Kerala College breaks taboo around sex, creates nation-wide buzz

Eat, Play, Love, responsibly a campaign to provide medically accurate and scientific sexuality education to youngsters launched by Vvox in association with Pixstory is already creating buzz on social media with it's reality based approach to sexuality education.

Why is consent so important in sex?" asked Nirmal, a second year BA student at a prominent college in Kerala during a sexuality education programme held on the campus.

The 19-year-old wanted to know if there is anything wrong in being honest about his sexual feelings towards a girl on the campus."If I have feelings towards a girl, why should I be ashamed about expressing it?" asked the teenager, matter-of-factly.

a time when talking openly about sex is still considered taboo, around 100 students at the famous University College Thiruvananthapuram, sharing seats with the opposite sex, showed that talking about sex was as much a part of their well-being as much as their right.

The event was organised by the National Service Scheme (NSS) of the college in association with Vvox, a sexual health platform backed by Harvard-trained and ASSECT-certified sexologists from India and the United States.

The session comes little over a week after the Kerala High Court observed that boys should not touch a girl or a woman without her explicit consent.The highlight of the event held here on Saturday was high participation of female students.

Some of the topics discussed at the two-and-a-half-hour long session included, masturbation, virginity, pornography and the importance of eating right in sexual health.Responding to the teenager's query on consent, Sangeeth Sebastian, sexuality educator and founder of Vvox, said it is important to avoid any unpleasant situations by ensuring that the other person is comfortable with his sexual advances in the first place.

"Whether your feelings will make someone else uncomfortable or not, is something which you cannot control," said Sebastian.

Sebastian said Vvox in association with Pixstory, a hate speech fighting social media platform, Kerala House, a Thiruvananthapuram-based restaurant and Kanal, a gender sensitisation platform, will extend the session to more Kerala colleges in the coming months.

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