Why Indian Schools Need Better Sex Education

This past May, in Delhi, India, a harrowing series of screenshots of messages sent in a group chat was circulated on Twitter and Instagram. The messages revealed that the participants of this chat — who were mainly teen boys from relatively prosperous backgrounds, who called themselves “The Bois Locker Room” — were unabashedly berating and objectifying girls with whom they attended school. Roughly two days after this incident, the Delhi Commission for Women, a governmental body created to investigate and examine all matters relating to the safeguards provided for women under the constitution and other laws, arrested all adult contributors to the chat, including a rising senior from Noida. Additionally, the mobile phones of 15 members were sent for forensic analysis after being confiscated by the police.

While feminists expressed their anger at the time, no serious action was ultimately taken by the regional educational boards to appropriately establish any kind of policies to prevent such conduct in the future among schools in Delhi. This is hardly uncommon, according to Srishti Srinivas, a rising senior from central Delhi. She told The FBomb that her school authorities not only “rarely take the initiative to discipline a sexual predator or perpetrator,” but actually victim-blame and slut-shame girls who are subjected to this treatment. This attitude is evident even in everyday disciplinary actions; administrators “take the strictest action against a girl who dares to wear a colored hair tie or apply tinted lip balm,” Srinivas said.

Sexist microaggressions perpetuated among peers also contribute to the prevalence of rape culture in Indian high schools. Girls are coerced by social convention to bite back any rebuttals to sexist humor and shrug them off, while boys are encouraged to perpetuate such humor, which creates a culture of social sanctions by which this behavior is normalized. Lamentably, teachers often ignore this behavior, or are seemingly unable to distinguish genuine humor from sexism. This is not only distasteful but also precarious since sexist humor acts as a social license to normalize misogyny and chauvinism. In fact, a 2017 study conducted by the Harvard Kennedy School found men’s enjoyment of sexist jokes is positively correlated to their rape proclivity, which is a “self-reported measurement that demonstrates a man’s willingness (not to be confused with likelihood) to rape a woman under the circumstance that they would not be discovered.” The study deduced that sexist humor tolerated or initiated by women cultivates a sort of social tolerance toward casual sexism.

Paavani Ojha, the co-founder of Mardaangi, an online platform that gives male victims of sexual assault an outlet to voice their stories, believes that awareness of consent is crucial to ensuring the complete erasure of tolerance toward sexual misconduct.

“Consent is an alien concept that is never brought up in schools, which can result in sexual assault,” Ojha told The FBomb. As a high school student herself, Ojha recalled that the only sex education she received was when her school split up the boys and girls in different groups, and talked to each about their respective pubescent developments, “not once explicating upon the numerous themes that sexual encounters encapsulate,” Ojha said. Ojha also recalled that her teachers often shamed her for being friends with boys and asked her to stop wearing dark colored bras because they attract the “wrong” kind of attention. “Rather than restricting girls from expressing their gender identities, schools should focus on holistic education which will ascertain that a girl can be herself without the fear of harassment by her male colleagues. Refusing to acknowledge that students will venture into sexual dynamisms won’t ever prevent mishaps from transpiring,” concluded Ojha.

The Adolescence Education Programme, which is a governmental initiative that aims to empower young people with age-appropriate and culturally relevant information and develop skills to enable them to respond to real-life situations in positive and responsible ways, covers certain elements of comprehensive sex education by helping adolescents challenge stereotypes, identify and report violations, and understand reproductive health rights. However, it is partial to gender binary folks, views marriage and sexual acts as compulsory for women, and has little discourse about abortion. Schools’ poor implementation of this program furthers the damage done to the understanding with regards\ to sexuality of numerous Indian youths.

Schools can only become safe havens once they adapt comprehensive, all-inclusive sex education in their curriculums to equip teenagers with the proper knowledge and humanistic skills to healthily navigate their sexualities on their own terms.