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Fathers need to break taboos around sex

Jun 17, 2023 08:42 PM IST

Studies reveal that mothers participate more in talking about sexual issues than fathers, and it may be true in India, too. But we need fathers. Where are they?

When I got married at 23 and joined my ex-husband in Kashmir, my father called to ask if I had reached safely and whether things were comfortable. His name kept flashing on my mobile screen but I dreaded answering. For a few irrational moments, I cooked up lies in my head to hide the fact that I was sharing a bedroom with a man.

Did my father’s puritanical attitudes around sex harm me? Yes. At a subconscious level, I still feel somewhat guilty for being a sexual person.(Unsplash) PREMIUM
Did my father’s puritanical attitudes around sex harm me? Yes. At a subconscious level, I still feel somewhat guilty for being a sexual person.(Unsplash)

I did not grow up discussing sex with my father. My daughters, 13 and 20, do that with theirs. I’m amazed at my husband’s patience and the girls’ ease — both virtues absent from my adolescence and adulthood years. Those were different times, one could argue. But healthy parenting transcends spatio-temporal boundaries. And so do hurts and harms in the absence of one.

So, did my father’s puritanical attitudes around sex harm me? Yes. At a subconscious level, I still feel somewhat guilty for being a sexual person. Many parents, fathers, in particular, find it difficult to acknowledge that their children, especially daughters, are sexualised individuals. Their parents, in all likelihood, faced the same difficulties. This is where the first barrier — generationally passed-on attitudes — appears in communication between fathers and daughters.

American society-based studies reveal that mothers participate more in communicating about sexual issues than fathers, and this may be true of India, too. But we need fathers. Where are they?

In a study conducted on Mexican men, it is revealed that men exposed to “de-emphasised expressions of gender inequalities” (i.e., urban patriarchies) are more likely to develop more liberal attitudes towards their daughters. But another interesting study suggests that fathers with less education reported more communication with their sons about sexuality. Clearly, less educated fathers were more clued-in about what their sons were up to — exactly what they did in their youth! This study further said, “More educated parents might assume that their teens are engaged in intellectual activities and preoccupied with educational pursuits.” I have no means of knowing what my highly educated father was thinking.

I do know, however, what my daughters’ father is thinking. He’s thinking that in a world where women are routinely being attacked by their partners, his daughters must feel empowered enough to make the right choices in terms of relationships and sexuality. That in a hypersexualised social context, he and I should emerge as the voice of sanity as opposed to equally misinformed peers on matters of sex. That in a storm of rape-emulating and dehumanising images pervading the web, our girls should find us as a sanctuary of healthy sexual behaviours.

Sigmund Freud has done a lot to enhance our understanding of sexuality but half-baked interpretations of his theories have also ruined certain things forever. Simplistic readings of Freud’s Oedipal and Electra complex formulations, for example, make us immediately suspicious of any acknowledgement of children’s sexual individuality coming from parents. And deviant fathers have not made things better.

It is, therefore, imperative to realign the father’s male gaze to have a healthy and productive discussion about sex and sexuality. There is a need for the father’s acknowledgement of the daughter’s sexual being. At the same time, it needs to be framed within the rubrics of healthy parenting, and not voyeurism and other abusive practices.

Even well-meaning and fairly liberal fathers may believe that their children are not ready to hear about sexual issues and wellness. They need to acknowledge that this attitude is engendered by the socially imposed idea that acknowledging children’s sexuality somehow readies them for engaging in sexual activity immediately.

To address this, Simone de Beauvoir’s lines come as a manual, “The erotic experience is one that most poignantly discloses to human beings the ambiguity of their condition: in it they are aware of themselves as flesh and spirit, as the other and as the subject.”

Fathers are flesh and spirit, and so are their daughters.

Nishtha Gautam is an author, academic and journalist. She’s the co-editor of In Hard Times, a Bloomsbury book on national security. The views expressed are personal

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