With a shroud of stigmas and taboos surrounding the topic, it’s difficult to get a clear idea of the sex scene among youth, but just as difficult is trying to get the youth to take part in an open forum about sex and sex related issues in order to educate them on the matter.
Sagar Budhathoki of Youth Peer Education Network (Y-PEER Nepal), a youth-to-youth initiative pioneered by United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), believes that youth are not expressive about this topic.
“It’s difficult for youth to talk about this. At a young age they are shy and feel embarrassed just saying ‘ sex’ or talking about it,” says Sagar who adds that youth who work in the sexual reproductive health sector understand but for most youngsters who are in college, sex is something that is still only discussed in hushed tones within small circles of friends.
In an effort to be more open about sex and sexual education, Y-PEER, and Story Cycle, a media platform that bridges the source of stories to views, joined efforts in the “Talk to me: Let’s talk About Sex” open forum held on Dec 4 at Adarsha Kanya Niketan, Magal Bazar Patan.
Breaking the event into two major categories Dr Rajendra Bhadra of Jhpiego presented the first segment on art, culture, sculpture and sex. With humorous comments that induced giggles in the crowd of almost entirely young people, Dr Rajendra spoke on how sex is talked about in our culture – just not openly.
Exploring various Nepali traditions like Bratabanda, marriage, and Nwaran, Dr Rajendra was able to explain that sex is abundant in our culture, history, and that it is embedded in a large degree of Nepali practices even if it subtle.
The 18 year old Shusma Puri, says, “Dr Rajendra brought up a good point – we talk about sex but we don’t do it openly. I talk about it with girls but we do it in a room and never bring it up around boys. I thought the program was good – there’s no harm is taking about sex, it doesn’t ruin anything.”
Shushma, a student of National College added, “I wanted to get more information. I first learned a little about it when I got my periods but I had no idea what was happening and even in school we weren’t taught about it properly.”
According to Shusma her teacher was shy and therefore not thorough about teaching sex education.
When discussing about sex and reproductive health, the matter of gender inevitable comes up. Perhaps for this reason the second segment focused on HIV related stigmas and discrimination with Pooja Ghale of National Federation of Women Living with HIV and AIDS (NFWLHA) and Bhumika Shrestha of Blue Diamond Society spoke about youth and homosexuality.
Bringing up minorities and their issues to light, the event attempted to raise awareness and expose youth to the truth and reality in Nepal. But when it comes to sharing, there are several sides of the story that needs to be taken into account.
Saurav Dhakal of Story Cycle explains that when it comes to sex related matters there are two major drawbacks in Nepal.
“As a story teller at first, we thought that we’d go and people would talk and we could put a story together – but then we realized that it takes people time to talk and share, and even then we’re not sure about what language to use.” Saurav explains the difficulty in navigating a conversation and there is uncertainty about what words and phrases may or may not be appropriate.
When a story is competed there is difficulty in giving it the exposure it needs, “We try to take the stories to broadcasters but Nepali mainstream broadcasters don’t think this issue is important.
Maybe they don’t trust other people but no matter what, our stories being available online aren’t equivalent to being printed on national media.” This obviously makes it even more difficult for the news to be spread.
Beyond just informing youth about sex Sagar explains that when talking about sex and sexuality a major issue is that youth may agree that this is a issue but they fail to see it as their issue.
“Before I started working in this sector, I didn’t realize that it affected me, but when I saw that this was also relevant to me, I became more interested.” Sagar believes that once youth internalize the need to be knowledgeable about sexual reproductive health only then can there be change.
To address this Y-PEER uses a peer educator method, “We currently have 72 peer educators, there are girls, boys, and third genders between the ages of 16 to 24 that we have trained who then go to other youth.”
Using a balance of all genders and minority groups, the idea is to have youth reach out and educate other youths.
“This isn’t something that will have impact overnight, it’s a slow transformation that happens on the local level,” Sagar says.
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