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Writer's pictureBilal Tayyab

Teenage and Sex education

It is no secret that any topic revolving around sex and sexuality is taboo in Pakistan. Anyone talking about sex and puberty is greeted with cold stares and a reminder that you need to be more modest. My parents never gave me the ‘Talk’. It is possible that their parents never talked to them about it, and so they thought that it was normal for children to figure out on there,





or maybe they did not know how to approach this topic. Whatever the reason may be, I got my information about sexuality and puberty from everyone and everything but my parents or teachers.


This meant that I had to figure everything out on my own, and it resulted in me getting partial or incorrect knowledge from my peers in school. I remember that there was once a popular song with the word ‘sexy’ in it; I think it was called ‘Sheela ki jawani’ or something similar. I was probably around 8 or 10 years old, so I did not know what it meant. I only knew that it was a bad word and that the adults told me not to say it out loud whenever I sang the song. This made me curious and led to some silly discussions with my peers at school. A few of them said that it was some dance and others said that it meant taking your clothes off, but everyone agreed that it was something ‘bad’. It sounds silly when I think about it now, but we sternly believed it.


When I hit puberty, I started experiences changes in my body, like one usually does. I was confused since I had little knowledge of how puberty works, and the changes I was experiencing were normal. I think I started to feel insecure about myself after that. I was surprised and somewhat embarrassed about hair popping up on every part of my body. I was also getting urges and sensation which I could not understand. All this made my teenage a bizarre time. It would have been easier for me to have responsible adults who I could freely talk to about what I felt going through these, or even some sort of sex education class at school that told me that all this is normal.


This blog was just some things I could think of about my time as a teenager. This was not very structured, but I hope that you enjoyed it. Thank you for reading!

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7 Comments


wish we had formal sex education in our schools where we could responsibly and accurately teach children about these things instead leaving them to go look for it on the internet or from others because children are bound to be curious, its on us to handle this responsibly

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I agree with you Bilal as I went through the same experience during my teenage and puberty. As I was reading your blog and while writing this comment, I am thinking that how big an issue sex education is in our lives and yet it is completely ignored by parents and other elders. Furthermore, easy access to internet and sexual content has made this issue even more serious.

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Taneer Jannat
Jul 03, 2021

so insightful because I also clearly remember considering Sheela Ki Jawani to be the most monstrous thing from my childhood and the shame around that one single word. But I have also noticed a prevalent issue with also hiding pregnancies. It might seem bizarre to us but pregnancies are a very "hush hush" topic in most desi families still.

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Very well written and yes, this is actually quite a problem in our society. What elders and teachers don't realise is that if they don't educate children when needed, children will try to self educate them and this will actually have more risk of exposing them to content not for their age or maybe very explicit. If a proper approach towards sex education is taken, misinformation and mishandling of this topic will stop.

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safa.imran11
safa.imran11
Jul 03, 2021

Even in my school, they used to take our science textbooks in the beginning of the year and return them after gluing together the reproduction chapters. I have never understood the shame and taboo surrounding a natural biological process that sustains life.

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Bilal Tayyab
Bilal Tayyab
Jul 04, 2021
Replying to

I had a similar experience. They used to censor any mention of sex by covering it with a black marker

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