we say it is. The fault is not ours. From the day of our birth we are told that talking about such things in public is not good, and it’s uncomfortable and inappropriate. It’s personal, ofcourse. But we created animosity towards awareness. Due to that, if a girl tries to express her feelings to a boy about her periods, he will ensue it into sex appeal in the conversation because the boy never thought that talking about this is normal. No daughter can talk about this to her father. It will turn out to be the most embarrassing phase of her life. And vice-versa. Thousands reasons can be listed. Majorily liket: Lack of education, involvement of sex, polarization between cultural teachings and sex education, decreasing the disparity among opposite sex, limitations of relationships etc., resulting to rise in illogical taboo regarding men for menstruation cycle and sex education.
My point is, we have to put forth our efforts to eradicate these stereotype. This mentality is deeply rooted in our unconscious mind and, hence, will require a lot of conscious efforts.
-Firstly, whenever you come across such topics, feel no shame or guilt to know more about it. You feel comfortable with someone to talk about this? GO AHEAD. The more we consciously educate ourselves about it, the more we will unconsciously treat it as a normal and natural thing. And, of-course, that will show the kind of maturity that a girl wants to see in society.
Second. If you are raising a child, you must be aware that she/he is going to study about reproduction, menstruation cycle, sex organs from class 8th onwards by our Indian education system. But it will be merely a study and not education. Until the right kind of awareness is provided to the kid. That’s the age when you should also start educating your child about this. It’s better that the child learn about such personal and natural things through teachers and parents, on whom she/he can rely. And not from people of same age,, who themselves don’t know how to maturely deal with such things and hence get familiarize with the sexual topics in a dirty and bad sense.
In our society, also the previous ones, we haven’t treated sex education as a basic education. Every generation in their middle age have various habits and mentality deeply rooted in them and with that mentality they form a society. So we can just change and establish the mentality of ours and the coming generation respectively. So we better focus on that. It’s one of the steps towards building a better world for progeny and beyond. Especially for girls, who will have a gift from ancestors to live in a society where rape, murder, harassment will be a crime, not just as per law, but as per conscience.