SEX EDUCATION ALL WRONG.

It’s a great idea to teach, at every stage of life, appropriate sex education to children. It is not only necessary; it is the bedrock of a well balanced approach to a normal individuality. But look around and see how we teach one thing and do another. 

The child of today must be so frustrated and confused at what it is that constitutes normal sexuality. And by this I do not mean sexual orientations as that is a function of as much the environment as individual make-up. I mean, the development of a healthy approach to all things sexual.

We begin this age-appropriate sex education in the early days of a child’s life as a toddler by teaching a child to use in-appropriate names for sex organs, we will call the male sex organ anything but the easily identifiable name of penis, pee pee, thingy, and in our native languages, even more ludicrous names have been developed to attribute anything but normalcy to the sex organ (Yorubas- kokoro *dies*).  

The female sex organ is also described in (if it were not so pathetic, it would be criminal) terms such as wee wee, down below, front bum and several other laughable monikers that suggest to the child that speaking the names of such hallowed organs of the body is anything but normal.

We then shroud interpersonal relationships in such secrecy as to suggest to growing (read inquisitive) young children that we are asexual beings. Bearing all of this background, such children arrive at their adolescence, ill-equipped to handle their own sexuality and then get treated with the right amount of suspicion that confirms to their mind that they better have no sexual leanings or they will be burnt at a stake.

Do bear in mind that by this time, these children may have unfortunately come in contact with an irresponsible adult or two who have tried to define sexuality for them by abusive relationships and further skewed their understanding of sexuality.

At this juncture, several parents then come awake as if the child just grew a brain overnight and needs to be assisted in using the brain to figure out what parts of the body do and how they function. Hellllloooooo!!!!! You are too fucking late! Excuse my French!

 This is the picture of the failure of our sex education and it has nothing to do with the devil much as we would like it to. We are failing in modeling to children and youth that sexuality is a good and great gift that we were blessed with when we were born and which will enable us to navigate the relationships that we will form here on earth and lead us aright and stand us in good stead throughout our lives. This is the failure we must seek to redress.

Speaking to a friend recently who had wondered why mobile phones do not have sexual words as suggestions when you try to type a message on predictive texting (yes, we use the words and have to type them in full every time! Sigh!). We concluded that those who make phones must have no sexuality and it struck me that as many spheres of life pretend that we humans are asexual, this is one more aspect of the lie that is our sexuality.

How many of us, as very world savvy as we are, throw up our African-ness at any display of affection or sexuality and conclude in the deep recesses of our minds that any display of sexuality by a person equates promiscuity? 

Several encounters with young adults (not even children) will give one the assumption that every display of sexuality is to be done under electric light and even then, in as far a recess or receptacle as possible. This attitude is why we need to then remind those who are legally (can one be illegally?) married that the bed or bedroom is not the only ring in which to express sexuality.

Speaking to my eight year old recently, I was shocked when she was revising notes on physical education and refused to pronounce a particular word spelt s-e-x. I was totally shocked! What is this? 

Here was a child raised as we had tried in as ‘open’ an atmosphere as we could muster. Hubby and I had this unspoken agreement that it was not okay to raise ‘regular’ kids, we had not bothered with any synonyms for body parts when they were growing.  And even though we had many ‘oopsies’ moments when we had conversations with other people and the girls used the correct terms for body parts and every adult turned ashen grey and looked everywhere except at us and tried to use their eyes to dig a hole to stick us into for allowing such…….(well, I don’t know!) You tell me! How then did she pick up this ‘it must be a bad word and I may be hanged for using it’ attitude from? 

I went on to make her read over and over again and we are still working on how many times I can bring sex up in a day without her acute embarrassment.

We cannot deny the existence of a thing through the formative years of a child and hope that they will then suddenly wake up as adults and embrace the right-ness of said thing. 

If we must educate our children and young adults right about sexuality, we must begin to re-orientate ourselves and accept that we are sexual beings and that acknowledgement must carry with it, the responsibility to free ourselves and others of the acute embarrassment of having body parts that bring us pleasure and define our intimate relationships. 

I believe it is only then that we as responsible sexual adults can appropriately educate our children aright in sex education.

Please note, I do not advocate a Western sex-glorified approach to life but I do believe that every child will be better able to choose the right path for their sexuality when we do not treat this very important part of life as something to be ashamed of and the ability to make an important choice  of the right use of their sexuality for themselves will be the best sex education we would have bequeathed our children to safeguard them in this increasingly perverted world.