Consent, sex and love: Much needed conversations with adolescent girls

“Even if she loved him or was friends with him, she never asked him to touch or rather kiss her.”

This one statement says a lot of things, expresses lot of feelings and generates dilemma as to how one needs to negotiate consent; how does one understand that talking or being friends, gestures like laughing or being close to someone doesn’t mean you are given a free pass to infringe other’s bodily integrity in the name of expressing oneself. In our society while girls are never taught to give consent or say NO to things that involves them whether asking for something or making a choice on the another hand, the environment created gives full hand opportunity to boys to do whatever they feel like in terms of acting on their choices which may or mayn’t involve other person so they safely assume that it’s not really necessary to ask others especially girls. 

This might sound like a judgment but to back with logic – we can take examples from recent cases of sexual harassment where the accused were very learned men – judges, film makers, politicians, journalists- all these men in their statement said that the victim never said no, made gestures which were inviting, they didn’t hear a NO! Even the judicial system gave away the statements that questioned victims on whether they actually said NO? It’s weird how people don’t understand – No! The idea of this session was to engage with the adolescent girls on sex, condoms, love and relationships and most importantly consent – telling them it is their right that they can say yes or no to things that want or don’t want.  

The session on ‘Sex education’ began with the story of Paro which ended with the question as to what would you do if you were Paro? Some answers were predictable, some were unique and some of them were questions!

‘I would slap him’

‘I would beat the shit out of him’

‘Tell my parents or tutor or friends’

‘Would leave the tuition’

‘I would ask why he did this to me.’

‘I would kiss back’

‘Surprised, may be stare back’

‘This was against her will, she would tell him that’

‘The kiss was on cheek or on lips?’

In the next activity, the participants were divided into the groups of 4 and were asked to share ‘whether they have heard the word sex in school, family, friends or seen on TV’

‘We have seen sex in many movies (they named the particular movies) and my friends do talk about sex’

‘I have read something about sex in science textbooks as to how babies are made when parents have sex’

‘My friend told me that sex happens between boy and girl’

‘I have seen that boy and girl kissed in the play guard perfume advertisement and in a TV serial’

‘Yes, I have seen boys and girls staying very very close to each other and kissing’

‘I have heard this word from my sister, my friends also told me that all boys and girls have sex at some point. I have seen people doing sex in movies’

‘I have read in the newspaper – if you have problems related to sex, contact on this number or addresses’

‘I haven’t heard about sex but I do know about good touch and bad touch’

‘I had asked my sister about sex’

‘I heard from a boy who said I will have sex with my girlfriend’

Usually we screen movies to explain sex and condoms, however here we prepared role plays to explain the same. It was interesting and new thing for us too – seeing the reactions of the participants we safely can say that it worked well. After performing the play building understanding on sex, the outpour of questions paved the need for explaining condoms. With these plays, we could also see the discomfort and fear on their faces which actually points out at the ways girls and boys are raised. Even when they were not exactly aware of the word sex, they knew that it’s something bad or something that brings shame, and when they knew what sex is – they are scared for various reasons! This disheartens me because just being a girl in this society comes with a huge burden that acknowledging one might be interested in engaging in sex could be a scary thought not because of the process but what would people think of me? We tried dwelling on this feeling as well. 

Lot of questions were asked to us privately and not in the large group with the fact that many of them were still struggling with this new knowledge-

‘Are there female condoms too?’

‘How does a condom look like?’

‘Who can get pregnant?’

‘Any alternatives of condoms’

While I was answering individual questions, slowly many other girls too joined in with curiosity and more questions. This really uplifted my mood as we might have been little successful in challenging the shame around sex and supporting the girls understand that talking about sex after alls is nothing to be ashamed off.