Sixteen or eighteen? The legal age for consensual sex has been 16 in India since 1983. It was raised to 18 last year. In the wake of the Delhi gang rape, the government in mid-March decided to lower it to 16, meeting with howls of protest. Bowing to pressure, the Cabinet raised the age back to 18.

Even as the people in high places debate the “morality” of sex before marriage, t2 brings together six young Calcuttans to find out what’s really going on between the sheets for today’s teens.

NO AGE FOR SEX

t2: Sixteen or 18, what should be the age for consensual sex?

Josh Majumdar, 18: We are having this debate because of the rape in Delhi and we wouldn’t have had this debate if one of the accused was not 17 years old. Because he was a minor he got suggestive punishment and about 100 community service hours... that’s it! If he was a few months older, he would have got a minimum of 10 years in prison.

The question is, if a boy of 16 or 17 can commit such a crime why can’t we create a provision in the law to deal with it? In other countries, governments are debating about bringing the age down. And in India, the government has been forced into pushing the age up!

I think we should bring the age down to 16 or less because thanks to mass media or social network, we know what we are doing. We know how our bodies may react or our minds.

Soumendra Bhattacharya, 21: First and foremost, it is sex, NOT rocket science. And I don’t think two people ever stop having sex because of a law. The law has no hold on our hormones. So, 16 or 18 is irrelevant. I think the government should do better things than decide at which age people should have sex. It is more important to have sex education. It is more important to tell the youth about the use of protection.... Today young people are exposed to sex, through ads or other means.

Manisha Ganguly, 18: There is such a hue and cry about the age for consensual sex because most people think that lowering the age is promoting sex, just like they think giving out free condoms means promoting sex. I agree with Soumendra that when you are about to have sex you don’t stop because there is a law. Most people my age are sexually experienced. Also, if the age for consensual sex is 18 and the age for marriage is 18 (for women) then it really narrows the bracket for women to experiment sexually. And that leads directly to the question of marital rape, which I think also needs to be addressed. The age for consensual sex should be 16 or lower. There are countries like Argentina and Bolivia where it is 13. As a progressive country we should lower the age for consensual sex.

Ateesha Sethia, 18: There are women who get married off at 16 and they literally get raped. But if the age for consensual sex is 16, there will be no action taken against that.

Rachaita Hore, 19: How many of us are really aware of these laws? And laws don’t really have a hold on your sexual life. I think we all agree that teenage sex is a reality today and there is no point putting that under covers. Criminalising teenage sex is really not the solution.

Syamantakshobhan Bose, 21: Putting an age on maturity and the right to have sex is just silly. But the administration has to fix a parameter by which to judge everything. We are driven by societal norms. If you lower the age of consensual sex, then there is an increasing chance of child molestation. An adult can intimidate a child and claim it was consensual. But raising it to 18 also doesn’t really solve the problem. Rape and consensual sex are two different topics and they can’t be put on the same page.

TO SAY OR NOT SAY

t2: Do you speak about sex at home or is it a taboo?

Manisha: I’ll give you a situation: you are watching a movie with your parents. Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt are getting cosy and immediately the channel changes. That is what happens, even now.

Josh: In my home, my mother made me watch movies like Summer of 42, The Reader, Veronica... so, it has never been a taboo. All the childhood digression that I have had — and every boy has had them — my mother has dealt with them and spoken about them openly. Now I see my friends in school who aren’t very open with their parents and they still have some twisted concepts about sex. If you talk about it you know what is healthy, what is not. But in a majority of homes that doesn’t happen.

Ateesha: I am very close to my mom and talking about sex, even pre-marital sex, is not taboo. But the truth is we get most of our information from friends and we never come back home and verify it.

Josh: My mother explained what oral sex is — I used to think it was just talking about sex! I found explicit books at home and when I was in Class VII she caught me reading one. She told me to finish it. She had read them a long time back as well. We talked about different kinds of sexual relations. I now understand what a man and woman can do and what they can’t. So, if someone told me that they went to a hotel and had sex 15 times in 20 minutes I would know they were lying. But a boy in Class VII would think the guy was Superman!

Ateesha: I was in Class VI when I heard about lesbian and gay relationships for the first time. My mom explained how that works. If I had just listened to my friends, I would have had really, really weird notions about same-sex relationships. She told me that when she was young she used to think that you just had to go to bed with a guy — not do anything — just lie on the same bed and you would get pregnant. If I hadn’t talked to my mother, I would probably had similar notions!

Soumendra: All Indian mothers like to think that their sons are born and die virgins! I think the government of India has played a major role in making sex a taboo. When a film like Gandu does not release, it speaks volumes. I read in the papers that government officials go through TV channels at night to see whether the content was unsuitable!

Syamantakshobhan: My mother told me about the changes that would happen in my body and I was glad because I didn’t think I was going crazy. Some of my friends thought they were dying! Others thought they were doing something very wrong.

Rachaita: I remember I was reading The Second Sex [by Simone de Beauvoir] and because it had a naked woman’s picture on the cover, my friend was mortified to take it home. She actually got a newspaper to cover it!

 

t2: How often do you talk about sex among friends?

Manisha: For GenY, sex is not a taboo, so we talk about it quite a lot. But it’s not like we sit down and really think about it and talk. It is just part of the conversation.

Syamantakshobhan: It inevitably slips into conversations.

Josh: If I am talking to a girl or a boy and the topic of sex or anything to do with sex comes up then there is no inhibition or barrier.

Manisha: For girls, it is like talking about make-up.

Ateesha: Ya, friends talk about... should they do it, should they not do it. I have a friend who has been going out with this guy for three years and she wants to have sex with him, but she is really scared that it is going to hurt. And she’d rather ask her friends who have done it for advice.

 

SAFETY FIRST

t2: What do you know about safe sex?

Manisha: Coming from a girls’ school we are quite aware of contraception, especially pills.

Ateesha: I have a friend studying in Harvard and they have sex-ed classes where they were asked if they knew how to put on a condom. She was the only girl who did not. She was then taught, using a banana. But that is exactly the kind of thing we wouldn’t know either, if we were not experienced. Again, this is something you would rather ask your friends than you parents.

 

t2: How do you react to condom ads on television?

Josh: They have become so common that your reaction to a cartoon ad and a condom ad is the same!

Ateesha: I think condom ads miss the point, most of the time. They are more about getting laid than the actual need for contraception.

Manisha: Nowadays you can’t even tell the difference between the Wild Stone (deo) ad and a condom ad!

Rachaita: I think the only ad campaign that got the point across was the Buladi campaign. But you don’t see that anymore. I think they should bring it back.

Syamantakshobhan: There was also talk about having condom vending machines but that has not materialised.

Manisha: Ya, there is still a reservation about going into a shop and buying a condom. Many people still feel uncomfortable doing that.

 

IN THE CLASSROOM

t2: Have you ever had sex education?

Josh: In school we had value education from Class VI. In classes XI and XII, the value-ed classes were dedicated to sex education for one semester. We had to answer questions like ‘How do you define pornography? What is the inducement to pornography? How does pornography harm children?’

Manisha: We were taught about having sex and how to do it in a safer way, so as not to harm anybody.

Soumendra: I think in school they tried to focus on the aesthetic aspect of sex. You know, how it is a sexual union of souls not bodies! No one ever talked about contraception.

Josh: It was more like how it is not sex, it is making love and how you make love because you love somebody and how it is about coming together for a new creation…

Ateesha: They completely disregard the fact that there can be sex for recreation.

Soumendra: I think the point was more about not treating the female body as a commodity.

 

t2: So, do you want formal sex education?

Ateesha: We need to have proper sex education and from pre-puberty. A lot of my friends, when they had their periods, thought that they had some disease and that they were about to die.

Josh: Having sex-ed only in school is not going to help. You don’t always follow up on what you are taught in school, be it discipline or spoken English, because what happens at home matters. I think what is needed is sex education classes for adults, where they are taught about how to teach their children.

Syamantakshobhan: There should be sessions where parents and students can interact. Maybe joint sessions once a month?

‘ADULT’ CONTENT

t2: Where do you get your information about sex?

Ateesha: Primarily on the Internet.

Soumendra: From friends.

Manisha: I think both. We get information off the Net and then back it up by talking to friends.

Syamantakshobhan: There is a lot of misinformation on the Internet.

Ateesha: Friends can get it wrong, too. And most probably they got their information on the Net as well.

 

t2: How much Internet time is spent on porn?

Josh: That depends on what your plans for the day are! It depends on whether you are single or dating. It depends on whether you have a friends-with-benefits arrangement and someone on your speed dial. If you are getting the real thing, why would you need the visual one? I mean if it is about learning from it then there are videos on YouTube which tell you how to do what and which points to put pressure on. I have seen all those in Class VII and VIII but I have come out of it. If you are addicted to it then you keep watching, whether you get action or not. Else you tend to grow out of it. You don’t stop completely but you are not hooked to it.

Ateesha: Well, girls are reading things like Fifty Shades of Grey.

Manisha: Ya, that book was exchanged quite often in school. I think what Fifty Shades did was introduce BDSM as something not dangerous and painful but something safe. It made sex something not outlandish but regular and accessible.

Soumendra: From the guy point of view, Fifty Shades gave girls funny ideas.

Manisha: It is not like girls don’t watch porn. I have some friends who would stay up at night with a bottle of vodka and watch porn. I mean girls today are much more liberated and do have access to porn as well.

Syamantakshobhan: But girls usually deny that they watch porn.

Manisha: That is not true. You know, there is this idea that girls don’t enjoy sex as much as boys do, which coming from a girls’ school, I would like to deny.

 

t2: Are porn DVDs prized possessions?

Syamantakshobhan: But no one buys porn DVDs now. They use to thrive when there was no Internet.

Manisha: Now you have uTorrent. Now you can have porn on your phone. Why do you need a DVD?

Rachaita: Personally, I am against porn. I find it boring and humiliating.

Manisha: Ya and it gives boys all these ideas about what a girl should do!

 

t2: When does GenY start having sex?

Manisha: I think between 14 and 16, most people become active sexually.

 

t2: And where do they usually have sex?

Josh: You have to have your house empty, basically.

Manisha: The loo.

Syamantakshobhan: Your house or a friend’s house.

Manisha, Ateesha, Soumendra, Rachaita: Terraces! It is like a favourite spot.