A digital magazine on sexuality, based in the Global South: We are working towards cultivating safe, inclusive, and self-affirming spaces in which all individuals can express themselves without fear, judgement or shame
Each time a child or adolescent asks a question that may be (even indirectly) related to sexuality, many parents and teachers get squirmy and nervous. This may be because they themselves do not have the information required, but in most cases, it has more to do with the ‘hush-hush’ that surrounds sexuality.
I feel that parents, teachers and CSE can make room for these disparate realities of adolescents by first acknowledging the limits of formal sexuality education, that the curriculum imparted formally fails in providing the kind of learning that happens through other sources.
A child’s social environment in their foundational years plays a critical role in shaping their worldview and influences their responses and the way they communicate with their peers.
Despite the lack of a formal Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) curriculum in place in India, there has been a growing interest in providing CSE programmes in schools.
Gender and sexuality are like constituent parts of a jigsaw puzzle that keeps morphing in such a way that nothing ever ‘fits’ for long, and the game begins anew each time.
Here’s to some quiet time listening in to what people are saying, and consuming, on the Internet, particularly on social media, on the subject of gender and sexuality.
Safe spaces in the way that they often circulate are depoliticised and the assumption is that there won’t be any conflicts, but there can be no safe space without an exchange of ideas, which will create some bad feelings leading to conflict.