Challenging the shame and awkwardness around physical changes as part of adolescence

“I don’t particularly remember something that indicated I am a boy or a girl but people generally used to say that you are a boy and those are girls!”

“I came to know that I am a girl when I had my first periods. Everything changed after that.”

Same question and two polar opposite answers! We kick- started our first ever online gender, sexuality and reproductive health program for adolescents with first workshop on ‘my body is changing’. This program is heart and soul of gender work at Sahas, we have been working for more than 3 years in collaboration with various grass root organizations and government schools to be able to extend sexuality education to adolescents of low socio-economic backgrounds as they are most vulnerable to gender based violence.

COVID-19 crisis posed numerous challenges in building discourse on gender and sexuality with adolescents: mobilization – reaching out to participants from low SEC, do we implement entire program with the same set of participants or conduct separate sessions for different set of participants, what are the dire topics that should be talked about, will the participants be comfortable to engage on these topics through technology and no to forget heavy use of technology – which may or may be available for the participants.  So, we sat down with our collaborating partners and a team was created for ideation, suggestions, and mobilization for inviting the adolescents for gender, sexuality and reproductive health program along with providing technological support to the adolescents who might not have access to laptop or mobile phone.

Adolescence is a very crucial age of life which is dominated by physical changes that facilitates the way for becoming sexual beings – interestingly this entire conversation is missing from the lives of people who enter into adolescence primarily because our context shames the words of sexual organs and sex at large. So, for me – puberty is one of the most important workshop as part of our adolescent program because it is the first step towards unpacking shame, awkwardness that surrounds our sexual organs and physical changes that take place. It is challenging indeed to facilitate on-ground because the participants are exposed to this kind of conversation for the first time, so I didn’t really anticipate how this would turn out online. However I was excited for this challenge because we don’t really know for how long this crisis will go on and god knows what would our new ‘normal’ would be and conversations on gender and sexuality has waited too long to pause here.

The workshop on ‘My body is changing’ began with brief introduction of our work at Sahas, intention setting and objective for this session. We then invited the participants to introduce themselves along with one thing that they are grateful for during this COVID crisis. Their responses were very thoughtful and interesting-

‘Usually I spend lot of time in community library, learning guitar and spending rest of the time with my friends but because of this situation – I am able to spend more time with my family and the best part is I have come to my village for the first time. I am able to appreciate my mom and dad more’

‘I am grateful that I am able to connect through internet and use technology for other purposes than just using it for social media.’

‘Apart from going to school, most of my time is spent in working at local shop. But because of this crisis, I don’t have to do either – there is no work load, I am so relieved, I can play, talk and draw.’

‘I have used this time to hone my creative skills – my painting has become better, I have learnt few more songs and I have got more hobbies’

‘I love cooking and experimenting with it – now I can do it though I have limited supply’

On the question of what made them think they are a boy or a girl for the first time –

‘I came to know that I am a girl because I was given the clothes that are worn by girls. Also the way the language for girls and boys are different – like mein jaati hoon, khati hoo and so on ’

‘My parents never discriminated me! For them it didn’t matter if I am a girl or a boy and they never made me feel that ways. My dad proudly says that I am their son and he loves me no matter what others believes’

‘I got to know that I am girl because of changes in my body’

The next part of the workshop was tricky because we wanted to recreate the activity of body map online. When we do body mapping in schools and communities, it takes efforts to engage them as a group to draw body map, write names of organs and discuss the questions around it but here they were asked to do individually. I am so grateful and happy to see that these participants took a step ahead by creating their body maps and share it with us in the large group.

There was hesitation, confusion and sort of discomfort on talking about good things and bad things about the changes that are happening in their bodies.

‘Our behavior changes, male body gets testosterone – too much of that hormone can influence our sexuality!’

‘The good part is that I used to be physically weak as a child, but now my body is stronger, have more muscles and I feel good about it. But the bad part is that I have hair all over my body – it itches and is irritating. I don’t like it’

‘I hate stomach aches, nausea, cramps and pain in legs that comes as part of periods. I just don’t want to have those kind of pain every month’

‘There are so so many problems that comes with growing up especially for girls. People see you in weird ways, there are many restrictions posed to as to when can we go out, whom we can go out with or what kind of clothes can we wear. This is weird what has physical changes to do with all this restrictions’

Taking cue from the discussion points, we engaged with participants on what does puberty means, what all changes happen during adolescence?, sexual organs and physical changes that happen during adolescence.  We used various tools to make these conversations interactive, participative and fun rather than lecture mode. Few questions followed this discussion-

‘Till when do these changes keep occurring in our body – like till what age?’

‘If these changes don’t happen then what do we do?’

I was thrilled that the conversations that are considered tabooed and absolute no-no in schools and in households, we were able to do them even during COVID-19 crisis. Very happy and amazed by openness, curiosities and vibrant energy these participants brought to the workshop on Puberty!

Post workshop, one of the message made me smile –

‘I enjoyed the session so much. I always thought that if someone asked me about any of these, how I would explain. I was uncomfortable before but now I feel confident because I understand the importance of these conversations. Now I can talk to anyone and explain anything they ask me related to physical changes. What I loved most about this session was that no one was forced to do anything, it’s the way you talk brought comfort to the participants so that they could ask questions without feeling judged or ashamed’