The Right Time To Have Sex: An incident from 2 years back
A teenage girl once asked me: “Aunty Tobe, at what age can I start having sex?”
It was a question that popped out of nowhere so, naturally, i was taken aback. It took me a little over a minute to decide how best to answer her question. In that minute, I mulled over several options;
‘When you are married’
Who was I kidding? We all grew up having our mothers tell us girls to save the cherry till our wedding night.
Put your hands up if you obeyed that....
Ah, I thought as much, you didn’t. So why should I tell that to a little girl knowing that the world is much more sexually in-tune and the chances that she will have sex right after the conversation with me are not completely ruled out?
‘When you are legally an adult,18’
For the purpose of legal jagon, this would be good advice...it would save who ever she has sex with from the chance of being charged with statutory rape. But then again, there are cultures and traditions that consider an 18 year old girl ‘old’ where marriage is concerned. As much as 18 is the legal adult age, what happens when you are forced to grow up quickly and make adult decisions because of the lot you are cast in life?
‘When you feel ready for it’.
Erm...how do you know you are ready for it? Is there a writing that will appear on the wall or will clocks suddenly go off around the world to herald a girl’s readiness for sex?
After going through these thoughts, I decided to answer her by saying;
"You shouldn’t have sex or make any life changing decisions, without fully understanding the risks and the benefits and being prepared to be responsible for your actions"
If you are going to skip your period one month and start crying to someone, saying things like you ‘accidentally’ got pregnant, then you shouldn’t have sex.
If you are going to go to a shop and loiter around for long minutes until no other shopper is around so that you can ask the shop owner to hand you a pack of condoms with no witnesses, then you shouldn’t have sex.
If you are too embarrassed to look at yourself in the mirror and take a look at your private areas to know what they look like in their natural healthy state, you shouldn’t have sex.
If you are going to be too ashamed to go to a hospital and ask to see a gynaecologist and let him/her look and feel around your private areas when you have itches and/or secretions and/or discoloration, you shouldn’t have sex.
If you are going to lie to everyone that asks you: “are you having sex” and swear to them that you have never been touched, you shouldn’t have sex.
If you feel too afraid, paranoid, ashamed or embarrassed to go to a HIV counsellor and do a HIV test, you shouldn’t have sex.
If the thought of contraceptives freak you out, you shouldn’t have sex.
If you will feel guilty every time you are done with the bed rumble, you shouldn’t have sex.
By the time I was done, she said to me: “Aunty, you make sex look like a university course. Haba”.
I said to her: “No it isn’t, it is a life time course”.
This conversation was almost 2 years ago. She is now a legal adult and she tells me she still hasn’t had sex ( I say ‘she tells me’ because the truth is, that I would never really know) because she decided she only wanted to have safe sex and doesn’t yet have the courage to go to a store and buy a pack of condoms.
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