7th Grade

Aria walked into her school’s auditorium, giggling with the rest of the girls, because they were about to have their very first Sex Ed workshop. 

Everyone whispered and began guessing what topics the people conducting the workshop would cover.

“Will they tell us exactly what sex is?”

“Will they tell us what 69 is, ‘cause we already know!”

“Will they show us a picture of a dick?”

That last question came out of Rohini’s mouth, Aria’s best friend. 

Their mutual friend, Kabir, had told them what was told to the boys during their Sex Ed workshop, which happened right before the teachers began to herd the girls out of their class. He told them that Rohan had been ogling at the drawings that were shown to them, of women’s bodies. 

Everyone settled down and the talk began. There was a buzz in the air. 

Halfway through the talk, Aria was bored out of her mind, listening to the man conducting the session drone on and on. She thought that they’d talk about contraceptives and reproduction, and actually say out loud that the penis goes into the vagina but they didn’t; instead they talked about menstruation. And no drawing of a dick was shown.

Soon after, there was a session, where all the girls were sent into one class and the boys, the other. 

This time, a woman stepped in, equipped with a slideshow that made every single person in the room roll their eyes. 

She told them about hormones and menstruation. And how they shouldn’t bully each other and that friendship is magic, and all that jazz.

But then, she began to talk about crushes, this is when the people who had fallen asleep were shaken awake by their friends, and the people who were slouching and trying not to fall asleep sat up straight and became fully alert. 

She showed them a diagram, a triangle, with what she said were three types of love: compassionate love, romantic love and infatuation. In this formulation, compassionate love involved intimacy and commitment, romantic love included passion and intimacy, and infatuation included passion and commitment, and all three things together made ‘consummate love.’

Aria thought that this was incredibly stupid, the idea that love has to be certain things in order for it to be real, as long as the people in love were happy, who cared? Everyone has different needs and wants. The needs and wants of one person may not align with the needs and wants of other people, and that is perfectly fine. 

Finally, the questions segment of the talk came up, and Rohini, the bold bold girl that she was, raised her hand and loudly asked, “Ma’am, ma’am, why do condoms have flavours?”

Of course, everyone burst into laughter and giggles.

And, of course, nobody answered the question. 

8th Grade 

Aria and the rest of the girls were once again herded into the auditorium like sheep.

Aria and Rohini were exasperated by the end of the talk. It was the same thing that they’d been through last year! All about menstruation! The people involved in organising sex ed talks seriously underestimated what 8th graders already knew. But that wasn’t what was infuriating. 

Krupa had asked, “Why aren’t girls allowed into the kitchen or in temples while they have their period?”

And the people conducting the talk shared a glance and began with “Uh well…” 

But, Krupa continued, saving them, “Is it because of the energies of the temple? It’s upward, and the energy of a woman on her period is downward.”

The people running the talk seemed all too relieved and said, “Maybe… it could be…there may be such energies.”

Aria angrily whispered to Rohini, “This is such rubbish! These ‘upward’ and ‘downward’ energies don’t exist, what a load of crap! And they didn’t even say that it was crap, they said that there was a chance that this sexist nonsense is true! Who hired these people?”

Rohini nodded and replied, “yeah”, but that was all she said. Aria walked out of that auditorium enraged, she knew that she should have said something, but she didn’t, and now some girls probably believed that being denied things and being ostracised while menstruating was normal, even scientific. And what the person conducting the workshop just did, was endorse these misogynistic practices. 

9th Grade

Aria went to the latest edition of the sex ed talk without much expectation. She was cynical and her cynicism was clearly justified, because the slideshow was the same, the triangle showing the three types of love was the same. It was all the same except one added segment on STDs, but how they were contracted was not talked about. 

She whispered to Rohini, “Do you think they’ll talk about orgasms?”, because everyone in their grade had already read smut, and knew what they are. “Do you think that they’ll tell us how our bodies produce them? Like, the biology of it?” 

Rohini shrugged and said, “They probably won’t even talk about masturbation”, and they didn’t. They did, however, talk about porn and how it’s bad and that we shouldn’t watch it. 

Rohini whispered to Aria, “Isn’t it good to know what having sex looks like before we actually go out there and have sex? Like I know that porn is probably exaggerated and real sex is probably not like that, but won’t it give us some idea of what it’s like?”

As they were walking out of the classroom, Aria asked Rohini, “As future adults who might have sex, they should be talking to us about orgasms, pleasure, and all, shouldn’t they?”

Rohini nodded, “Yeah, they should, they should also show us condoms, like bro, I’ve never even seen one, I dunno what it looks like and I think they should.”

Aria added, “Yeah like whenever people have sex in movies the woman always says that she’s ‘on the pill’, but what exactly is ‘the pill’?”

Cover Image: Photo by Laura Baker on Unsplash