Of the birds and the bees

Should the schools be authorized to teach reproductive health issues? This issue has been a thorny one for years,  and  many people - parents, church authorities, even teachers - still believe that they should teach children what sex is all about by starting off with, “Well, you know, the birds and the bees…” and then moving on to another unrelated topic. These are the same people who strongly object to the passage of the Reproductive Health bill in Congress, claiming that sex education in the schools, one of the features of the bill, will lead to promiscuous behavior.

The other day, I was leafing through albums of my column upon the request of a publisher, and came across a piece entitled, “Of the birds and the bees,” written on May 17, 1990. The column began with a couple of friends and myself - all solo parents then - talking, over churros and chocolate e, about how we should discuss the subject of sex with our children. I had written the piece 20 years ago, and I still hold the view expressed therein, today. Let me print parts of the column.

“When we were growing up, our parents did not talk to us about sex. They told green jokes with us listening in the sidelines, but when asked by their prodigious children about how babies were made, they would hem and haw, ‘Well, you see, the birds and the bees…’

“The fathers took the matter of ‘educating’ the boys into their own hands. They were the ones who took their boys to the doctor for circumcision, or to the local medic who cheerfully performed such a dramatic task in the shade of a tamarind tree, his instruments consisting of a huge piece of stone that served as his chopping block, a knife, and a pile of fresh guava leaves that he crushed and pasted on the swollen organ. The male species made a big thing of what they called “rite of passage,” but why the ritual was necessary the fathers would not explain.

“By and large, I think my father’s generation thought sex education came as a matter of course. Boys had sex with the “bad” women in town, and that “baptism of fire” affirmed their manhood. One of the girls I had merienda with said her father-in-law took his sons to brothels and later brought over girls from a cheap disco house to his house to “complete” the celebration of his son’s graduating from college with high honors.

“Boys with less adventurous fathers learned about sex in their own sweet time. They read Playboy and Penthouse and tucked them under their beds. They discovered those ‘perilous’ places by themselves. I did not sense my parents’ worrying about my male siblings’ ‘coming of age.’ Perhaps they did not discuss such things when I was around.

“The prevailing attitude, as it is right now, is that, shocking though it may be, boys can have sex, but not girls, that boys are not punished for getting a girlfriend or a casual date pregnant, but girls should be punished, and if possible, be married off to the guy who caused them to be pregnant.

“How were we girls educated on sexual matters? We had our menses, were told they would come regularly every month, and that if we missed having them a couple of months, we were, good Lord! pregnant, but how that happened we were not told.  Our mothers, for sure, were not told what to expect on their wedding night, nor that sex was pleasurable, or that they could ask their husbands to have sex with them.

“In the girls’ college dormitories was where a lot of learning took place. Away from snooping mothers, we imbibed our instructions from such banned books as Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Frank Harris’s dirty biography which we promptly hid beneath our pillows when the matron announced her presence outside our door with the tinkling of her silver bell. Some of the girls completed their half-baked education by actually becoming pregnant - and not knowing how that came about, and getting married.

“Actually, today’s parents are spared from the ticklish task of explaining human and sexual reproduction. Through objective, scientific texts and unemotional graphic presentations in school, sixth graders know how babies are born, and can talk about it with detached precision. I don’t believe kids who are shown pictures of sexual organs and how fetuses are lodged and expelled become maniacs. The kids learn early about the dangers of careless abandon, of unprotected sex, of having too many babies and without parental resources to support them. They know about the pill, the condom, vasectomy - and many wait until they’re married to have sex, with the same partner, and if they believe they should not have sex before and outside of marriage, that is their personal choice.

“I told my friends that while we as parents are naturally concerned that our kids are aware of reproductive health issues, there is another thing we should think about, and that is how to raise children who believe in equality between the sexes. Should we adopt the double standard of morality, i.e. what’s good for the male should not be good for the female? Should we allow our boys to have fun and games without hurting the opposite sex?

“These days girls, particularly those in college, are aware that they have rights. Even prostitutes have the right to say no to the advances of paying customers who beat them up or who simply do not appeal to them. Prostitutes, unfortunately because of poverty, sell their bodies for the sexual gratification of men. But with the increasing real fear of AIDS contamination, the boys are aware that sex with their girl friends is safer than with prostitutes. As mothers, it is not just the question of our boys’ getting a girl pregnant that scares us; our real concern is should we allow our sons to have sex with their girlfriends without exploiting the latter’s vulnerability and using them simply to satisfy their sexual needs?”

Today, 20 years after I wrote the above column, my message is just as clear: boys and girls should have the same rights, privileges and responsibilities over their bodies.

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My email: [email protected]