Finally got around to writing about a topic close to my heart and something that I’ve been meaning to write (& right) for quite a while now.
I am sure that most people reading this have debated, read and deliberated over this topic at expansive length but I just wanted to question the ridiculous morality that most of us seem to harbor when it is related to anything close to sex.
The genesis for this post first happened when I had gone to visit one of my dad’s office colleagues; they have a son around the age of 4. He had just come out of his bath and his mom was drying him up with a towel. In the meantime, the kid was innocently playing with his private part. The way in which his mother reacted when she spotted it, was shocking – she first slapped him and shouted at him for doing something that was dirty and which he had been warned before against indulging in, and actually fell to tears which she quickly swallowed when she realized that I was present in the room.
This act between mother and son was a spontaneous one. The son’s act was spontaneous due to his natural curiosity and the mother’s due to her indoctrinated horror at something she perceives as a ‘dirty act’. I am sure that she was acting out of love and genuine concern for her child but was unable to fathom the damaging consequences with which she handled this incident.
And I believe that this is a common instance that happens across a lot of homes in India and abroad. Maybe other parents do not show an outburst along the lines that this ignorant woman showed but I’m sure that such things are heavily frowned upon till today.
This opening act leads to my central thesis of sex being invariably seen as a “dirty thing”/”an immoral thing”/ “an animal or carnal instinct” / “the devils act” ….(adjectives galore).
This medieval idea of sex being portrayed as “an immoral act” has pervaded to this date and defied logic and rationality. And believe it or not, it is hardwired into the maximum majority from childhood, along the lines of the kid above. We are allowed to question on why we have a nose, how does a car move, why is the sky blue – but as soon as we ask our elders “how did babies come” or “what are condoms” – glances are exchanged, the room becomes deathly still and the kid feels he is being taken to the gallows for these filthy thoughts.
Our elders are genuinely ignorant of this fact – the fact that they imbibe a sense of horror to sex in the same way that their parents have imbibed in them, without a moment’s pause of thought on what damage they are inflicting on their kids.
From childhood itself sex and everything related to it is submerged under a guilty thrill…a guilt that manifests itself in ugly forms over the lifespan of an individual’s life.
This early trauma for the kid when it comes to anything sexual makes a deep and lasting impression on the child’s latter life when it comes to relationships and obviously physical intimacy.
The kid senses the secrecy shrouding any mention of this topic and starts to either swallow this natural curiosity or satisfies it in hushed conversations with school friends and the external media in today’s age.
The problem being – she develops a distorted view on sex that lasts throughout her life and is permeated into her children and her confused relationship with her lovers.
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*She represents the adult male and female.
I hope to write more on this topic. As you can imagine, the topic is very vast and there are multiple things that I would like to cover. I genuinely believe that our generation has suffered greatly due to the duality that is related to sexual morals and I hope that it is not transferred to our kids.
As a disclaimer, I also want to include that I am greatly influenced by Bertrand Russell’s – Marriage & Morals.
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