Is It Time For Sex Education In Arab Schools?
Sex education is a necessity. Based on monitoring the current situation in our Arab societies, we can notice how news on sex offenders are infesting our feed on social media. Although the current anti-sexual abuse movements are strong and very effective, there’s more society can do, alongside the individualistic movements, in order to protect its individuals against sex offending.
In a society where sex offenders find apologists who team up to defend their acts of sexual abuse, we need individuals with a better understanding of sex, its morality, and its consequences.
If we have a respectful sex curriculum in schools, we can teach kids how to respect their bodies, and understand how it functions, instead of leaving them in their early years of puberty. Wandering in the dark alleys of misleading sex content of pornography, their peers, and the dark web, sex education can deliver the most scientifically appropriate sex content that benefits their understanding of themselves.
When we teach our children what sex is, how it functions, the different kinds of sexual preferences, and the variety of sexuality, we’ll be helping them figure out things early in their lives, and potentially be saving them a lot of disappointments and traumas.
A potential sex offender, marital rapist, victim, and rape apologist, can benefit from sex education
Teaching a potential sex offender the functionality of sex, the morality of consent, and the consequences of abuse, can potentially prevent them from so much stress and disappointment that a sex offender lives with. A sex offender is a person who has a deformed understanding of others’ needs and the meaning of consent, hence an animalistic attitude towards his/her sexual needs. This doesn’t excuse an offender, but rather, it merely explains the act and shines a light on the problem, and what we can do to save children from growing up to becoming predators. Everyone has their traumas and disappointments, but this doesn’t mean one is justified to disrespect everybody else because of it.
In regards to those who commit rape within their marriage, a thorough and proper sex education may potentially implant an understanding that regardless married or not, one does not own another person at all costs. No means no does not apply only to those outside of marriage. It applies at all costs. A marriage entails one to feeling safe and secure with their partner, and not having to endure abuse by a right that their partner feels entitled to merely by default.
A potential victim can benefit a lot from sex education, beginning from teaching them how to draw lines, and understanding their rights. In addition to knowing that consent means everything when it comes to sex, and any sexual act that comes beyond their consent is to be considered abuse, and not their fault. If this doesn’t save them from an unfortunate abusive situation, or doesn’t save them from the post-traumatic experience, it will at least save them from the guilt and shame that eats the victim from the inside out. Furthermore, it would teach them how to seek out justice from their offenders.
A potential rape apologist can benefit from a respectful sex curriculum throughout their early years. To understand how sex works and learn the morality of consent and everyone’s right, they might get their head out of their butts as they grow up, and understand that the only person to blame is the rapist.
Sex is very important for our mental health
Yes, it is. Statistics clearly point out that people who have an active and satisfactory sex life are less stressed, less depressed, and happier in their lives. And when we say “satisfactory,” we mean sex that covers every individual’s preferences. That can’t happen unless the person has a sufficient understanding of their sexuality, and the self communication channel to understand their sexual preferences. How can we achieve this? Proper sex education.
Although the Arab societies tend to amputate any conversation about sex, it doesn’t change the fact that it is a basic human need in all societies. Us as well.
This comes from the feeling of it being wrong, forbidden, and ‘3eeb,’ that try to shuffle the idea of sex into a very dark hidden part in our consciousness. But instead, it shuffles it into a dark side of our obsessions.
Sex education can teach children how to make peace with their varying sexualities, and how to consider sex as an act of pleasure, respect, and love. Thus encouraging them to discover and talk about sex in a more healthy manner, instead of creating a destructive obsession.
If we do not understand our bodies, how can we educate our children?
In Arab societies, we are quite discreet when it comes to sex, and our knowledge of sex comes directly from several sources such as our peers, folklore, myth, adult production and more. All of these sources deliver a very deformed image of the truth. It delivers more wrong than right, and we end up illiterate and lost in the darkness.
We don’t understand how sex really works, which leads to higher expectations that clash with reality, and ending with disappointment. So how can we teach our children to avoid such clashes and disappointments? We ask for help from professionals, and leave the matter of education for schools. I mean, that’s why we created schools, right?
