The 7th session of the Open Space internship held on Monday, the17th was a truly fun filled 3 hrs. Hans, from the Deepgriha society kickstarted the 1st day of the 2 day workshop asking 7 of the '13 hues' to hold down Daawar(while he lay on the floor in the crucifixion position giggling) and introduce each other. The session was on .........umm...........yeah....... it was on sex and sexuality. Not an issue easy to talk about, is it? Thats because you guys havent had a chance to interact with Hans.
With the help of various interactive and funfilled activities like analysing newspapers for sexually suggestive material, listing 20 words we associated with the word 'sexy', body mapping(we came up with mostly conservative body maps) with reference to where we feel pain, pleasure(physical) and shame(psychological).Hans definitely helped us get more open to talking about it.
The discussion began with what we mean when we talk about sex and sexuality. Initially, we were hesitant to openly list out words (Hans doesnt like silence by the way.........) we managed to come up with a few conservative responses such as male/female, copulation,intercourse,act for sex while sexuality was referred to as the manisfestation of one's sex, sexual characteristics, appeal, drive and the sexual organs.
We also overwhelmingly felt that sex is in the individuals themselves while sexuality is in the conditioning.Hans then proceeded to divide us into 3 groups, each with a separate newspaper to analyse:-
SAGA-Sneha,Aditi,Geeta and Ankur with the Times of India
RAGA-Daawar,Chitteshri,Nisha and Soni and with the Indian express and
BAGA which included our surprise guest Mrs. Verghese( who was supercool about the topic being discussed and actively participated in every activity),Anu,Janhavi and Mahalaxmi with the Maharashtra Herald. Our analysis of the newspapers revealed shockingly subtle suggestive references such as the Corolla ad(touch corolla, feel happy), ads for body contouring services, massage ads to supposed 'news' like Daniel Radcliffes 1st kiss......the fact that these references are so rampant sets your grey cells thinking.....what exactly is fuelling ads such as these? are we creating the demand? are we a nation of covert sexuality?
Add to these questions, if sex and sexuality is all around us why did the Bombay legislative council come up with with a statement saying-" No sex education please! This is Maharashtra.....",not a very good stand when estimates project 53.22% of children in India face severe sexual abuse?????
With this as our food for thought Hans came up with another activity(yes, he is full of learning by expereiencing...... something that had died in all of us a long time back thanks to our lacklustre education system.....). Here we were all given chits with a reference to whether we were male or female or references where it was difficult to decide on. He then proceeded to make us stand in 3 groups:- Mars for the Men , Venus for the Women and Earth for characteristics exhibited by both the sexes and left us with a lingering question.......................where does the trans gender fit in all of these?????
Unfortunately, all good things like the session had to come to an end and you better believe this one,we got homework for the next day.. yeah, you read it right.... homework i.e finding out the meanings of sex and sexuality from different sources. Nothing tedious na????
More tomorrow...............
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