It is how the safest place for you to be, can turn out to be the place where you end up feeling the most suffocated at. The place where you cherish your laughter, childhood, silly pranks, innocence and how it can also turn out to be the place where you buried your consistent cries for help, silently wishing somebody would understand how it would feel for an eight year old to be touched, somebody who has no knowledge of even their body parts. Two hands to draw, to paint, to build, two legs to walk, to cycle, to run, to fall, a tongue to taste that tempting dessert, a stomach to digest, a nose to smell the flowers, lips to make a smile, or put your mother’s lipstick and act like an adult, two glittering eyes to see and appreciate the world, two ears to listen to your parents, teachers and sometime to the little bird in your garden. Perhaps telling children about their sexual parts, giving their sexual parts appropriate and correct names was not the correct approach. While as children you could have been taught about the rape culture, molestation, catcalling, sexism, and how to not feel like a second gender, you were in fact taught about the outfits you would wear, the colors that would match your gender, how to be an ideal child who does not answer back, who does not lie to their parents. It was focused only how to be a child who was good at athletics, academics, had a good general knowledge and who would obey their elders, whatever the situation may be. While your parents were busy getting you ready for the rat race, somebody tried to grope you in school, a sibling pushed their fingers inside you, and an elder raped you when everyone was away, and you were asleep. It was that time when you find yourself uncomfortably with someone who’s getting something inside of you, inside of the place from where you urinate-and you don’t know what that place is called. It happens almost every day, every night, it happens when everybody is gone and it happens whenever and wherever this person finds you alone and it happens when you are with everyone. From having to sit on a dinner table, in a classroom, at a café with friends and laugh with the one who kept raping you for years, to making yourself believe that it does not matter and it does not affect.
A lot of sexual violence cases go unheard when someone is not able to communicate the event to anybody else. Many children suffer sexual abuse and as a parent, you simply never get to know. During childhood, kids are being taught of the body parts, but there is no mention of their sexual organs. Even if it is mentioned in a biology class later on, you will hear giggles and feel shame. While it is easy for a child to talk about how she/he fell and hurt their knee, it is almost impossible for them to come up and talk about how they were being catcalled, molested or raped, to their own families. It is a conversation that merely any parent has with their child, but it should undeniably be an important discussion between the two parties. Instead of giving a vagina or a penis a cute or a vague nickname, it is necessary for the parents to break the taboo and let their kids know about their bodies completely, let their kids know about the anatomical names so that they do not destigmatize their body parts. This will give them full ownership of their bodies, instead of making them feel ashamed of having a vulva, a clit, or testicles. To give your child a language which is healthy will only help them to understand that it is not bad or dirty to talk about it. It is important because it helps avoiding the confusion and makes the communication effective, and eventually makes them feel that it is alright to talk about your private parts. It is required because they need to know that their bodies belong to them and they should make well thought decisions concerned with them. This is the way empower your children, adding one power at a time.
When you become the source of the answers that their inquisitive mind has, they will not have to find some other source to get their explanations.
theaikya 