The Illusion of the Unscathed
Anju Kish’s journey into the world of sex education began with a moment of personal shock. She was twenty years old at the time. She was raised in a progressive family in Nagpur, where she was treated as an equal to her brothers. She was an educated and knowledgeable young woman. However, a casual afternoon with her best friend shattered her understanding of her own body. They were looking through a pregnancy book together as her friend was expecting a baby. Anju stared at the diagrams and realized she had absolutely no idea how childbirth worked. She admits with disarming frankness that she thought babies were born through the anus. In her mind, the pelvic region was reserved exclusively for waste elimination because no one had ever named the vaginal opening for her.
Her friend's reaction was uncontrollable laughter at Anju’s ignorance. Anju felt a wave of acute embarrassment wash over her. That shame quickly gave way to a sudden anger directed at her mother. She questioned how her parents could have left her so entirely in the dark about her own anatomy. They were otherwise open-minded egalitarian people. Yet they had allowed her to reach her 20s without knowing the most basic facts of her physical existence. She felt betrayed by this omission and realized that the silence in her home was not a protective measure. It was a barrier that left her vulnerable to humiliation from her peers.
This incident became the seed of her future mission. She realized that silence was an active force that erased knowledge. By not addressing these aspects of her body, her parents had inadvertently prevented her from understanding it. She vowed then that she would break this cycle. She determined that whenever she had children, she would be "super open to them". She would ensure they never faced the indignity of discovering biological facts through the ridicule of a peer. This personal origin story anchors her work. More than any academic theory could kindle, her curiosity was rooted in a raw, relatable desire to preserve a child's dignity.
"I was 20 when I discovered that babies come out from the vagina... I was completely shocked, and I was very angry with my mom."
The "Fine" Fallacy
One of the most persistent barriers Anju encounters in her work with parents is what she calls the "Fine Fallacy". This is a common defense mechanism used by parents to avoid uncomfortable conversations. They dismiss the need for sex education by looking at their own lives. They claim that they grew up without these conversations. They insist they turned out perfectly "fine". They use their own survival as evidence. They argue that silence is an effective strategy for raising children. Anju dismantles this defense with a piercing question. She asks them to define what "fine" actually means. She challenges them to look beyond the surface level of their adult lives. She asks them to examine the internal reality of their experiences with their own bodies.
Is it truly fine to reach adulthood without knowing the correct names for your own anatomy? Is it fine to carry a deep and internalized shame about masturbation and the natural biological process of menstruation? She points to a common experience for women in India. They often stand at a chemist's shop and wait. They walk through the room to ensure that no men are present. Only then do they whisper their request for a sanitary napkin. This false modesty behavior is a symptom of deep conditioning. It shows that periods are viewed as shameful and secretive. It is a behavior learned through years of silence and embarrassment. It creates a culture in which natural body functions are treated as crimes.
She encourages parents to reflect more deeply on their pasts. She asks them to consider if they were ever inappropriately touched as children. Most adults have a memory of an incident they have never disclosed to their parents or peers. They remained silent because they lacked the language to articulate what had happened or because they blamed themselves for it. They feared they would not be believed or judged for the abuse. Anju argues that we survived despite the silence and not because of it. We navigated a minefield blindfolded. In the best case, we were lucky rather than safe because of competence. To claim we turned out "fine" is to ignore the scars we carry. It ignores the risks we run. We must break this generational chain of silence. We must do this if we want our children to be safer than we were.
"Can you really say you did fine? ... This entire feeling of shame stems from the fact that you've grown up with no conversations."
"If my child were not having these conversations with me, I would have never known... it would have played in his mind."
The "USA" Incident
The theoretical commitment to openness was tested when Anju became a mother. The catalyst for her practical application of these ideas came when her son was seven years old. He returned from school one afternoon with a strange question that had arisen on the school bus. The older kids on the bus had asked him if he had ever been to the "USA". He innocently said yes because he was thinking of the country and had indeed traveled there. The older boys laughed at him uproariously. He sensed immediately that he was being mocked, but he could not understand why. He came to his mother in a state of confusion. He insisted that "USA" didn't refer to the United States of America in this context. He was distressed by the laughter and the exclusion he felt from the older peer group.
Anju could have dismissed the incident as trivial childhood teasing. She could have told him to ignore the bullies or simply focused on the geography to correct him. Instead, she listened to his confusion and validated his need to understand the social dynamic. A few days later, her son came back with the answer he had doggedly discovered from his peers. The boys told him that "USA" stood for "Underskirt Area". They were asking if he had seen up a woman's skirt. This was a crude joke meant to humiliate him. It was also meant to introduce him to the objectification of women at a frighteningly young age. It was a test of masculinity designed by children who were already absorbing the misogynistic toxicity of their environment.
This incident underscored for Anju the necessity of parental involvement. She realized the danger of silence. If she hadn't established an open line of communication, her son would have internalized that crude definition without a counter-narrative. He would have looked at every woman in a skirt and wondered what was under it because that was the new definition provided to him. He might have viewed women as objects to be conquered or inspected rather than people to be respected. The silence at home does not mute the world. The world is loud and full of misinformation and distorted values.
By talking to her son, she was able to contextualize the incident for him. She turned a potential source of shame and objectification into a moment of education and trust. She realized she couldn't stop the world from talking to her son. The internet, peers, and media will always reach him. She could only ensure his voice of reason was hers. She proved that being a safe harbor is more effective than being a gatekeeper. She taught him to deconstruct the joke rather than simply absorbing the prejudice inherent in it.
The Power of Storytelling
Anju’s professional background as a copywriter became her secret weapon in the field of sex education. She knew that dry and academic facts rarely stick in the minds of children or adults. When schools teach subjects academically, students often memorize the material for exams and then forget it immediately. Sex education cannot afford to be overlooked because it is knowledge for life rather than for a test. It requires a different pedagogical approach that engages both emotion and intellect.
She decided to translate the complex and often awkward topics of sexuality into the universal language of storytelling and humor. She wrote her book "How I Got My Belly Button" using her own children as a sample audience. She read them drafts to see when they became bored and when they leaned in to listen. She realized that when information is presented in a narrative, it bypasses the brain's defenses. It becomes engaging and fun. It transforms a lecture into a shared experience that bonds parent and child.
Her mission is to help parents become the authors of their children's understanding. She uses games, plays, and even stand-up comedy to break the ice. She learned stand-up comedy specifically to disarm parents and elicit laughter at their own fears. She wants parents to realize that they don't need to be doctors to talk about bodies. They just need to be storytellers. They need to be human. By replacing the lecture with the story, she invites parents to stop being the gatekeepers of silence. She encourages them to become guides to a safer and healthier reality.
"I was also very sure that I'm not going to teach it in the... academic manner... They vomit it out on the exam paper, and that's it."
What I learned from Anju Kish
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The "Fine" Fallacy: We often claim we grew up "fine" without sex education. Anju argues that surviving silence does not mean we are fine. It often means we carry internalized shame or lack the language to articulate abuse.
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Customer vs. Consumer: In the business of sex education, the child is the consumer. However, the parent is the customer and gatekeeper. You must sell safety to the parent to provide education to the child .
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The Buddha Face: When a child asks a difficult question, the most important tool is the "Buddha Face." This is a neutral expression that signals to the child they are not being judged or ridiculed.
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Humor as a Trojan Horse: Sex education is serious. However, treating it too seriously creates anxiety. Humor and games bypass parental defenses and make the information stickier for children .
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Incremental Learning: Parents fear they must explain everything at once. Anju teaches that sex ed is incremental. You answer only the specific question asked. You build the structure brick by brick rather than dumping the whole load at once .
The Silent Heritage
Mithra Krishnamoorthy’s story begins in a landscape defined by its absolute silence. She grew up in Tirupur and attended boarding school in Erode. She describes both cities as "huge villages," despite their economic status as industrial hubs. The social architecture of these places enforced a rigid gender separation. She attended a coeducational school where boys were present constantly, while interaction with them was strictly prohibited. These unwritten rules created an invisible wall between the students. They taught her that the opposite sex was a separate species to be avoided, instead of human beings to be understood.
The educational system reinforced this divide by reducing "sex education" to a functional briefing on menstrual hygiene. Mithra recalls sessions in which girls were gathered in a room to learn a single logistical skill. They knew how to use a sanitary pad. The instruction was mechanical and stripped of context. The teacher instructed them not to wear the pad for more than four hours. This warning constituted the entire curriculum. It failed to address the emotional turbulence of puberty and hormonal changes, as well as the discomfort arising from these bodily changes. The session ignored the reproductive system completely and the responsibility, shame, and pleasure that might affect them emotionally. The school treated menstruation as a sanitary disposal issue instead of a significant biological milestone.
This culture of omission permeated her home as well. Mithra notes a painful irony regarding her family dynamic. Her mother is a highly educated woman with a Master’s degree in Sociology and years of experience as a special educator. She works professionally with children, yet the topic of sex remained an unbreachable barrier between mother and daughter. Mithra felt she would be "shushed" instantly if she ever voiced her curiosity. She realized later that this behavior had nothing to do with malice. Her parents possessed advanced degrees, yet they lacked the vocabulary and templates for these specific conversations. They were products of their own conservative upbringing. They repeated the silence they inherited because they had no framework to replace it.
"We always parent the way we were parented."
The Innocent Child
The silence persists because parents cling to a specific fantasy. Mithra identifies the primary barrier as the "ideal child" myth. Parents desperately want to believe that their children are the most innocent and naive beings on the planet. They operate under the delusion that if they do not mention sex, the child will remain unaware of it. They fear that introducing the vocabulary of sex education will "spoil" the child by planting ideas that were not previously there. This fear paralyzes them. They convince themselves that ignorance equates to purity.
This belief fails in the digital age. Silence does not preserve innocence. It merely outsources the education to the nearest available screen. Mithra points out that while parents refuse to talk, their children have unfettered access to the internet. A child with a smartphone can access explicit content instantly. The parents believe they are protecting their children from corruption. In reality, they are leaving them to navigate a complex world armed only with the distorted reality of pornography and the rumors of peers. The child learns about intimacy from "shit talks" with equally uninformed friends. They consume content that warps their understanding of consent and pleasure while the parents sleep soundly in their denial.
The parents prioritize their own social comfort over their child's safety. They fear their community's judgment more than failing their children. They worry that, if they speak openly, neighbors or relatives will view them as permissive or immoral. This social pressure creates paralysis. The parents remain silent to maintain the facade of a "good family," while their children are left to interpret their developing bodies on their own. They perceive speaking as a risk to their reputation. The refusal to talk serves as an act of denial that leaves the child vulnerable to misinformation and exploitation.
"Parents want to believe that their kids are... the most innocent... the most naive person that they can ever meet."
The Hunger for Answers
The consequences of this domestic silence become violently visible when Mithra steps into a classroom. She describes a specific session with 350 college students that revealed the depth of the educational deficit. She provided them with a box for anonymous inquiries. These young adults flooded her with more than 400 slips of paper. The sheer volume of questions revealed a generation starving for basic facts. These were not complex philosophical queries about sexual ethics or identity. They were fundamental questions about their own biology. Mithra notes that the students asked questions as basic as "alphabet" or "three-letter words" regarding their own anatomy.
Ignorance persists despite the existence of a formal education system designed to prevent it. These students were science majors who had completed high school biology courses. The curriculum includes a comprehensive section on the reproductive system. Mithra points out that there are nearly 150 pages dedicated to this topic in their textbooks. The system fails them because teachers treat the subject as optional. Instructors often advise students to skip the chapter entirely or leave it as a "choice" to avoid awkward conversations in the classroom. The students graduate with a detailed understanding of the respiratory system while remaining strangers to their own bodies and desires. They know how to breathe, yet they do not know how to touch or be touched without shame because topics like masturbation remain sealed.
The hunger for answers drives these students to dangerous sources. Mithra observes that, without a credible adult to guide them, adolescents turn to the only available teachers. They rely on pornography and their uneducated peers. She explains that boys often learn about sex through "shit talks" with equally clueless friends. This feedback loop of misinformation creates a warped understanding of intimacy. They learn porn-performance instead of connection. The tragedy is not that they are curious. The tragedy is that their curiosity is punished. They ask simple questions. The silence of their parents and teachers forces them to accept toxic answers from the world around them.
"These questions are very simple... as basic as the alphabet."
Raising the Parent
"They evolve as a father, they evolve as a mother, and it requires a lot of unlearning and relearning."
The solution to this crisis requires a radical act of empathy toward the "enemy." Mithra refuses to villainize the reluctant parents who block her access to students. She validates their intent while correcting their methods. She operates from the understanding that these adults are not malicious jailers who withhold information. They are humans operating on outdated software. She explains that becoming a parent forces us to confront our own history. It requires a conscious, painful process of "unlearning and relearning". They must actively dismantle the shame that was instilled in them by their own parents to ensure they do not pass it down to the next generation. This surpasses an educational task. It is an act of breaking a generational cycle.
Mithra approaches these parents with compassion. She recognizes that they are afraid. They fear that talking about sex will shatter the innocence they treasure. She gently dismantles this fear by reframing the conversation. Parents don’t need sexologist-level knowledge to become a safe harbor for their child. She teaches them that a parent evolves alongside the child. The parent who protected a toddler from a hot stove must grow into the parent who protects a teenager from misinformation. This evolution requires them to abandon the facade of being perfect and acknowledge that they are learning as well. They must build a vocabulary that was never given to them. They must construct a bridge across a cultural chasm that they were never permitted to cross themselves.
The goal is to replace the silence with a new kind of authority. Mithra envisions a home in which the parent is approachable and knowledgeable enough to make their children comfortable asking fundamental questions. She argues that the ultimate safety net is a relationship built on trust where a child can ask "why" without fear of rejection or punishment. She emphasizes that this dynamic starts early. If a parent patiently answers a simple question about why the sun rises, the child learns that they can ask questions about their body, too. When a parent answers honestly, they do not spoil the child. They secure them and teach them how to treat themselves and their peers with respect. They prove that the home is a place where the human body is celebrated rather than hidden. Mithra clears the path for a generation that does not need to whisper to be heard.
What I Learned From Mithra Krishnamoorthy
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The "Spoiling" Myth is Fear-Based: Parents resist sex education because they believe ignorance equals innocence. They fear that introducing vocabulary will plant ideas that were not previously there .
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Silence Outsources Education: When parents refuse to answer questions, children do not stop asking. They simply turn to non-credible sources like peers or pornography to satisfy their curiosity.
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The Algebra Analogy: Sex education follows a curriculum like mathematics. You teach basic body parts to a toddler just as you teach numbers. You teach puberty to a ten-year-old just as you teach algebra. It is a progression rather than an immediate exposure to adult concepts .
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Human Connection Over Algorithms: While digital access to information is high, gadgets lack the ability to tailor information to a child's specific emotional maturity. A human facilitator or parent provides context that an AI or search engine cannot .
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Parents Need Education Too: The barrier is often not malice but a lack of vocabulary. Parents cannot teach what they never learned. Helping the child often requires first educating the parent on how to speak without shame .
The Misunderstood Buzzword
Meher Suri addresses a significant intellectual bottleneck in modern social discourse. The term "intersectionality" has become omnipresent. It is frequently used in corporate diversity training and social media arguments. However, it is often misused to mean "diversity" or "having many traits". Meher returns to the term's roots to correct this. The concept was coined by the legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw in the late 20th century. It was designed as a framework for understanding how different systems of power overlap, without labeling specific individuals.
The confusion arises because people view identity as a list of separate categories. We see "woman" as one box and "race" as another. Meher explains that intersectionality is the study of the point of intersection. It is not about listing a person's attributes. It concerns understanding the unique flavor of the cake that results from the mixing of those ingredients. It is a tool for analyzing power dynamics rather than a self-identification method. Meher argues that we must reclaim the term's precision. We need to move beyond using it as a synonym for "inclusion". We must begin using it as a lens for "location".
"It is not about calculating the degree of oppression, but understanding the nuance... based on where you are."
The "Math" Trap
Meher refers to the most misunderstood concept of intersectionality as the "Math Trap". Society often treats oppression as a cumulative score. We assume that if a person has one marginalized identity, they have a score of one. If they have two, they have a score of two. People often think that being a "Queer Muslim Woman" equals being "three times" as oppressed as a straight white woman. Meher argues that this "addition and subtraction" model is fundamentally wrong.
Identity is not a scoreboard. The experience of being a queer Muslim woman is not simply "womanhood" plus "Islam" plus "queerness". It is an entirely distinct experience that cannot be divided into its parts. It creates a qualitatively different reality rather than merely a quantitatively harder one. Qualitatively distinct, often involving compounded and context-specific forms of marginalisation. When we treat intersectionality as math, we engage in the "Oppression Olympics". We try to determine who has it worse. This misses the point entirely. The goal is not to rank suffering. The goal is to understand the specific texture of that suffering.
The math trap seduces us because it is simple. It allows us to categorize people quickly. However, human lives are not linear equations. Meher insists that we cease calculating the "degree" of oppression. We need to examine the specific context of the individual. A person might be marginalized in one room and privileged in another. The math changes depending on the environment. The "score" is never static.
"We very incorrectly sort of jumped to this equation... that it is about calculating the degree of oppression."
Access and Exclusion
Meher uses the example of the "Queer Muslim Woman" to illustrate the concept's complexity. The mathematical model suggests this person is only at a disadvantage. Meher expands this assumption. She explains that intersectionality is about "social location". Your location determines what you can see and where you can go.
Yes, a queer Muslim woman faces unique discrimination that a white feminist might never understand. She faces specific barriers in both her religious community and the broader secular society. However, she also has unique access. She has access to spaces that others do not. She can enter the specific intersection of queer Islamic spaces. She understands the nuances of that existence from the inside. She occupies a vantage point that is invisible to others.
This is the core insight that many miss. Intersectionality is not just about counting the doors that are closed to you. It is also about recognizing the doors that are open only to you. It brings "certain benefits as well as certain disadvantages". It grants a unique form of knowledge. This person can bridge gaps that no one else can bridge. They can speak to realities that are invisible to the majority. If we focus solely on oppression, we miss agency. We miss the unique power that comes from living at the crossroads. We reduce people to victims rather than recognizing them as experts of their own unique reality.
"It also means that you have access to only certain places that a queer Muslim person has access to."
Why It Matters for Policy
Why does a researcher or a policymaker need to understand this? Meher argues that if you don't understand intersectionality, you will design bad policies. You will create interventions that fail the very people they are meant to help.
Imagine building a health clinic for "women". If you do not apply an intersectional lens, you might make it in a neighborhood where a "Dalit woman" is socially forbidden from entering. You have technically built a resource for women. In practice, you have built it only for upper-caste women. The policy is successful on paper but a failure in practice. Intersectionality is the tool that makes solutions actually work for everyone. It forces us to ask "which women?" and "under what circumstances?".
Meher emphasizes that this understanding is vital for collecting data. If we treat "men" as a monolithic block, we miss the specific mental health crisis affecting men who are also poor or from marginalized castes. Intersectionality prevents us from making lazy generalizations. It ensures that our empathy is precise. It ensures that our resources reach the corners of society that are usually left in the dark. It turns good intentions into practical action.
"Understanding what your position in society is based on your social location... implies that you have certain benefits as well as certain disadvantages."
What I learned from Meher Suri
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The Math Trap: Meher showed me that oppression cannot be added up like numbers. Being at the intersection of multiple marginalized identities creates a qualitatively different experience, not a quantitatively worse one. Ranking suffering misses the point entirely.
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Social Location Changes by Context: A person can be marginalized in one space and privileged in another. Intersectionality demands attention to context rather than static categories, because power shifts depending on the room you are in.
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Access, Not Just Exclusion: I learned that intersectionality is not only about closed doors. It also explains which doors are open only to certain people. Living at an intersection grants unique access, insight, and forms of knowledge that others do not have.
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From Victims to Experts: Focusing only on oppression erases agency. Meher reframed people at intersections as experts of their own realities, capable of seeing and articulating experiences that remain invisible to those at the center.
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Why Policy Fails Without It: Without an intersectional lens, well-meaning policies often help only the most privileged within a group. Intersectionality forces us to ask “which people, under what conditions,” ensuring solutions work in practice, not just on paper.
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